Edited News | OHCHR
“Victims face a range of serious violations and abuses, including threats to their safety and security; and many have been subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced labour, and other human rights abuses,” said UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence.
Laurence said that the enormity of online scam trafficking in Southeast Asia is difficult to estimate because of the clandestine nature and gaps in the official response.
The report cites credible sources which indicate that at least 120,000 people across Myanmar may be held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams, with estimates in Cambodia similarly at around 100,000. Other States in the region including Lao PDR, the Philippines and Thailand have also been identified as main countries of destination or transit where at least tens of thousands of people have been involved. The scam centres generate revenue amounting to billions of US dollars each year.
Most people trafficked into the online scam operations are men, although women and adolescents are also among the victims, the report says. Most are not citizens of the countries in which the trafficking occurs. Victims come from across the ASEAN region (from Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), as well as mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, South Asia and even further afield from Africa and Latin America.
“While some countries in Southeast Asia have put in place legal and policy frameworks relevant to counter trafficking, in some cases they fall short of international standards. In many cases their implementation has failed to respond adequately to the context and sophistication of these online scams,” Laurence said.
The people who are coerced into working in these scamming operations endure inhumane treatment while being forced to carry out crimes.
“They are victims. They are not criminals. In continuing to call for justice for those who have been defrauded through online criminality, we must not forget that this complex phenomenon has two sets of victims,” Laurence stressed.
Pia Oberoi, Senior Advisor on Migration and Human Rights (OHCHR), who authored the report, detailed some of the scams.
“One of the main ones that we hear about is the so-called ‘pig butchering scheme’ where the targets of the scam are approached in a romance kind of scam and basically scammed out of their money, thinking that they are speaking to somebody who is interested to be romantically involved with them. And in fact, last year we learnt about the tragic death of a person from Malaysia who had travelled into Thailand and then been trafficked into Myanmar thinking that she was thinking that she was responding to the advances of somebody,” she said.
Oberoi continued: “But because of the stigma of having been scammed, they will not be reporting this. They'd rather kind of not suffer that shame and stigma of having been the victim of a scam. And in the same vein, people that have been trafficked into these scam compounds suffer not just physical abuse and mental abuse, but financial ruin in many cases because they have taken on debts and then to release themselves from these scam compounds to take on more debt. But they also take on stigma and shame, particularly, as we said, because of the profile of these people. They're not uneducated.”
Ends
For more information and media requests, please contact:
In Geneva
Ravina Shamdasani - + 41 22 917 9169 / ravina.shamdasani@un.org or
Jeremy Laurence + +41 22 917 9383 / jeremy.laurence@un.org or
Tag and share
Twitter @UNHumanRights
Facebook unitednationshumanrights
Instagram @unitednationshumanrights
1
1
1
Edited News | UNWOMEN
Aid agencies echoed wider warnings of growing signs of widespread starvation in Gaza on Tuesday, as UN-partnered international food security experts released their most dire assessment yet of the situation in the wartorn enclave.
1
1
1
Edited News | IOM , UNDP , UNHCR
Sudan: urgent help needed as more than 1.3 million war-displaced people begin to return home
As conflict rages on across parts of Sudan, pockets of relative safety have emerged in the past four month, spurring more than one million internally displaced Sudanese to make their way home, says the International Organization for Migration (IOM). A further 320,000 cross-border refugees have come back to Sudan since last year, mainly from Egypt and South Sudan, to assess the current situation before deciding to return to their country for good.
1
1
1
Edited News | UNRWA , WHO
Gaza: SOS messages describe people fainting from hunger; UN health worker detained
Worrying alerts from United Nations staff in Gaza who have been fainting from hunger and exhaustion over the past 48 hours have increased fears for people’s survival in the devastated enclave, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.
1
1
1
Edited News | UNHCR , UNOG
Over 11.6 million refugees risk losing aid access due to funding cuts, says UNHCR
Approximately one in three refugees and other vulnerable individuals normally supported by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) are expected to lose out from funding cuts, it said on Friday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR
Ravina Shamdasani, Spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, made the following announcement on the Office’s opening of a new mission in Bangladesh.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR
“The surge in the number of Afghans forced or compelled to return to Afghanistan this year is creating a multi-layered human rights crisis requiring the urgent attention of the international community,” UN Human Rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Friday called for accountability and justice for the killings and other gross human rights violations and abuses in the southern city of Suweida.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNHCR
Syria: hundreds killed in Sweida, ‘widespread’ violations as civilians flee for their lives
Amid violent clashes in southern Syria’s Sweida governorate, a picture of grave human rights abuses and rising humanitarian needs is emerging by the hour, the UN said on Friday.
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
At the bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva the UN Human Rights Spokesperson Liz Throssell made the following statement on the latest number of civilian casualties in Ukraine.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
The UN Human Rights Office on Tuesday called for investigations into hundreds of killings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by Israeli security forces and settlers, warning against ongoing forced mass displacement of the Palestinian population.
1
1
2
Edited News | OHCHR , UNRWA
Nearly 900 people have been killed in Gaza in recent weeks trying to fetch food, with most deaths linked to private aid hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the UN Human Rights Office have today released a report detailing the evolution of violent gang incidents beyond the capital Port-au-Prince since October 2024 up to June 2025, and the resulting loss of life and mass displacement.