Thomson Reuters researchers have discovered that Ukrainian refugees may be victims of human traffickers and cyber voyeurs, the Guardian reports. The analysts revealed an increased interest in the topic by analyzing global search engine traffic.
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The organisation has called for urgent action to increase protection for Ukrainian women and children at risk of sexual exploitation.
Analysis of Internet search trends has shown that the number of views of pornographic videos allegedly showing Ukrainian refugees has risen sharply over the past six months. A snapshot of 13 videos purporting to feature Ukrainian refugees shows they were viewed 275,000 times in January.
In the UK, searches for “Ukrainian escorts” have doubled since 2022, while in Spain there has been a 600 per cent increase in searches for “Ukrainian porn”. There has also been an increase in searches for these terms in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France and Switzerland.
According to Valiant Ritchie, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) anti-trafficking coordinator, “The high demand from men for sexual access to Ukrainian women and girls creates a huge incentive for traffickers to recruit vulnerable people to meet this demand and profit from it.”
“We have already found direct evidence of recruitment attempts in chat rooms used by Ukrainians,” he clarified.
At a hearing at the European Parliament last November, evidence was presented that Ukrainians are at high risk of being recruited into prostitution or the porn industry and that many of them are increasingly being recruited through online platforms.
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