Areas of Focus

Over the years, HRC has built a strong expertise in countering human trafficking and labour exploitation in the commercial fishing industry. The fishing industry is vulnerable to human rights abuses, with fishers on distant water fishing vessels being subjected to forced labour, violence, lack of drinking water and food, and even facing death – recent findings estimate that over 100,000 fishers die annually. A lack of transparency across the fishing supply chain has resulted in a lack of regulations surrounding labour standards for fishers at sea, revealing persistent cases of human trafficking and forced labour. This is an issue that largely affects migrant fishers, who often work on board foreign fishing vessels as a way to make ends meet. HRC are working to increase transparency in the fishing supply chain and improve the livelihoods of fishers.

In July 2022, HRC got word of a 24-year-old Taiwanese girl being sold four times, forced to conduct online scams in a compound in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Soon after, thousands of similar cases came to light and this trend rapidly emerged as a form of organised crime of an unprecedented severity and scale. We have witnessed its impact on victims from over 60 different countries across the globe, from Brazil, to Uganda, to Taiwan. In June 2023, Interpol issued an orange notice on this emerging trend of human trafficking, marking it as a serious and imminent threat to public safety. In the same year, the UN stated that hundreds of thousands of victims were being held in scamming compounds, forced to conduct online fraud. HRC has been a trailblazer in countering this crime, forming and working with a network of organisations and individuals across the globe to assist victims and gather much needed information to combat this form of human trafficking.