Trafficking for forced criminality into cyber-scam operations has become one of the most significant trafficking challenges of recent years. It also provides one of the clearest examples of what happens when enforcement moves faster than protection. While the nature and scale of this form of trafficking are increasingly well understood, and enforcement actions have intensified, major gaps remain in how governments and other actors respond to those affected, particularly following raids, compound closures, and releases.
As a rapidly evolving form of organized crime, trafficking into cyber-scam centers has reshaped the trafficking landscape and exposed serious failings in victim identification, non-punishment, cross-border coordination, and long-term protection. Moreover, while scam centers were initially concentrated in Southeast Asia, the model’s profitability and adaptability have enabled it to expand rapidly across regions, integrating into different local contexts and existing criminal economies.
The form this expansion takes varies considerably across settings. In some contexts, exploitation is organized through large, centralized compounds. In others, it may be embedded in prison-based scam operations, gang-controlled networks, smaller fraud operations, or decentralized systems operating through mobile devices. What remains consistent is the coercion and exploitation of people for criminal profit.
The underlying problem allowing this model to persist is no longer a lack of information. Survivors, frontline organizations, journalists, researchers, and law enforcement partners have repeatedly highlighted the patterns. The challenge is not understanding the issue, but implementing an effective protection response: who screens people as potential victims, who funds protection, who coordinates across borders, and who remains accountable after a compound is closed, a raid takes place, or a group is released.
In the absence of consistent screening and victim identification, trafficked individuals are often treated as immigration offenders or criminal suspects, limiting access to protection and assistance. The non-punishment principle is often overlooked, including in cases involving clear indicators of trafficking and coercion. Large-scale releases have also shown that people may be removed from situations of exploitation without the systems needed to receive, protect, repatriate, and support them long term.
In many cases, civil society is not supplementing the response. It is the response. Frontline organizations are arranging shelter, food, case coordination, flight tickets, embassy contact, referrals, legal support, and reintegration assistance, often without dedicated funding or formal authority. This is not sustainable. Civil society cannot continue to act as the emergency backstop for failures in formal protection systems without being properly resourced and included in response planning.
This is not an argument against enforcement. Effective enforcement and victim protection are mutually reinforcing. When people are screened, protected, and supported, they are safer and better able to contribute to accountability efforts. When they are detained, deported, criminalized, or left stranded, both protection and justice are weakened.
While international scrutiny has intensified and law enforcement actions have disrupted some networks, evidence suggests that many operations adapt, relocate, or resume once pressure subsides. Responses focused only on disrupting visible sites risk reducing visibility without reducing exploitation. As trafficking for forced criminality integrates into different organized-crime environments, responses must account for how the system adapts locally rather than focusing only on where the problem was first observed.
As this crime continues to spread and evolve, strengthening victim identification, protection, coordination, and long-term support must be at the center of the global response. Governments, donors, international organizations, law enforcement agencies, and private-sector actors should urgently invest in protection-led response systems, including consistent victim screening, non-punishment protections, emergency shelter and repatriation support, trauma-informed reintegration services, cross-border referral pathways, and properly resourced coordination among civil society.
Without greater investment in these areas, the protection gaps that have characterized the early response risk being replicated wherever trafficking into scam operations takes hold.
Signed by Freedom Collaborative on behalf of our partners and working group members, including: Platform for Social Justice; Namjai Community Association; Humanity Research Consultancy; Acts of Mercy International; SAFE Foundation; Cross Global Asia Foundation; China Labor Watch; Legal Support for Children and Women; Association of Mobilizing Community Resources (AMCOR); Centre for Human Rights – Pakistan; La Strada International; LexCollective; The EyeWitness Project; Ezekiel Rain; Nigat Global Initiative; Hope’s Cry International; Rahab Uganda; EOS Collective; Tahseen Ullah; and Sammy Chen.
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