Jorn van Rij
Jorn van Rij is a senior researcher at the intelligence unit of the Netherlands National Police working on human trafficking and organized crime. His main focus is on strengthening international cooperation and the use of innovative technology to identify victimization and perpetration online. In the past he was an appointed an international expert for several European anti-trafficking projects, he was also involved in projects from Frontex, ICMPD, the UNODC and IOM and he was a member on the advisory committee for the pilot project: advising on the victimhood of human trafficking by the Dutch Ministry of Justice. Jorn holds a BSc and MSc (hon.) in Criminology from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam (NL) and a Ph.D (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Pécs (HU). He also received an honorary doctorate from GTUNI in Tbilisi for his work in Georgia.
Publications:
Rij, Jorn van & McAllister, Ruth (2019) ‘Using Criminal Routines and Techniques to Predict and Prevent the Sexual Exploitation of Eastern-European Women’ in: The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking, Palgrave Macmillan
Van Rij, J. & Kis Kelemen, B. (2019) ’Private military and security companies on E.U. borders: who will take responsibility for their human rights violations? – A theoretical analysis.’ In: Bence Kis Kelemen – Ágoston Mohay: EU Justice and Home Affairs Research Papers in the Context of Migration and Asylum law. University of Pécs Faculty of Law, Centre for European Research and Education
Van Rij, J., Mohay, Á. & Bileišis, M. (2020) ‘Russia’s private military forces: a dual layer of human trafficking?’ In: Conflict and Human Trafficking Nexus, Palgrave Macmillan
Sessions
In 2016 Europol warned that: 'the global development of online infrastructures has made the Internet a crucial tool for human traffickers, and it is likely to become more significant in the future’. In 2020 Europol stated that human trafficking transformed into: 'a new business model, in which the online component is an essential part of criminals' modus operandi’. Criminals use the internet as a way to select victims and avoid detection. They do so on three levels, knowingly: I. the surfaceweb, II. the deepweb and III. the darkweb. The internet is ever spreading and new apps, sites and platforms for communication appear every day, so does the hunting ground for criminals. Criminals perceive the internet as a tool to new sources of victims and earnings with limited threats while law enforcement perceives the internet as a threat and a source of crime with limited tools to fight these crimes.
This can and needs to be turned around. The internet should not be seen as a threat but rather as an opportunity and as a way forward for both criminal investigations and intelligence as it is a way to identify online victimization and perpetration of all sorts of crimes committed online. Not only cybercrime but also cyber enabled crimes like human trafficking. The surfaceweb is the way in which victims are solicited and clients for the services are found while the deepweb is being used as a means for facilitation. The darkweb is the place where business is conducted on either online slave marketplaces or for criminals to get in contact with one and other. This however is poorly researched, insufficiently mapped out and therefor almost invisible.
The way forward would be to apply cyber ethnography which is a method of data collection that involves applying the techniques of classic anthropology and ethnography to the online world. The overall aim of cyber-ethnographic studies is to immerse oneself in the virtual world that the participants have created, in order to understand how they experience social interaction and devise ways of regulating social order.
Co-author: Sander de Koijer