Minister launches central hotline against human smuggling and trafficking

Victims can now report or come into contact with the specialized help centers on the website stopmensenhandel.be. There is also an ‘escape button’. This serves to quickly switch to another page, if someone were to read along.

The purpose of the hotline is twofold. In the first place, it should help victims faster and more adequately. In addition, it should also help to expose criminal networks around human trafficking and smuggling more quickly, to close them down and have them brought to justice. By the end of the year, there will also be a central telephone number that victims can contact day and night. The minister is allocating 140,000 euros for this.

Lower Threshold

Minister Van Quickenborne: “We see today that victims report far too little because they are afraid of the police and also because they do not know the existence of the three centers. Such a hotline is therefore necessary to lower the threshold. This problem has there has been far too little interest in politics and we want to turn that around now. We now have to ensure that the aid centers have more manpower to be able to take up the fight.”

Saturday is World Day Against Human Trafficking. Forty Belgian municipalities are participating and will, for example, show projections of a blue heart. That heart expresses the suffering of the victims, it also symbolizes the numbness of people smugglers and expresses solidarity with the victims.