UN calls for scam center clampdown

GENEVA

The U.N. human rights agency on Feb. 20 called on governments to clamp down on scam centers, which have mushroomed in Southeast Asia and where hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked into forced labor.

The agency released a report documenting torture, sexual abuse, forced abortions, food deprivation, solitary confinement and other abuses.

"The litany of abuse is staggering and at the same time heart-breaking," U.N. Human Rights high commissioner Volker Türk said, calling on governments to act against corruption that was "deeply entrenched in such lucrative scamming operations, and to prosecute the criminal syndicates behind them."

The UNHCR had already said in a 2023 report that hundreds of thousands of people were forced to work in the centers, that other investigations have found are responsible for billions of dollars of online fraud.

The new report said satellite imagery and on-ground reports show that nearly three-quarters of the scam operations are in the Mekong region and have spread to some Pacific Island countries, South Asia, Gulf States, West Africa and the Americas.

Based on accounts from victims, police, and civil society groups, the report said forced laborers had described being held in immense compounds resembling self-contained towns, made up of heavily fortified multi-story buildings with barbed wire-topped walls and armed guards.

The report into forced labor at scam centers in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates between 2021 and 2025, reinforced reports of the deprivation that the scam center workers are put through.

The U.N. said that many of the forced laborers were wrongly treated as criminals once freed.