A two-day training on combating human trafficking has started at LvSUIA

Today, the practical seminar "Human trafficking: prevention, counteraction and interdepartmental cooperation" has begun at Lviv State University of Internal Affairs. Employees of the Police, Prosecutor's Office, and the State Border Service of Ukraine have been taking part in it. Representatives of other regions also have joined the event using the ZOOM platform.

LvSUIA is presented at the event by Larysa Brych, Head of the Research Laboratory, and Olena Herasymiv, Assistant Professor at the Department of Criminal Procedure and Criminalistics.

Specialists of the European Union Advisory Mission (EUAM) Ukraine are the main speakers at the training. They are Gediminas Buciunas, EUAM Senior Adviser on Prosecution, Jukka Larkio, Trainer on Criminal Investigations, and Aymar Koss, EUAM Senior Adviser on Integrated Border Management.

"Such a social phenomenon as human trafficking or "21st century slavery" has existed since ancient times. Unfortunately, we still face it, but we are trying to fight it. Today, my colleagues and I are updating this topic once again and we will be happy to share our own work experience in the area of counteracting this phenomenon," Senior Adviser on Prosecution Gediminas Buciunas said.

Then his colleague, Trainer on Criminal Investigations Jukka Larkio, introduced himself. He spoke about his professional development and work at the Helsinki Police Department.

Aymar Koss, Senior Adviser on Integrated Border Management, also addressed the audience.

For better communication, Gediminas Buciunas offered the training participants to introduce themselves and talk about their experience in combating human trafficking and share their expectations from the event.

He focused on different ways of the "human trafficking" concept and emphasized that the best way is to define it as "a type of activity when a person's freedom is stolen for the purpose of making a profit."

During the seminar, Gediminas Buciunas also mentioned the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which Ukraine ratified in 2004. The purpose of this legal document is to promote cooperation in the effective prevention and fight against transnational organized crime.

The specialist also shared with the participants his own experience in combating organized crime.