I have seen a lot of human suffering in my career. Through the services we provide, frontline responders, police authorities, prosecutors and judges are better equipped to protect victims of trafficking and smuggled migrants and secure convictions of the perpetrators. The team I lead is working all over the world to support countries to fight human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

According to our latest Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 148 countries out of the UN 193 Member States reported human trafficking cases in the last two years. Human trafficking is not a crime that is happening only in the developing world. While trying to stop the criminals, we should not forget the migrants themselves and the need to respect their dignity, human rights and offer protection to those that need it. Smuggling gangs make a lot of profit from people who are seeking a better life. With migrant smuggling, we need to focus on how to stop the criminals and not the migrants. Ilias Chatzis and Yatta Dakowah, the UNODC Representative in Brussels, during a special session of the EU Parliament on migration - Brussels, Belgium - 2017. They may even work within the organizations that are supposed to be tackling these crimes, like the police or immigration service and abuse their profession. They have friends, families, and children. We have to accept that the criminals are real people themselves. For criminals, it is all about the money, and people are just a way to make a profit. Then they take all the money and often let them starve. Traffickers in Europe take groups of children from country to country and force them to beg. There are industries that we come into contact with in our everyday lives, like hospitality, agriculture, construction, and others where trafficking victims are exploited. It is a crime that can sometimes happen in front of our eyes, as we go to work, do our shopping, drive our children to school or meet friends for dinner. There is more violence, victims are younger and there are more child victims. They have become more severe, in the sense of what the criminals involved inflict on people. “Human trafficking and migrant smuggling have evolved a lot since I first took over this job. You can hear the full interview on the UN podcast, Awake at Night.

Chatzis was talking to Melissa Fleming, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications. This feature has been edited for clarity and length.

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