On February 1, 2021, the United States of America and the Kingdom of the
Netherlands, with participants from the Netherlands and Aruba, Curacao, and Sint
Maarten participated in a virtual seminar on strategies to better combat human
trafficking led by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The seminar
followed a prior training conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
UNODC focused on tools for criminal justice practitioners, as well as challenges, and
achievements in international cooperation on human trafficking cases. In particular,
UNODC featured the TRACK4TIP initiative to enhance the regional criminal justice
response to human trafficking among migration flows involving Venezuelans by working
at regional and local levels to identify, prevent, and prosecute human trafficking cases.
The participants represented criminal justice practitioners, prosecutors, police, and
specialized judges from various entities of the kingdom.
Experts from UNODC alongside guest speakers from the Ibero-American Association of
Public Prosecutors (AIAMP) and the Ibero-American Network of Specialized
Prosecutors against Trafficking in Persons and Migrant Smuggling (REDTRAM), shared
best practices to improve the prosecution of trafficking in persons cases to further our
cooperation on effectively combating the crime.
Officials from Aruba, the Netherlands, the U.S., and UNODC gave remarks to open and
close the training. The Minister of Justice of Aruba, Andin Bikker, stressed the
importance of joint cooperation between all entities of the kingdom and the United
States on human trafficking investigations. Minister Bikker noted the spillover effects of
Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis on the Caribbean region and the important existing
framework for joint law enforcement cooperation between the kingdom and the United
States of America. Acting Deputy Director Laura Rundlet of the U.S. Department of
State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons closed the training,
reflecting on the importance of international collaboration and of law enforcement
approaches that are trauma-informed and victim-centered as we work to improve our
collective efforts to fight human trafficking.
TRACK4TIP is a three-year initiative (2019-2022), implemented by UNODC, with the
support of the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons. The project benefits eight countries in South America and the Caribbean with
national and regional actions in Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic,
Trinidad and Tobago, Curaçao, and Aruba.
This seminar supported the anti-trafficking efforts of the kingdom partners and reflects
the U.S. Government’s commitment to global leadership on this key human rights and
law enforcement issue.
