Santo Domingo, (Dominican Republic), 01 July 2022
From February to June this year, under the STARSOM project, UNODC held a series of three specialized trainings involving around 25 practitioners from Costa Rica, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos and Barbados, in Puntarenas, Tegucigalpa and Santo Domingo, on how to improve international cooperation to tackle this crime.
In all three trainings, investigators and prosecutors from the countries involved participated in a simulated exercise in which they had to collect and analyze evidence and investigate a fictional migrant smuggling case.
“We believe that using case simulation in a learning environment is a key tool to transform practices. During the trainings, practitioners can develop investigative strategies, reflect on their actions, and discuss what they can do better in the future to protect lives and disrupt criminal networks engaging in migrant smuggling”, said Carlos Perez, UNODC expert.
The participants of the trainings held in Costa Rica and Honduras worked together to uncover a hypothetical criminal network. During the last training in June, in the Dominican Republic, the participants managed to arrest the perpetrators, played by actors, and rescue the smuggled migrants.
“It is important to understand that the smuggling of migrants is a crime that is committed over a long period of time and that crosses borders throughout the world. It also often intersects with other crimes, such as human trafficking, kidnapping, sexual abuse and corruption”, said Victor Paredes, UNODC Training Consultant for these exercises.
Central America is an origin and transit area for smuggled migrants on their way to North America towards the US and Canada. Smuggled migrants, in particular women and girls, are vulnerable to being trafficked, abused, and exploited along the route or at destination.
STARSOM is a two-year (2021-2023) project to counter migrant smuggling and protect the lives and rights of migrants across routes leading to North America and crossing multiple countries in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.
STARSOM is funded by the Government of Canada through its Anti-Crime Capacity Building Program (ACCBP).
