Bangkok (Thailand), 19 May 2017 - Senior personnel from across Thailand's investigation-prosecution continuum were brought together this week, for the first of two capacity building workshops on the Smuggling of Migrants.
Migrant smuggling poses significant challenges in Asia, generating an annual value of $2 billion for criminal groups and leading to deaths and human rights abuses. Within Southeast Asia, UNODC estimates that over 80% of irregular migrants rely on smugglers.
Accordingly, the workshops are tailored to improve law enforcement responses to these challenges. The participants - from such agencies as the Anti-Human Trafficking Police Division, Attorney General's Office, Immigration Bureau, Department of Employment and Marine Police - learnt how Thailand's legislation could be best leveraged to bring high-level migrant smugglers to justice. The trainings also focused on approaches to be adopted to develop complex cases, particularly the proactive use of criminal intelligence.
The week's capacity training is the latest instalment in the UNODC project on Building Capacity to Investigate and Prosecute Migrant Smugglers, designed to boost the numbers of successful prosecutions in serious cases of migrant smuggling. Subsequent workshops in this series are to be held in Myanmar and Indonesia later in the year, building on the recent UNODC initiative to enhance regional cooperation on live migrant trafficking cases at the operational level.
Speaking to senior officials from across Thailand's investigation and prosecution continuum, General Nathatorn Prousoontorn, Commissioner of the Thai Immigration Bureau, emphasised cooperation as key to boosting prosecution rates for high-level migrant smugglers:
"Multi-agency collaboration is one of the most powerful weapons we have against migrant smuggling. As transnational crime flourishes in the gaps between law enforcement agencies, a joined-up approach is essential to disrupt the activities of smugglers".
Benjamin Smith, UNODC Regional Coordinator on Trafficking in Persons and the Smuggling of Migrants reflected on the underlying aim of the project and the strategy that underpins it: "By targeting mid to senior-level officers, our aim is to encourage the law enforcement leaders of tomorrow to buy into the importance of proactive, intelligence-led investigations, to bring down the key organisers and facilitators of migrant smuggling."
Click here to learn more about UNODC's work on preventing human trafficking.
Click here to learn more about UNODC's work on preventing migrant smuggling.
