AND
n the context of the Day Against Trafficking in Persons (July 30) I participate in a world summit in Washington DC, United States, in which the advances and challenges to eradicate this criminal phenomenon in all nations are addressed, highlighting yesterday during my speech the use of financial intelligence in the structural strategy that is required to combat this transnational crime, in addition to the traditional methods of prosecuting crime that appear in most criminal policies on the planet. I am convinced that pursuing the traffickers’ money route and dismantling their economic and financial structures is a forceful response in detecting and expanding trafficker networks, whose line of action cannot be ignored any longer by the international community if it really we want to generate substantial changes in the fight against trafficking.
According to UN Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2020In 2018, nearly 50,000 victims of human trafficking were detected and reported in 148 nations. However, given the covert nature of this crime, the actual number of victims is much higher; whose repercussion in the world continues to affect mainly women and girls with 65 percent of the identified victims. However, there is an increase in men and boys compared to the previous report (35 percent of all identified victims).
In addition to the above, it is identified that sexual exploitation remains the main form of exploitation in the world (50 percent of cases), but there is an increase in quantified cases for the purpose of forced labor that mainly affects men. and children (from 34 percent in 2016 to 38 percent in 2020), and other forms of exploitation, such as begging by others.
In the 2020 National Risk Assessment, it is realized that in the case of Mexico, human trafficking is one of the main crimes precedent to money laundering. In addition to the fact that it is observed that organized crime has diversified its activities towards other illicit activities other than drug trafficking, with considerable profits, such as the one analyzed. Similarly, it is among the emerging risks derived from covid-19, when an increase in human trafficking, the exploitation of workers and online child exploitation is detected, which have a high probability and level of socioeconomic impact. Traffickers are increasingly using the Internet, particularly social media, to identify and recruit potential victims.
In this sense, the number of victims of human trafficking in Mexico is increasing, while traffickers have their eyes on the vulnerable groups hardest hit by the pandemic. Mexican authorities identified 624 cases of human trafficking in 2021, which represents that the proportion of cases has almost doubled compared to the 393 registered in 2018, according to data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System. Mexico City concentrated the highest number of cases with 180 in 2019, while last year, the state of Mexico had 170 cases, followed by Nuevo León, with 91.
The latest State Department report on human trafficking finds that the groups considered most at risk of trafficking in our country include unaccompanied children, indigenous people, people with mental and physical disabilities, asylum seekers and migrants, internally displaced persons, LGBT+ people, informal sector workers and children in territories controlled by gangs, as well as the fact that in most cases trafficking occurs between family members, partners, acquaintances in social networks or through employment-related traps.
Another worrying aspect that stands out is the link between corruption and human trafficking in Mexico, which, according to consulted reports, shows the participation of State agents in the execution of sexual trafficking operations, including irregular entry. of foreign victims of trafficking into the country. The strategy against trafficking is structural and must be approached, I insist, from a perspective that includes, in addition to the criminal prosecution of perpetrators and corrupt officials, as a preventive measure, the use of financial intelligence to bring down the economic structures of criminal organizations. dedicated to committing this crime and avoiding its refinancing.
By way of conclusion, I do not want to fail to mention in this installment, about the absence of the rule of law that is maintained in Tamaulipas by the invisible hand of Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca who, as I have anticipated on social networks, continues to seize de facto of the state institutions to get away with the criminal acts that are attributed to him and his closest associates, and it is the case of trying to impose the son of the superior state auditor, Jorge Espino, as the next mayor of the city of Reynosa, to expense of the political persecution against the current mayor (Morena), of the manifest corruption that co-opted to the areas of procurement and administration of justice of the entity, the consent of García Cabeza de Vaca and the lack of independence and impartiality of Jorge Espino as head of the autonomous body in charge of the control of the state, who out of dignity should resign and is taking a long time .
