IBM helps fight human trafficking

On Human Rights Day, Mark Wakefield, a spokesman for the UK-based IBM, spoke about how the company plans to combat human trafficking. The corporation does not plan to do its own service; instead, IBM provides its resources to the already existing Stop the Traffik service . Actually, this is not a service, but an organization that has been engaged in combating human trafficking for many years.

IBM has decided to address the issue of human trafficking because a company of any size cannot remain indifferent to human rights violations. This includes not only human trafficking, but also, for example, the human right to education or access to fresh water. But trafficking in human beings is one of the most flagrant violations of human rights, so this problem must be solved as soon as possible.

Worst of all, human trafficking is becoming an increasingly common way to make money for a black business. Experts estimate illegal profits from such activities at $ 150 billion annually. It is not so easy to fight this violation, since the criminals who deal with it have learned to hide well. That is why the government bodies of various countries are familiar only with the tip of the iceberg - the rest remains closed from prying eyes. Militiamen assume that annually more than one million people become victims of human traffickers. But these are only those victims that can be traced using direct or indirect methods.
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Thanks to the tools provided by IBM, Stop the Traffik will be able to track much more illegal trade flows and connections between criminals. IBM's cognitive services are capable of processing a huge amount of information per unit of time, detecting connections between individual database elements that cannot be detected by a person, even a qualified specialist.

Thanks to data obtained with the help of IBM, employees will have the opportunity to work more efficiently, cooperating with law enforcement agencies. The project participants hope that all efforts made by partners will help in the fight against human trafficking. Perhaps this will provide an opportunity to disrupt the processes and connections established by criminals.

In order to be able to react to abductions in a timely manner, the organization Stop the Traffik has released a special application. It allows users to report suspected kidnapping. The application, called STOP APP, is available on Stop the Traffik website. Thus, a casual witness to the abduction or even a member of a criminal group who decided to “tie up” with his past, you can not contact the law enforcement agencies, but tell about everything seen and heard in the application.


In addition to computing resources, IBM has granted the employees of the above organization five i2 licenses . The company also trains volunteers who have decided to help combat trafficking in persons by providing support through the development of services and programs. Information received from the STOP APP application is sent for processing and storage in the SoftLayer Cloud.

Access to all these tools will help Stop the Traffik to track connections between criminals from different countries and regions, visualizing all links using programs and services. Probably, after some time a map of such connections will be created, which will ensure reliable and effective work of law enforcement officers from different countries.

By combining information from users of the application with information provided by financial institutions, law enforcement and other anti-trafficking actors, Stop the Traffik can also work more efficiently.

Today, any reader can help prevent trouble - simply download the STOP APP application and start working with it.