 to trafficking in persons in internal displacement crises. Before we begin, an essential logistical note. Everyone please navigate right now to the Zoom toolbar at the bottom of your screen and click on interpretation and then select English or Spanish. Don't leave it off. This event includes simultaneous interpretation and unless you select the correct language, you will not be able to hear the interpreter. Please be aware that this session is being recorded. My name is Polo Lynch. I'm the Budget and Policy Director for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, or PRM, at the US Department of State. I will serve as today's moderator. This event is co-hosted by PRM and the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and the UN Global Protection Cluster Anti-Trafficking Task Team, which is led by our international partners, IOM and UNHCR. We also recognize the Walk Free Foundation for its support of the work of the anti-trafficking task team. Welcome to our co-hosts and to our distinguished speakers. Allow me to share a few more logistical notes for the meeting. We ask participants to keep your microphones muted throughout the session so that everyone can hear the speakers. We will have one hour for our event today, and we have a very full agenda. If we have time, we will take questions from the audience via the chat box. So please, if you have questions for the panelists, enter them in the chat box, and if time allows, was I muted? No. OK. In addition, the Global Protection Cluster Anti-Trafficking Task Team welcomes your outreach with any questions you have on these topics, and we'll share their contact information in the chat box as well. Let me now introduce our speakers and our agenda. First, we will hear remarks from Leslie Ziment, Deputy Assistant Secretary for PRM, about the US government contributing to anti-trafficking in humanitarian response. We will then hear from Siobhan Mulally, the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children, on addressing the global challenges posed by human trafficking, and followed by William Shimali on how the humanitarians can address trafficking in internal displacement crises. Following those remarks, I will moderate a discussion with three highly experienced humanitarian field practitioners working in Ukraine, Northeast Nigeria, and Colombia about what anti-trafficking action looks like in practice. If time permits, we will take questions from the chat, and then we'll wrap up with closing remarks from USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Response Deputy Assistant to the Administrator, Amy Tohill-Stahl. And again, for those of you just joining us, because our event is being broadcast in both English and Spanish, please navigate to the toolbar on the bottom of your screen and click on Interpretation, and then select English or Spanish to hear the interpreter. Now, I'll turn it over to Deputy Assistant Secretary Leslie Zimmern to share her remarks. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and thank you, Paula. Hello, and welcome, everyone, and a very warm welcome to our distinguished speakers. I'm pleased to see so many of you joining this event today to discuss how humanitarian actors can help prevent human trafficking in crisis situations and respond to trafficking where and when it occurs. We welcome the strong partnership and leadership of IOM and UNHCR for co-leading the Global Protection Cluster Anti-Trafficking Task Team, a network of humanitarian and anti-trafficking bodies established to share best practices. We are pleased to host this event to highlight the introductory guide to anti-trafficking action in internal displacement contexts, a comprehensive resource that includes field-tested anti-trafficking tools for practitioners. For the last two years, the Bureau of Population Refugee and Migration has funded IOM for the Countering Human Trafficking Crisis Project in partnership with USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which also funded complementary work through the Heartland Alliance. This project supports the Global Protection Cluster Anti-Trafficking Task Team and helped to create the guide we will discuss today. Trafficking has always been a serious challenge, but the increased vulnerability of so many people due to the COVID-19 pandemic has made our response even more urgent. Right now, people in humanitarian crises around the world, human traffickers are targeting these people when they are at their most vulnerable, suffering from the impacts of conflict or forced to flee their homes. We have seen that trafficking affects everyone, both across borders and internally within a country. Traffickers are compelling victims to perform labor or engage in commercial sex through various means. However, human trafficking is frequently omitted from our humanitarian response strategies. In a 2018 survey, fewer than one in five national protection clusters had a mechanism in place to coordinate anti-trafficking. As humanitarian actors, we need to do better. I recently met with PRM partners and asylum seekers in Trinidad and Tobago, a country where many Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers are at risk of human trafficking due to a lack of legal status that provides access to formal labor markets and basic services. It is extremely important that humanitarian partners understand these risks and are able to help address them. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, one of PRM's NGO partners, recently assisted two Venezuelan women in Aruba who were trafficked after pursuing what turned out to be a false job offer. HIAS worked closely with IOM and UNHCR and the Coordination Center on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling in Aruba to provide a comprehensive case management services to these women, including safe accommodation, mental health and psychosocial support, legal counseling, and temporary cash assistance. Their case is a microcosm of the threat that human trafficking can pose to affected people, but also the difference that a humanitarian response can make. The United States is deeply committed to combating human trafficking across the globe. The State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons helps lead the policy response to this critical issue. And the Department's annual Trafficking in Persons reports helps us understand trafficking trends and assessments. Secretary of State Blinken renewed the Department's commitment to address human trafficking alongside our global and multilateral partners on National Freedom Day. We are seeing signs that these efforts are having an impact. Anti-trafficking working groups are being established in humanitarian responses, and trafficking is being included in some humanitarian response plans. But this is only the beginning. We hope that today's webinar will bring greater awareness of the guide and of the constructive role that humanitarians can and will play in addressing human trafficking. Thank you again for participating today. Thank you, Leslie. Now let me pass the microphone to you and special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Siobhan Mulally. Over to you, Siobhan. Thank you very much, and thank you for this opportunity to join this spotlight event today and to mark the launch of the introduction. And guide to anti-trafficking action in internal displacement contexts. I've had the great privilege of working already with the Global Protection Cluster and with the anti-trafficking task team. And I'm delighted to see this work progressing and to see these gaps being filled. What we often see in humanitarian action and responses are the siloing of expertise and supports fragmentation of knowledge and practice. But here in this guidance and in the work of the anti-trafficking task team, steps are to be taken to overcome that and to establish good practices to fix what was just said in terms of the failings in a number of global protection clusters where only one in five in 2018 specifically had a focus on action against human trafficking. What we have seen in recent years is an increase in practice and knowledge and guidance around sexual and gender-based violence, in particular, and on child protection. But a much slower response in relation to identifying and responding appropriately and effectively and in a timely way to the risks of trafficking in persons. For my mandate as UN Special Rapporteur, the links between trafficking in persons and conflict in humanitarian settings is a thematic priority for my work. That builds on previous work that was done including through the holding of an ARIA formula meeting at the Security Council in 2019, which began this work of making the links at the Security Council between trafficking, the Women's Peace and Security Agenda, and the work of the Security Council. I hope to continue that, and I'm linking and working closely with the special representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence and Conflict and with the SRSG on Children and Armed Conflict. And I hope also to continue working with the Global Protection Cluster. What we tend to see in anti-trafficking actions, particularly in humanitarian settings, what we tend to see in anti-trafficking actions in conflict settings and in humanitarian settings is greater attention being paid to risks of sexual exploitation, but less attention to risks that are related to forced criminality, recruitment of children into armed conflict, often linked with sexual exploitation, as well as labor exploitation. And there I think the need for guidance and greater expertise and attention to good practice is quite urgent. I was pleased to see in the introductory guide the case study on Borno State in Nigeria. And just last week, my mandate, along with the working group on enforced and involuntary disappearances and the special rapporteurs on education and on sale and sexual exploitation of children, issued an urgent appeal to the Nigerian government to address the situation of repeated abductions and kidnappings of children in northern Nigeria from school settings. And again, this builds on earlier work, earlier engagement with the Nigerian government to try to identify the gaps in child protection, but also to take steps to ensure accountability, to combat the impunity that appears to exist for these repeated abductions and kidnappings and to look closely at the long-term protection needs around counseling, support, rehabilitation, and social inclusion for the children who have been affected. In terms of the methods of my mandate, just to note, because I think engagement with humanitarian actors and those on the ground is critically important. My mandate and other UN special procedures work through communications, submissions of reliable, authoritative information from those on the ground, and we can then engage and work with governments through urgent appeals or through what may be allegation letters where there are serious risks of human rights violations occurring or having already occurred, or other letters or other forms of communication where we try to engage in a policy process, a legislative reform process, or look at where there may be gaps in practice. And that is where I hope that we can build links and relationships with humanitarian actors on the ground to be able to respond and use those tools in a timely way. I note also the attention in the guidance to grave violations against children during armed conflict. And again, although trafficking is not specifically enumerated as a grave violation, as is highlighted in the guidance, trafficking is related to and may be related to a number of those grave violations. And so it's important that that awareness is built into monitoring and reporting mechanisms. Again, I think very importantly highlighted in the guidance and that links in, as is noted with the work of the SRSG on children and armed conflict in particular, and I think it will be important that we continue to make those links between the normative standards, the requirements, the positive obligations on states of prevention and of accountability. My two thematic reports this year, just to conclude, one will focus on non-punishment of victims of trafficking to ensure that we keep a focus on a human rights-based approach and support victims of trafficking in protection and long-term rehabilitation rather than criminalizing victims as unfortunately does occur in many parts of the world. And that is linked to a failure of early identification and referral for protection. So the attention to identification and referral for protection in the guidance is very welcome. The second report will focus on the links between terrorism and trafficking which is repeatedly highlighted, but with less attention to the human rights-based approach to the protection of victims in context of terrorist activities and armed conflict. And that will go to the General Assembly in October of this year. And I hope we'll also draw on the practice and information that we are getting from the work of the Global Protection Clusters. So I look forward to continue working with you and thank you for this opportunity. Thank you very much for those remarks, Siobhan. I'd like to welcome Global Protection Cluster Coordinator William Chamele to share his reflections on human trafficking during crises. Over to you, William. Thank you very much, Paola. Thank you also, Leslie and Siobhan, for the introductions and for hosting this important event. This is not the first time we see each other on the same panel highlighting this important issue. On behalf of the anti-trafficking task team of the Global Protection Cluster, including UNHCR, IOM, I would like to thank the special reporter, the U.S., in your different branches, and as well the Walk Free Foundation, who are in Australia, I guess, having a spotlight between the U.S. and Australia creates time-lapse difference that is difficult to reconcile. But I hope some of our Australian friends and colleagues are able to join. In times of crisis, trafficking increases. The data is there. Even if the data is not immediately there, we as a humanitarian should work on the assumption that it will increase and go in on no regret basis and start responding or preventing. Recruitment increases, sexual violence, kidnapping, domestic servitude, forced labor. There is a new demand that is created by the chaos and the conflicts and the disasters. And there are new supply for this horrible crime that is also created. But combating trafficking, as Siobhan said, relies first and foremost on the local action and local organization. And that requires engaging with parliaments, with civil society, with health networks, with unions, with border guards. It requires a kind of alliance that is not a classic and typical alliance for human Italians. Combating it requires going beyond the protection of the cluster. And we're very happy to get the pressure for us as a cluster to do much better. Yet, this pressure needs to carry all our voices and go beyond the cluster system, go beyond the humanitarian system altogether. And that's not to say that we don't have an important role to play. We should sharpen our role, be part of this puzzle and enable that broad alliance to combat this crime. Above all, our purpose is to have an impact, a positive impact. Using all possible channels, there is time for behind-the-curtains negotiations, there is time for local support and capacity-building. There is time to move out. When all other tools and methods haven't worked, combating trafficking is clearly, since I started my tenure in this job, is clearly the single largest set of violations in time of crisis, where humanitarians do not yet have a predictable and at-scale way to respond. That needs to be fixed. Let's change it together. I hope this alliance today this guidance and the conversation are a step in this direction to try and find a predictable way for our engagement. So welcome everyone to this discussion and I'm looking forward to hear the views and the stories from the field colleagues. Back to you, Paula. Thank you very much, William. What I heard from all three of you this morning was the gravity of human trafficking and its prevalence in humanitarian crises. But also a hopefulness that more and more humanitarians are taking action. Let's learn more now from three particular country situations where humanitarian actors are tackling trafficking challenges. Let me start by introducing our three panelists. Patience Paris-Schickse is with the Heartland Alliance and coordinates the Lake Chad Basin Human Trafficking Prevention Project in Northeast Nigeria. An Nguyen is the Chief of Mission for IOM in Ukraine. And Mayeline Vegara Perez is the 2020 Nansen Refugee Award winner and coordinator of Fundación Renoncé, a home for children and teens who have survived sexual exploitation in Colombia. A very warm welcome to all three of you. Let's start by setting the scene. All three of you work in anti-trafficking but in very different parts of the world. Could you briefly describe in about three to four minutes the context you work in and the forms, prevalence, and response to trafficking among displaced people and host communities? Let's start with Mayeline, and followed by Anne and then Patience. Mayeline. Thank you very much, Paula. Good morning, everyone. Well, it is well known for everyone here that Colombia, historically, we've had a series of violence, violent events related to drug smuggling and trafficking. This hasn't, and naturally this hasn't helped regarding the trafficking of well, infants, adolescents, and adults. Today I would like to mention and state that how we see the, see how women specifically and girls, the trafficking of women and girls, have existed forever, so to speak, and it has been deepened now related to trafficking and drugs, and I would like to emphasize as well that as, although we do have the transnational traffic, we also have a local traffic that we don't see and we don't tackle, so to speak, is a local trafficking within departments, municipalities, internal here in Colombia. And it is necessary to have the ability, because I believe this is a ability or a skill, to identify this, identify these cases, both us working in the field and international organizations that are working in the field as well, and the government, because we would think that sometimes we do have police teams that would have the expertise to identify these cases, but in many cases we see that there is a difficulty for them to identify these cases. Of course, these problems in identifying the cases in adolescents and girls and women, adult women, victims of trafficking, they are associated to the collective imaginarium, so to speak, that we have here regarding girls and women, to be a little clearer. Myself, I'm a professional working in a field, no matter what NGO or government or international assistance or anything, I believe that adolescents are responsible of their own trafficking, or because they said yes to something, and even though they knew that this person was going to move them from one place to another, and at the destination they were going to be sexually exploited. If I believe that this adolescent is, in fact, responsible for what happened, this sexual exploitation case, from my part, well, let's say I'm a municipal police officer or psychologist or anything, I won't look at it as a case, but as a responsibility from her part, and I believe it is necessary to go beyond and destroy this social imaginarium, social fixed thoughts that make these girls and women responsible of their own situations, and as well as emphasize the attention that a girl or an adolescent requires, and naturally a woman's, an adult woman's attention, that because we need to differentiate the needs. And I believe that Columbia has, well, Columbia has the option to access justice for these aggressors, but I believe they're, as well here in Columbia, we're still slacking on justice to achieve these aggressors to be handled by the law, and well, thank you very much, that's my thought. Okay, over to Ann. Thank you, Paula. I hope you can all hear me loud and clear. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. It's really nice to see over 370 participants in this session, and I'm really happy to also see familiar faces and names, and so thank you so much again for this time. You know, the operational context in Eastern, in the Eastern conflict area in Ukraine is extremely complex as it's highly politicized locally, nationally and internationally, and characterized by multiple and often overlapping layers of socially destabilizing factors, which includes a simmering conflict with a 420 kilometer line of contact within Ukraine's borders, which separates communities from needed infrastructure and services. It also includes a protracted displacement conditions, economic stagnation, and believe it or not, natural disasters. As a result, we have in what we call the ECA 4, 3.4 million people in need, and it's one of the oldest populations in the humanitarian setting, and we have 1.4 IDPs, and most of them are not in camp settings, but are living in host communities. Something to note is that Ukraine is a developing country with relatively functional infrastructure and services in place, and prior to the conflict was rooted by the social and economic factors, and this is really important to understand if we want to effectively tackle the issue within the crisis context as well. It goes without saying, but the conflict has increased the community's vulnerability to trafficking in persons abuse and exploitation, as well as adding many different types of trafficking dynamics, which make any response much more challenging, and all of these have been amplified by the pandemic, resulting in larger numbers of DOTs that we've seen, new vulnerable groups, as well as new forms of exploitation. Some very quick numbers to help better contextualize is that in 2013 before the conflict, we had identified 932 victims of trafficking. After the onset in 2014, the number slightly decreased, and it went down as low as 17% in 2015 due to the shifting of focus of life-saving needs, only to grow dynamically and to reach an increase of 64% in 2016. Showing that actually this delayed impact of the crisis. The numbers then grew by an average of 5% per year following the three years, and it reached over 1,300 cases in 2019, and unfortunately in 2020, the numbers again increased dramatically by 25% due to the COVID pandemic. I think that's enough for now, so thank you. Thank you very much. Now over to you, Passions. Hey, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone, and thank you for this opportunity. Not East Nigeria is a humanitarian context exacerbated by humanitarian crisis since 2009, and has affected our Bruno, Adamawa, and Yobi states in the Northeast Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria. According to UNSCR December 2009, 2020, the Boko Haram insurgency has displaced nearly 2.4 million people in the lectured basin. Presently there are about 304,562 Nigeria refugees over 2.1 million internally displaced in Nigeria, and over 778,000 internally displaced in the neighboring countries of Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. The humanitarian crisis has sorry, trafficking in persons strife in humanitarian crisis with increased vulnerabilities of the affected population resulting from the widespread economic, human, social, and material losses caused by the humanitarian crisis in Northeast Nigeria. Forms of trafficking in Northeast Nigeria are conflict induced, and they are characterized mostly by sexual exploitation demanded by adults and people in position of power, forced marriages, abduction of women and girls for sexual exploitation by combatants, abduction of forceful recruitment of children to be used as child soldiers or for suicide bombing. Example of our common cases, the most common and prevalent cases in Northeast Nigeria, I want to cite a case scenario with the case of our forced marriages. First marriages is common and prevalent in the Northeast Nigeria. We daily receive cases of children like the adolescent girls or young girls that have been forcefully married out. Most of the reason is the parents sometimes use them to pay their debts, so they have to forcefully marry out these children, these young adolescent girls, young girls with a promising future. And again, sometimes we have reports whereby young girls are being married out without their consent. We also have cases like children, young children, most especially the young children that are in school during the rainy season denied or deprived education because they are needed or because of the selfish interests of people in power and the adult, because they want them to work on their farmland during this season. And again, another thing that I want to also point out here is that these young children are being used on this farmland and maybe there was an agreement of a certain amount to be paid, but at the end of the day you realize that they are being used for more than the hours that a child is expected to work and also being paid is typing, not really being paid for actually the amount of work this child has done for the person that has recruited him. Then also we have cases of sexual exploitation whereby these vulnerable women and girls are being forcefully taken or are being forcefully or under threat demand sex by adult and people in power or position. Most of the times they will threaten them that if you don't sell sex there will be no food for you. There will be no access to shelter, housing and other basic necessities of life. Then talking of response to trafficking in North East Nigeria, the anti-trafficking response in North East Nigeria is through the four piece model that is the prevention, the protection, the prosecution and partnership. Thank you very much. Over. Thank you very much, patients. Thanks to all of you for explaining the context in which you're working. Now I'd like each one of you to describe either one trafficking initiative that you think has worked pretty well in your area or one challenge that you have that you seem to not be able to figure out how to deal with. I'd like to have you choose one or the other and we'll start with patients and then go to Myerlene and then on. So back to you patients, please. Thank you. Thank you too. I would like to highlight two significant initiatives that stood out for North East Nigeria and is really working well for us in the North East Nigerian context. We have the establishment of the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, Zonal Command in North East Nigeria and the Borno State Anti-Trafficking Tax Force. Anti-Trafficking in Persons Tax Force. The Borno State Anti-Trafficking in Persons Tax Force in Humanitarian Action was inaugurated by the Protection Sector on the 9th of July 2009 and was officially launched by His Excellency Professor Babagana Umarazunu, the Executive Governor of Borno State, the Honorable Commissioner, Borno State Ministry of Justice, NAPTIP, Meduguri Zonal Command, with support from Heartland Alliance International, International Organization for Migration at UNHCR, shares the tax force. The tax force has three subcommittees. The three subcommittees include the Prevention Subcommittee, which is responsible for awareness, empowerment of marginalized individuals and groups, economic empowerment, and access to education, as well as research. We also have the Protection Subcommittee, which is started with the responsibility of direct assistance to victims of trafficking. We have the Prosecution Subcommittee, which is responsible for advocacy, capacity building, legislation, and victims protection. The tax force has 43 members, from both federal and state ministries, departments, and agencies. We have civil society organizations, national NGOs, I NGOs, UN agencies, child protection, and the GBVs of sectors. And our Modular Coordination Meeting takes place Tuesday of the second week of every month to discuss issues on trafficking, I'm sorry, of issues on trafficking in persons and the way forward in Northeast Nigeria. And I also want us to know that the tax force is an example of the successful governmental and non-governmental collaboration to combat trafficking in persons in Northeast Nigeria, by responding to the pressing issue of trafficking in persons in a systematic institutionalized manner and to strengthen collaboration and capacity of partners to prevent, mitigate, and respond to trafficking in persons. Thank you very much and over. Thank you, Patience. Over to you, Marilyn. Gracias, Paula. Thank you very much, Paula. Well, given that trafficking, especially the one that has sexual exploitation objective has a profound psychological or personal impact, whether they're infants, adolescents, or women, from Columbia along with the government, we do have a response for this, which is that they specialize the therapeutic attention for children, adolescents, and women for, well, that have been victims of sexual exploitation or trafficking with this objective. I think this is fundamental, and I do believe this is fundamental because, well, a child and adolescent that has suffered either trafficking or sexual violence requires theoretical, specialized theoretical assistance, not only a psychosocial first aid or attention, so to speak, but in our practice what we've noticed is that it requires a specialized therapeutic attention. So for them to be able to face this and to, well, not only to face it, but identifying this so they can have a healthy and natural life, so to speak, for her or for them and their family. And I believe that from Derenacer Foundation, this has, well, this has become extremely good practice that I hope this could be replicated in other parts of the world because somehow we're transforming lives and actually helping them to hopefully mitigate or reduce the impact of trafficking and, well, sexual violence, so to speak. And on the other hand, it is important to emphasize prevention. We cannot just wait for victims to exist to assist them. It is important to work with with the communities, with the host communities and, well, refugee communities with educational institutions, with the private sector, with companies, especially companies that are related with tourism and traveling. They have an amazing direct direct responsibility regarding the prevention of traffic and here in Colombia, we've worked with some airlines, some transportation, companies with restaurants, with discotecs because these are places, contact places, where our collaborators working in these companies, if they have the ability to actually recognize the cases, they will naturally create some prevention strategies that will help us in this transformation process. We do have big challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the attention for adults. I believe that... I mean senior, well, when I mean adults, I do not mean senior, so to speak. I mean adults here, legally adults 18, 19 years old, they're victims, they're victims of trafficking or sexual assaults, etc. They are not children, so to speak, but they require specialized therapy. And something I mentioned before is regarding the judicial investigation. Why this? Of course, the trafficking of people, a person, it's well written in the Colombian penal code. It's well written there, it's presented, but we need someone to actually present a claim. And this happens a lot. Many victims don't say anything. And what we do from Renacer Foundation is we move around the streets, we go to prostitution sites, identifying victims, because we need to go and identify them because they're emotional structure do not allow them to access an institution and mention their cases and state their cases. And so from one side is the identification. And from the other side, the site to proactively act. What I mean with this don't need to wait for a claim to exist, but from the physical part or police officer or anyone that can create any type of control, vigilance, research, or investigation process to actually found proof of this assault or of these cases because and not only give this responsibility to the victim because we know emotionally what's going on inside of the victim's head because probably and regrettably their declarations, their claims, their statements will not be a substantial proof to prosecute someone. So we require, we need a proactive judicial process. And with this through this continue destroying the ideas, the thoughts that worldwide exist regarding the victims of trafficking and sexual abuse or assault, especially women and adolescents. Okay, thank you very much, Marilyn. And then over to you on please talk about the pros and cons, what's going well, what's not. Thank you. Yeah. Being self critical by nature, I think I'll focus on the challenges which leads which actually led us to advocating for the creation of the task team under the global protection cluster. You know that I think that the key challenges still is the lack of understanding and the stereotyping of trafficking in persons. Horny as it may sound, but if you don't know what you're looking for, you won't find it. And I recall a session which I had with actors in the protection cluster where when I asked you know the NGOs and other actors there what the faces of tip victims look like. I ended up with the usual description of a young 18 year old girl for sexual exploitation. Now that is a case but it's not the majority of cases that we see now. And so I think part of it is us needing to really help to reshape and to make sure that we have a robust data to provide the evidence that we need to be able to identify effectively who are the victims and who are the potential victims. Again in the context in my context as Ukraine prior to the conflict had and still has a rather robust tip response. We need to get away from you know some of the muscle memory is what I call in our humanitarian responses that sometimes leads to creating peripherals and assistance mechanisms versus a more sustainable approach of connecting and augmenting the existing national responses. And this also leads to what the previous presenter said was that we as a protection are and on humanitarian actors sometimes forget the criminalization aspects. And I think that that's something that really needs also be looked at and to be factored into it. This is an example of this humanitarian development coherence that we've been you know been talking much about. So thank you. Thank you all three very much for giving some very specific information about what's going well and what challenges are still there. I think we might skip right now to see if we can deal with some of the questions that have come up in the chat box. And for that I'm going to turn to Christina Gossick my colleague from PRM and she's been collecting these questions. So I'll let her ask some of the questions that we've got. Thank you. Hi, thanks Paula. I have a question here that I think might be best answered by Siobhan if she's willing related to counter-terrorism and human trafficking. And the question is overly broad counter-terrorism laws can result in human trafficking victims being wrongly treated as terrorists for being associated or co-located with armed groups who have been designated as terrorists. What can states be doing to protect victims who have been trafficked to armed groups to ensure that they are properly identified as victims and protected from punishment for acts that they were coerced into doing. I'm wondering if Siobhan might be able to to offer a response to this questioner. Thank you very much. That's a very good question and this is one of the issues that I will be addressing in as I mentioned one of my reports this year specifically the report to the UN General Assembly in October. This is a critical issue in that children may be forcibly recruited to participate in armed conflict or may be groomed over a period of time for the purpose of sexual exploitation, labour exploitation or a combination. States have a positive obligation legally under international law under regional domestic laws to take steps to prevent that occurring so effective action to prevent online grooming to raise awareness to provide information that is accessible to children in different settings and then there is an obligation of identification and that is not as we heard already it's not dependent on self identification it's a positive obligation on the state and early identification is critical to ensure that a victim is referred for assistance and protection and is not punished either through sanctions such as deprivation of citizenship in the citizenship stripping context that we've seen increasingly in recent years or in the form of detention or criminal prosecution. So identification is critical to ensure that victims are not wrongly prosecuted but it's also critical to actually combating impunity for human trafficking because if states and other actors are prosecuting the wrong people those who are victims not perpetrators then you're not going to get accountability for crimes that are being committed so that's critically important and the link in the nexus is being recognized but unfortunately not yet by states sufficiently I would say. Siobhan as long as we have you with the floor there's another question here for you that seems very relevant and the question is what should be done when public officials are involved in trafficking particularly when it's sometimes high-level officials who are involved. Thank you very much so again this is a very critical issue there is an obligation to ensure that that is recognized as an aggravating factor in terms of sentencing and punishing where there is an involvement of a public official and states have an obligation to take action to take effective action to investigate and prosecute and to recognize the aggravated nature of that involvement of a public official where we should be able to turn to public officials of course for protection and assistance. Unfortunately it is something that occurs far too much and can be a problem at borders for example but also in humanitarian settings and it can really block effective anti-trafficking action so it's really critically important that states are very proactive to take steps to ensure that that does not happen but it's an aggravating factor it must be recognized as such. I have a question here about prevention that I think perhaps might be a good one for on if you're willing to take it it notes that for natural disasters humanitarians engage in disaster risk reduction and the question is that when humanitarians are going into countries or cultures where there are prevalent preconditions for trafficking and GBV it seems too late to wait until a crisis occurs to mount a trafficking response and so what are some of the steps that can be taken in order to address trafficking before crises occur? Yeah that's a great answer and again you know I think this is where I mean from the humanitarian response context we need to when we get there we need to understand what's happening then or as these preconditions and so we've done some research where we think that especially within the humanitarian response we need to act within the 48 hours and different things like that but I think one of the things that's very important is for us to try to connect to what is already existing and what some of the preventive measures are so that we can help to augment it and not just create a new one. Hey we have a question here that's a little bit long but I guess I would kind of put it to the panelists broadly and it's about addressing trafficking in deep field locations where the trafficking networks themselves may pose a risk to humanitarian personnel where they are sophisticated and can outsmart the resources of humanitarians and where there's not potentially a strong state presence to provide safety and protection for humanitarian actors so how to address human trafficking in that kind of insecure environment and I don't know perhaps you know our panelists can address that given the conditions in Colombia, Nigeria, Ukraine I think we're running a little short on time so we should maybe ask one panelist to volunteer to address and then we have closing please thank you but someone has to be here Good, Marilyn please Marilyn? Yes Regarding my experience or our experience we are located in several areas of Colombia right now I'm in Guajira which is the west of Colombia and there is a strong presence of United Nations agencies and international agencies and there are other places where it's firmly isolated where we've identified traffic trafficking cases for instance I'll give you an example young girl stuck who was moved here to Colombia arrives to a small municipality here in Colombia and then she's moved again to another country sorry another city or a small city even more isolated person over there we had international medical medical team over there their objective was only to provide medical assistance but these professionals over there they had received some training regarding how to identify trafficking or sexual exploitation cases and one of the nurses identified certain cases within the life of this child that she determined they were a little sketchy of course we didn't have any presence of the state no one the girl this girl was was under control of her sorry to use this word of her pimp and men would go into her home and out of her home and rape her there of course the nurse noticed noticed this but the girl was not capable of explaining because the person the person who was exploiting her was next to her so the nurse what the nurse did was she called us she called the state and the next day we arrived there of course well I believe it's extremely important to understand the role that everyone plays for instance in this case the nurse the nurse's role was was to probably activate activate the the protocol so to speak and call by calling the by calling us and from her side just help the girl but not put herself in risk so I believe that as would be somewhere around there to recognize our roles the roles that each of every one of us has for instance in our case we're judicial investigators well we're not judicial investigators that's that's the role of police officers there are some of the people who offer psychological assessment and others who offer the judicial investigation but that's the objective to know the roles but but the challenge is to have a proper communication a proper articulation among all of us to arrive to the goal which in this case was to save this girl without putting ourselves or themselves in risk but complying with the roles I don't know if with this answer the question but yeah thank you very much Marilyn thanks to all the panelists for sharing your reflections it's clear that we have a lot to learn from what you're doing in the field and with that let me turn it over to USAID's Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance Deputy Assistant to the Administrator Amy Toehl Stull for her closing remarks over to you Amy thank you so much Paula and I'd like to begin by also extending a thank you to the incredible presenters today as well as for all of the rich discussion that's taken place I very much appreciate this opportunity to join you all today to put a spotlight on the scale and the complexity of trafficking as related to IDPs and conflict settings and to identify ways in which we as humanitarians can better respond to this multifaceted problem by ensuring that we're putting protection of the most vulnerable at the center of everything that we do USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance funded the introductory guide alongside PRM because we recognized that there was a clear gap in the tools needed to prevent and respond to trafficking in humanitarian emergencies and also the importance of equipping humanitarian response actors with the knowledge to be most effective Today's panelists have given sobering examples of how humanitarian crises can exacerbate pre-existing trafficking trends as well as give rise to new ones but most importantly I think our colleagues have shown us today that we can do much more to combat trafficking in emergencies and they've provided us examples of how to do so in the context of of conflict and displacement unfortunately we've only had an hour together today and there's so much more I think that we can learn from one another I encourage all of us to continue working together to learn from one another and to find practical scalable and impactful solutions that will make a difference for the men and women the adolescents and the children who are at risk of trafficking in its many forms For its part USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance remains committed to holistically preventing and responding to trafficking in emergencies in collaboration with our colleagues at PRM the rest of USAID and with the humanitarian community and I'd like to underscore in this closing that our new administration is committed to leading the global effort to combat the threat of violence exploitation and abuse while we welcome the opportunity to support the global protection clusters anti-trafficking task team through our partner Heartland Alliance we don't see this as the end of our engagement and we look forward to continuing to support ongoing efforts to improve our collective ability as a community of practice to better address trafficking in humanitarian contexts through the sharing of technical expertise and also the experience of humanitarian responders As other speakers and panelists have noted the best way to address trafficking in emergencies is to take a multi-sectoral approach we can't overlook the intersecting needs specifically those of women and girls in humanitarian settings through our global awards we attempt to do this for example by targeting child and adolescent survivors and violence in the home by addressing the intersection of gender-based violence and child protection we aim to better understand prevent and respond to the needs of those most at risk of trafficking we also support the development of technical guidance for the prevention of child recruitment as well as the release and reintegration of boys and girls associated with armed forces and armed groups we look forward to continuing to fund similar initiatives that are grounded in a holistic approach and I also encourage others to strengthen their country-level responses by adopting more holistic approaches as well on behalf of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance we appreciate this opportunity to bring together advocates technical experts and global partners around the world in order to advance our common goal of countering trafficking and emergency settings and I want to conclude by saying thank you again to the presenters for allowing us to learn from you today also thank you to PRM for hosting and facilitating this event and most importantly I want to say thank you to all of the participants who have joined today for your tireless work to address trafficking and all of its forms and some of the most difficult operating environments around the globe thank you so much thank you very much Amy I can only emphasize the value of PRM and BHA collaboration on protection issues and internal displacement with trafficking in persons being an excellent example before we close our event I just want to remind all the listeners that the introductory guide to anti-trafficking action in internal displacement contexts say that three times fast is an excellent resource to explore these topics in greater depth including tools and guidance on how to prevent trafficking who to work with in doing so what systems require that link is available in the chat this concludes our event today thank you to all 370 people who joined us this morning that is very impressive thanks so much thank you well I see we're still recording but I'm going to say goodbye