New Study Shows How AI Could Help Curb Trafficking in South Asia

From the Editor’s Desk

February 23, 2026

A survivor-informed policy paper suggests that artificial intelligence can help disrupt trafficking networks linked to cyber scam compounds in South Asia and nearby regions, by spotting digital signals early enough to guide human intervention. The findings deserve the attention of authorities in India and across South and Southeast Asia, because earlier detection buys time, and time gives people, embassies and investigators space to act before coercion hardens into captivity.

The paper, written by Aşkım Ezo Barol*, centres on the account of an Indian woman who said she escaped after being lured by a Facebook advertisement for an English teaching job in Thailand and was later forced to recruit others inside a closed compound.

In her account, interviewers stayed off camera during early calls and asked her to send her resume along with short video and voice recordings of her speaking English. After she arrived in Thailand for the supposed job, she said her passport was taken and she was kept waiting in a room for about seven hours. She was then driven to a river crossing and taken across to an enclosed compound linked to Myanmar’s scam centre network near the Thai border town of Mae Sot, close to Myanmar. She said she slept in a room with other women and was assigned phone and computer work tied to recruitment, while men handled crypto-related tasks and manual labour.

The woman said the compound had its own closed economy, with markets, restaurants and entertainment areas inside. Payments were made using cryptocurrency and a separate internal currency. She said the threats grew more serious whenever she resisted, including warnings that she could be sent to harsher camps or sold.

Screenshot from Facebook

The woman recounts her experience and survival in the research through answers to questions from the author, Aşkım Ezo Barol, who shared the paper with Newsreel Asia ahead of its publication.

The paper places the survivor’s account within a wider shift in criminal operations that combine trafficking, online fraud, money laundering and corruption in large scam compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, a pattern also documented by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in its 2025 Inflection Point report. UNODC analysts have found that these scam compounds keep shifting locations and changing names, which makes it harder for authorities to track and shut them down.

Within this expanding cyber-enabled trafficking landscape, forced labour remains widespread across the region. For India, the paper cites the Walk Free Foundation’s Global Slavery Index estimate that about 11 million people in the country live in modern slavery, and it says official victim counts capture only a fraction of the exploitation.

The paper identifies seven points in the trafficking journey where AI systems could help flag danger earlier and speed up rescue efforts. These include suspicious job posts, unusual interview patterns, passport seizure, movement through informal border crossings, the structure of scam compounds, cryptocurrency flows and threatening language used by traffickers. The author says these alerts should quickly be passed to trained officials who can assess the risk and take action.

The paper says the AI tools must be able to read, analyse and track content in major South Asian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Urdu, Sinhala and Nepali, because much of the recruitment and coercion in the region occurs outside English.

The paper adds that AI-driven financial monitoring can help investigators track trafficking profits more quickly, though it stresses that technology works best alongside human investigation and survivor-centred safeguards. Banks and financial technology firms already use machine learning to scan large volumes of transactions and flag unusual patterns that may be linked to trafficking profits. Tracking cryptocurrency has become especially important because many scam compounds rely on digital payments.

Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm that tracks cryptocurrency flows, estimated that crypto receipts from so-called pig butchering scams, a type of online investment fraud that many trafficked victims are forced to run inside scam compounds, reached at least $9.9 billion in 2024, the study points out, citing a report by Reuters.

The paper also says satellite analysis can help identify suspicious sites by looking for features such as fenced compounds, few entry gates, combined office and dorm buildings and heavy rooftop communications equipment. Investigations using satellite imagery have documented fortified hubs such as Shwe Kokko and KK Park in southeastern Myanmar and have reported the use of Starlink equipment to keep internet access running during crackdowns, the study says, citing The Guardian.

The study notes that Human Rights Watch has warned that AI tools promoted as anti-trafficking solutions can potentially widen surveillance, generate false alerts and harm communities that already face heavy police scrutiny. In response, the author calls for tightly focused use of AI, tools that work in South Asian languages, mandatory human review of alerts and clear public reporting of errors. The paper also urges direct involvement of trafficking survivors in the design and oversight of AI tools used to detect and prevent trafficking.

She also argues that long-term reliability matters as much as new technology. Tech Against Trafficking, a global coalition that maps and evaluates technology used to combat modern slavery, says its database of anti-trafficking tools lists more than 300 products and has found that many AI-branded tools had disappeared from the market by 2024. The paper calls for sustained funding and clear operating rules so that AI alerts lead to real investigations rather than remaining short-term pilot projects.

For South Asia, the paper calls on social media platforms, banks and governments to coordinate more closely so authorities can detect trafficking risks earlier and act faster while protecting victims’ privacy. This could mean platforms such as Facebook flagging suspicious overseas job ads to a trusted review channel, banks sharing anonymised alerts about unusual crypto flows linked to scam compounds, and governments creating secure reporting systems where embassies and police can verify cases before taking action. The paper cautions that any data sharing should remove personal identifiers and include safeguards so survivors are protected rather than exposed.

*(Aşkım is an international relations enthusiast with a Master’s degree in International Political Communication. As a Chevening Scholar, she has a strong interest in strategic communication and political campaigning. Her work focuses on research, policy and global politics, with particular attention to international elections and cross-cultural communication. She is passionate about using communication for impact and cultural diplomacy. She has worked on international initiatives as a youth worker in European Union projects related to governance, sustainability and technology. She has also participated in volunteer work under the European Voluntary Service framework as part of a refugee studies project in Tunisia.)

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