The news that T&T has fi­nal­ly made progress in the fight against hu­man traf­fick­ing and has been up­grad­ed to Tier 2 on the US State De­part­ment’s lat­est Traf­fick­ing in Hu­mans Re­port, comes with a new set of chal­lenges.

The 2024 re­port, which was re­leased yes­ter­day, pin­points the in­creas­ing use of dig­i­tal tools to “groom, de­ceive, con­trol, and ex­ploit” vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing, in­clud­ing chil­dren.

That places a greater de­mand on the skills and re­sources of lo­cal law en­force­ment to get ahead of the rapid tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments that have be­come weapons in the hands of the crime syn­di­cates be­hind the glob­al il­lic­it trade in hu­man be­ings.

There is no time to cel­e­brate the small step for­ward, which is due in part to in­creas­ing ef­forts made against hu­man traf­fick­ing and the first con­vic­tion of a hu­man traf­fick­er.

T&T re­mains a des­ti­na­tion, source and tran­sit coun­try for women and chil­dren lured in­to pros­ti­tu­tion and forced labour, main­ly from Colom­bia, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Venezuela, and Suri­name.

And while there has been progress, T&T’s con­tin­ued fail­ure to meet min­i­mum stan­dards in sev­er­al key ar­eas is wor­ry­ing.

The 2024 re­port echoes a con­cern from the pre­vi­ous re­port: “Cor­rup­tion and of­fi­cial com­plic­i­ty in traf­fick­ing crimes by some in the po­lice and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, in­clud­ing at more se­nior lev­els, re­mained sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns, in­hibit­ing law en­force­ment ac­tion.”

That alone de­mands an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion, but law en­force­ment and an­ti-traf­fick­ing stake­hold­ers must al­so re­dou­ble their ef­forts to seek out and dis­man­tle the on­line plat­forms be­ing used by hu­man traf­fick­ers and oth­er crim­i­nals to ex­ploit vic­tims.

This is al­ready fa­mil­iar ter­rain, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in this coun­try, where the huge de­mand for pornog­ra­phy not on­ly fu­els the traf­fick­ing of women and girls but oth­er types of ex­ploita­tion and abuse, in­clud­ing sex­tor­tion.

The need to get ahead—and stay ahead—of crim­i­nal use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy on a scale that ex­tends well be­yond the phys­i­cal bor­ders of this coun­try, is a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge. Traf­fick­ers can lure and ex­ploit vic­tims while re­main­ing hid­den and dif­fi­cult to trace.

The loose reg­u­la­tion of on­line plat­forms and T&T’s out-of-date laws fur­ther com­pli­cate an­ti-traf­fick­ing ef­forts.

For T&T to progress be­yond its cur­rent Tier 2 sta­tus, much more work must be done be­yond the min­i­mum ef­forts flagged in con­sec­u­tive Traf­fick­ing in Hu­mans re­ports.

This in­cre­men­tal im­prove­ment should not be used to score po­lit­i­cal points. In­stead, se­ri­ous at­ten­tion needs to be paid to the rec­om­men­da­tions in the re­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are spe­cif­ic to T&T.

The re­port al­so con­tains this gen­er­al re­minder that should be heed­ed by the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion: “Gov­ern­ments have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to reg­u­late the use of tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing in an­ti-traf­fick­ing ef­forts, such as dis­in­cen­tivis­ing the abuse of on­line re­sources for traf­fick­ing.

“Ef­forts to leg­is­late and reg­u­late tech com­pa­nies to bet­ter pre­vent and ad­dress hu­man traf­fick­ing will have broad­er im­pacts in ar­eas such as pri­va­cy, se­cu­ri­ty, and in­no­va­tion, so care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion with a wide range of stake­hold­ers will be need­ed.”

For the TTPS and oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­ti­ties, the main chal­lenge is to fight against “tech­nol­o­gy-fa­cil­i­tat­ed hu­man traf­fick­ing by mon­i­tor­ing on­line plat­forms, in­ves­ti­gat­ing sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty, and pros­e­cut­ing per­pe­tra­tors” and look­ing for “new ways to proac­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gate traf­fick­ing cas­es by har­ness­ing tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tions to col­lect ev­i­den­tiary ma­te­r­i­al.”

This is a tall or­der giv­en cur­rent leg­isla­tive and op­er­a­tional hin­drances but it must be done. The hu­man traf­fick­ers have had the up­per hand for too long.