This trend reinforces the need for prevention-centred approaches that can link community-level insights with migration and border management approaches before trafficking occurs, such as recruitment, visa application, and departure. 

In response, the Regional Support Office of the Bali Process (RSO), in collaboration with Freedom Collaborative, convened a series of prevention-focused engagements in Nairobi, Kenya under the Strengthening Prevention, Identification, and Survivor Empowerment in Cyber-Enabled Scam Trafficking project.  

The engagements represent a strategic shift toward upstream prevention in source countries, addressing gaps in responses that have to-date focused largely on rescue, investigation, and repatriation. By bringing together civil society organisations, visa-issuing officers from ASEAN diplomatic missions based in Nairobi, and Kenyan immigration officials in a key origin and transit hub, the series strengthened coordination at recruitment, visa application, and departure stages, where early intervention can help reduce vulnerability before exploitation occurs. 

Through the week the RSO and Freedom Collaborative hosted three events, including: 

• Ideation Workshop to Strengthen Prevention Response of Trafficking for Forced Criminality into Cyber-Scam Centres 

• Briefing on Identifying Forced Criminality Trafficking Risks in Visa Applications  

• Workshop on Strengthening Kenyan Immigration Officers’ Capacity to Prevent Trafficking for Forced Criminality into Cyber-Scam Centre

Survivor-informed perspectives 

The Nairobi engagements integrated survivor-informed perspectives, including survivor testimony, across all three events, ensuring that lived experience informed discussions and directly influenced response planning. These perspectives shaped the development of prevention messaging, strengthened understanding of key risk indicators, and grounded conversations on early identification and referral in real-world experience. 

Day 1: Ideation Workshop: Developing prevention messaging
Day 1 brought together civil society organisations to discuss and begin the development of prevention materials through examination of cyber-scam centre operations, victim profiles, recruitment tactics, and the role of emerging technologies. Country updates and survivor-informed insights informed problem-mapping and opportunity-mapping exercises to identify risk patterns, community vulnerabilities, and priority prevention and communication entry points. 

Day 2: Ideation Workshop: Ideation, prototyping, and refinement 
The second day of the Ideation Workshop focused on translating day 1’s discussions into draft prevention campaign materials, including key messages, visual mock-ups, and script outlines for video and print formats. Materials were tested through role-play exercises and peer feedback to ensure messages will be clear, appropriate, and reflective of local realities, supporting adaptation for use in communities and at key transit points along migration pathways. 

Day 3: Briefing ASEAN visa-issuing officers on trafficking for forced criminality 
With most ASEAN visa-issuing processes in East Africa concentrated in Nairobi, the briefing brought together visa-issuing officers from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand to examine how trafficking risks may present within visa application and interview processes. Discussions focused in particular on tourist visa applications, exploring documentation inconsistencies, unclear or evolving travel plans, the involvement of brokers or intermediaries in arranging travel, and mismatches between the stated purpose of travel and an applicant’s personal or employment background. The session also highlighted the importance of timely information-sharing and consular coordination. 

Day 4: Immigration Workshop: Strengthening immigration screening and coordination 
A capacity-building workshop examined the role of Kenyan immigration officers in preventing trafficking into cyber-scam centres, combining situational updates with the identification and discussion of key risk indicators, interview techniques, and scenario-based case studies. The sessions strengthened officers’ ability to recognise trafficking risks during routine inbound and outbound screening, to remain informed about evolving trafficking for forced criminality trends, and support timely information sharing with immigration counterparts across borders. Discussions also explored how trafficking risks may present at arrival and departure, how officers can apply risk-based approaches in a proportionate manner while respecting the rights of travellers, and how immigration services can contribute to broader awareness-raising and prevention efforts. 

1. Legitimate travel pathways remain a key prevention focus 

Participants across the visa-issuing and immigration events identified growing exploitation of visa-on-arrival schemes and medical visa pathways, which are often subject to lighter scrutiny, compressed timelines, and limited documentation requirements. Officers also noted increasing use of complex and indirect travel routing, extended stopovers, and last-minute bookings that are inconsistent with stated travel plans. Taken together, these patterns reinforce the need for earlier, information-led risk assessment and stronger verification mechanisms within existing travel authorisation processes. 

2. Group travel and intermediary-led arrangements can obscure individual risk presentation

Participants noted that recruitment networks may organise travellers in groups or ’tours‘, with applications and travel arrangements often handled by agents or intermediaries. While group travel is common and lawful, these arrangements can create an appearance of legitimacy and make individual risk indicators less visible. Discussions in Nairobi emphasised the importance of assessing group composition, consistency of travel narratives, and the source of travel funding, rather than assuming that group travel presents lower risk. 

3. CSO co-creation helps establish foundations for scalable, coordinated prevention 

Participants noted that involving CSOs in prevention message development can improve contextual relevance and enhance future uptake of materials through existing community outreach channels. Many participating organisations were engaging with one another for the first time, and the ideation process helped establish initial relationships that are set to support continued information-sharing, referrals, and iterative refinement of prevention materials, including translations, as the campaign moves into implementation. 

Looking ahead 

The RSO and Freedom Collaborative will implement a corresponding series of activities in Colombo, Sri Lanka in February—enhancing reach to actors based in key origin countries where victims of trafficking for forced criminality are originating from.  

The series will bring together South Asian civil society organisations to co-design prevention campaigns, alongside a targeted briefing for ASEAN visa-issuing officers based in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and a workshop for Sri Lankan immigration officers.  

Prevention materials developed in Nairobi and Colombo will, further prototyped with CSO partners, then be refined and prepared for dissemination through an awareness raising campaign across East Africa and South Asia.