Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Ioana Bauer as the two discuss the important role that cyber-security plays in preventing sexual exploitation.

Ioana Bauer

Ioana Bauer completed her anti-human trafficking certificate through Vanguard University. She has been a leader in Romania since 2010 in eradicating human trafficking. She has helped pilot survivor engagement projects nationally, internationally through the UN, and through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Ioana Bauer has impacted policy and legislation, leading an initiative in Romania to remove the statute of limitations for the crime of creating online Child Sexual Abuse materials. She’s spearheaded a new award winning protection model compass geared at preventing and identifying trafficking for Ukrainian refugees. Ioana Bauer has been active in the area of protecting human rights and dignity since 2005, and, since 2010, she has dedicated her efforts to addressing human trafficking by leading and shaping prevention activities, developing materials on the issue and conducting capacity building activities. Ioana is an Ashoka Fellow, a 2020 Resilience Fellow with GITOC, and is recognized as one of the women leaders advancing the UN SDGs globally.

Key Points

• The Ad Hoc Committee’s International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes has faced challenges in reaching a consensus among countries because of the tension between privacy and human rights.


• It is because online and off-line identities and lives have become increasingly interconnected, that a convention like the Ad Hoc Committee’s is necessary; to look into how this interconnectedness impacts children and vulnerable groups.


• Survivor voices should be heard and present in spaces like the convention, as they are directly impacted by the issues being discussed, negotiated, and decided on.


• Takedown mechanisms often re-traumatize survivors, putting them through a lengthy process that does not ensure takedown. 

Resources

• Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes


• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 


• eLiberare


• eLiberare Position Paper


• We Protect: Global Threat Assessment 2023


• Episode 304 – European Perspectives, with Ioana Bauer


• Episode 282 – Crisis Prevention of Ukraine Refugee Trafficking, with Ioana Bauer

Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:14

Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode #322 with Ioana Bauer, The Intersection of Cyber Security and Sexual Exploitation. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan. This is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Today, we are going to have a conversation about keeping our communities, our families, our children, safe online. Ioana, it’s great to be here, and I’ve been following your work on the Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies, I have to take a breath, for Criminal Purposes in hopes to reach consensus for a global framework to address cyber dependent criminality. Now this is happening in the space created by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, and it’s especially significant in our spaces where we work with those who have been sexually exploited, particularly in online spaces, sextortion, pornography, all of those aspects. We talk about that right here in Orange County at Vanguard University, and we discuss the issues around sextortion. Even here, we have cases where our local youth have been exploited by traffickers on other continents, in Africa, in the Middle East, in South America, so this is a global issue. I’m really happy to welcome you to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast again, Ioana. Ioana Bauer is chairwoman of eLiberare, and last year’s 2023 Global Center for Women and Justice Amplify award winner because she takes the knowledge and insight she has and amplifies it to bring more understanding, prevention, protection, prosecution in human trafficking. Ioana is from Romania, but has a global footprint. Welcome to the show again, Ioana, let’s just dive right in. When we’re talking about this, can you tell us why a UN convention is strategic in this fight?

Ioana Bauer 3:35

First of all, thank you so much for having me again on this podcast. I think this topic is specifically important, especially now that we don’t just have a digital footprint or a digital life, and then our day to day life, it’s our life period. These two areas are so interconnected that we can’t really say, in a lot of the parts of the world, that there is one without the other, right? Our online identity and our real life identity are very much interconnected, so we need frameworks that actually look into what this means for us. Cyber crime, what are the types, how are we protected? And just like you mentioned, Dr. Morgan, somebody could be a victim in Orange County, but the trafficker, the abuser, the consumer of this criminal material, could be on a totally different continent. That is why it is important to have an international convention, because basically, states need to have a common framework under which they say, “Yes, these are the rules of engagement, and this is how we’re going to deal with XYZ crime.”

Sandra Morgan 4:49

Let’s take a step back, and can you give us a very brief overview of the process for this Ad Hoc Committee?

Ioana Bauer 5:00

Absolutely. Right now, we’re trying to have a second concluding session. You would think that this would be easy, but when you are trying to bring consensus among hundreds of countries, all of a sudden it becomes extremely complicated. Also, it would be important to mention that this is not a new process. The UN has started talking about cyber crime and the need to have common grounds, or common frameworks to address it, since 1990, so it’s about time that we end up with some sort of legislation that can apply more widely than what already exists. However, the Cyber Crime Convention, which used to be named this, before states couldn’t even agree on the name, on the definition of what cyber crime consists, hence we have that handful of a title. It started in a very divergent or a divisive way, with two countries, mainly Russia and the US, in a fight to see who gets there first, which is really funny. It’s not the first time in history when you see this, right? So, trying to figure out how to start this and the framework under which it was gonna be done, with the U S, wanting the scope that is very limited and specifically talks about certain forms of criminality, but then other states, led by Russia, wanting this convention to have the potential to be used, maybe to punish people who fo not have the same opinions as their government, or who are whistleblowers. From the beginning, the convention had a lot of tension between privacy and human rights when it comes to free speech and one’s personal opinion to disagree with the state. Then this piece on protection that is so so important. Fast forward more than than 30 years, we’re getting close to 35 years, hopefully we’ll conclude in 2024, this Ad Hoc Committee that also includes multi stakeholders. So CSOs, tech companies, are coming together trying to put forward the legal framework that would do both: protect human rights and privacy, and citizens right to disagree and hold their own opinion, as well as safeguards that have to do with the protection of children, or vulnerable groups, or individuals in general, because we’ve seen that anybody can be a victim of a cyber crime.

Sandra Morgan 7:47

It seems like, when you’re talking about these states, these countries, they’ve been working on this and been aware of this, but it got stuck. Why? Why did it get stuck?

Ioana Bauer 8:03

That’s a great question, and I think we’re still trying to answer that, even though we’re supposed to close this process. But one, the definition. What kind of crimes do we actually look at? And this is closely related to the scope of the convention. The state agreed that this should only look at cyber dependent crimes. We’re not looking at cyber enabled, we’re not looking at cyber assisted crimes, we’re just looking at cyber dependent, with two big exceptions, child sexual abuse and exploita