The 10th Intercepted online campaign has been launched on Human Rights Day to enhance the visibility of a human rights-based approach to combating Trafficking in Human Beings. This approach is enshrined in the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which mandates obligations to prevent trafficking, establish a comprehensive framework for the protection and assistance of victims and witnesses, and ensure effective investigation and prosecution.
The campaign emphasizes the crucial need to prioritize human rights, dignity, and safety when developing technologies that track human identity and location, particularly those utilizing biometric data. It also underscores the importance of a gender-sensitive perspective in creating safe online spaces that facilitate the reporting of violence against trafficked individuals and the development of effective policies to combat this crime.
For two days, on December 3rd and 4th, a course on “Assessment of the Risk of Radicalization and Extreme Violence: Indicators in Vulnerable Populations” was held in Madrid. The course was aimed at the Civil Guard in their role as judicial police. The training, inaugurated by Antonio Sánchez, the Executive Secretary of the Euro-Arab Foundation, was delivered by experts in the prevention of radicalization, including Javier Ruipérez, Director of the Euro-Arab Research and International Projects Department, and Daniel F. Pérez, a Euro-Arab researcher. It also included expert mental health professionals, Eva Jiménez and Susana Sánchez.
The course focused on enhancing the participants’ ability to prepare robust judicial reports in cases of radicalization and extreme violence. To this end, Euro-Arab experts addressed key issues such as models and theories of radicalization, followed by presentations on risk assessment tools and the factors and indicators that can lead to extremist violence. In addition, practical exercises with real-world cases were conducted to reinforce the acquired knowledge.
The seminar, held on November 28th and 29th at the Euro-Arab Foundation headquarters in Granada, convened leaders and experts to discuss and shape the future of strategic communication. Key discussions centered on empowering local communities with tailored tools and successful strategies from EU Member States. A diverse group of experts shared valuable insights throughout the event.
The Euro-Arab Foundation, a key member of the EU Knowledge Hub consortium, oversees the Strategic Communication (StratComms) line for the prevention of radicalization and violent extremism.
On the 28th November, Karen Latricia Hough, a researcher at the Euro-Arab Foundation met with the Executive Secretary, Petya Nestorova of the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, to present the EU funded Horizon Europe VANGUARD project focused on fighting Trafficking in Human beings.
In particular, Hough discussed the societal impact of the project, touching on themes related to the inclusion of survivors of human trafficking in both preventative measures against human trafficking and policymaking. This is a critical aspect of combating this crime, as survivors possess unique insights and experiences that can significantly inform the design and implementation of prevention programs. Additionally, survivors’ firsthand accounts can help raise public awareness and generate empathy for victims, fostering a more supportive and understanding society.
GRETA is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings by the Parties, and the Vanguard project is an ambitious Horizon Europe project that focuses both on providing a state-of-the-art intelligence picture on current trends in human trafficking as well as the creation of advanced technological tools to fight the heinous crime in all phases of the trafficking chain.
On 19 and 20 November, the training and capacity building sessions of the European project PARTES for the protection of places of worship took place at the headquarters of the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies. Organised in collaboration with the Local Police of Murcia, these conferences allowed to share experiences and good practices, as well as to identify new opportunities to strengthen cooperation between the different institutions involved in the implementation of the project and the key actors in the protection of places of worship, such as religious communities, police forces, public authorities and civil society organisations. Participants and speakers included members of religious communities from Granada and Murcia, State Security Forces such as the Guardia Civil and Mossos d’Esquadra, as well as other key entities such as the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation (Fundación Pluralismo y Convivencia).
Some of the most relevant results of the PARTES project are the so-called ‘PARTES Guardian Approach’, a holistic model designed in a participatory and inclusive way, which considers all relevant dimensions for the protection of places of worship and the ‘Action Sheets’, a compilation of good practices drawn from the ten countries that make up the project consortium.
PARTES is a project funded by the Internal Security Fund of the European Commission which aims to develop a comprehensive prevention model for the protection of places of worship in the European Union through an empirical, inclusive and participatory methodology in order to prevent hate crimes against religious communities. As part of its priorities, the project has developed awareness-raising campaigns, evaluated and exchanged good practices across the consortium member countries, and developed workshops, training and seminars to improve cooperation between public authorities and religious communities, among other issues related to the protection of places of worship.
On 13 November, INTERCEPTED project held its second seminar on trafficking under the title Strengthening Digital Capabilities to Counter Human Trafficking. This event was co-organised with the ASIT project, which, as INTERCEPTED, aims to prevent and combat online human trafficking.
The event was opened by Antonio de Nicolo, from the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Trieste (Italy), who commented on the main features of both projects and how they contribute to preventing and counteracting the effects of trafficking, underlining the need for cooperation between different entities at different levels in the field of trafficking in human beings.
Karen Hough, a researcher at the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies, offered a panoramic analysis of online trafficking, covering the different ways in which this phenomenon manifests itself and the multiple groups and areas it affects, breaking stereotypes about this serious crime and distinguishing it from other crimes. The speaker also stressed the need for cooperation and presented several illustrative cases, whilst offering an interesting catalogue of good practices and solutions from other projects such as OSINT-RADAR or VANGUARD, in which the Euro-Arab Foundation and KEMEA, members of the INTERCEPTED project, also participate.
In his presentation, Lior Mordechai, Director of Customer Success and Marketing at Falkor Ltd., presented the main features of the forensic technology used in human trafficking investigations, which often makes use of open source intelligence (OSINT). Mordechai showed several examples of tools and methods for detecting online grooming and exploitation.
Finally, Sergio Bianchi, Director General of AGENFOR International addressed different strategies to improve collaboration in trafficking investigations, indicating multi-agency intervention models as well as how to develop unified scenarios for action in public-private partnerships against trafficking.
INTERCEPTED is a research project funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs that aims to intercept online recruitment and propaganda to disrupt the business of human trafficking, by enhancing the digital capabilities of law enforcement and judicial authorities and cooperating with internet service providers. The project is a partnership between the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Trieste, Italy, the Hellenic Police in Greece, Germany, the KEMEA Centre for Security Studies in Greece, the NGO AGENFOR in Italy and the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies in Spain, under the coordination of the University of Public Administration in Bremen (HfÖV). More information can be found on the Euro-Arab Foundation’s project page and on the INTERCEPTED project page.
The headquarters of the Euro-Arab Foundation in Granada hosted this Thursday the inaugural meeting of VicTory, a project funded by the European Commission, which over the next two years will work to mitigate hate and violent extremism from a restorative approach focused on the victims.
VicTory is designed to promote restorative justice as a key tool to repair the harm caused by hate crime and violent extremism and facilitate reconciliation. It will seek to broaden public awareness, highlight the need to listen to the needs of victims, provide greater access to information to support victims and practitioners and, for the latter, offer them greater preparation. All this, from a perspective of multi-agency cooperation that is embodied in the very nature of the entities that make up the project consortium.
Specific objectives of VicTory
The first objective of VicTory is to create a victim-centred approach to support victims of hate crime and violent extremism and incidents related to (violent) extremism. The second objective is to improve the effective and consistent implementation of legislation and good practices, such as restorative ones, to uphold victims’ rights and mitigate secondary victimisation. The third and final objective is to improve the skills, intervention, support and cooperation of key professionals, i.e. criminal justice practitioners, victim support workers and case managers, when working with victims of hate crime and incidents related to (violent) extremism.
VicTory responds to the priority of the European Union’s call to contribute to the effective and consistent implementation of European legislation in the field of crime victims‘ rights in line with the priorities set by the EU Strategy on Victims’ Rights (2020-2025).
As part of the INTERCEPTED Project’s Online Seminar Series, together with the ASIT Project, an online meeting focusing on Strengthening Digital Capabilities to Counter Human Trafficking, will be held on November 13, 2024 from 14:00 to 16:30 (CET). The seminar will delve into current trends in online human trafficking and the digital business model. It will subsequently present OSINT and forensic technology for trafficking investigations. Additionally, the practical aspects of multi-agency model and public-private collaboration will be addressed. Finally, the ways of developing a common domestic-foreign investigation scenario will be discussed.
The conference, held this Thursday at the Faculty of Law with more than forty people from different parts of Europe, has been dedicated to reviewing the work carried out in the first year of implementation of the VANGUARD project, as well as defining and organising the steps to be taken in the coming months.
According to Javier Ruipérez Canales, director of the Projects Department of the Euro-Arab Foundation, ‘the balance that can be drawn from this meeting is highly positive, as a large number of activities have been carried out in relation to the research developed around the theme of the project, trafficking and smuggling of human beings, thus fulfilling the objectives set for this first year of the project’s life’.
About VANGUARD
VANGUARD, a project funded by the HORIZON Europe programme, focuses on strengthening the fight against human trafficking through advanced technological solutions, promoting understanding and capacity building to interrupt the trafficking chain at an early stage, fighting the culture of impunity.
Among the most important objectives of VANGUARD is the development of a technological tool that integrates artificial intelligence to facilitate the work of law enforcement agencies in different European countries, including Spain, in this sense, the project is currently in the discussion phase.
The Euro-Arab Foundation based in Granada has opened the call to participate in theReBel (Redesign Belonging) project, which seeks to foster solidarity and a sense of belonging among migrant women by creating spaces for dialogue and co-creation of strategies. To this end, it invites migrant women over the age of 18 of any nationality who have lived in Spain for more than 5 years who want to share their experiences, talk about the challenges and barriers they face throughout the process of settling in Spain, and form part of the team that will design new integration policy strategies, with better services and more opportunities.
The first of the activities to be carried out by the participants will be a meeting, a reflection group, which will take place on 5 November in Granada. All the data of the participants in the activities of the ReBel project will be treated in accordance with the Data Protection Act (GDPR) and the information they provide will be treated with strict confidentiality.
Those interested should send an email to rebel@fundea.org where they will be able to ask any questions they may have, also with regard to the coverage of transport costs, and will be able to register.
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