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The PROTECT project is a 3-year (2023-2026), €4 million intervention funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), focusing on countering migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings (including children) in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. The project focuses on numerous aspects of migration, mobility and forced displacement in the selected countries, while examining horizontal challenges in the broader region of Central Asia (Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan) that hinder efforts to better counter both crimes. |
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Outcome 1: Providing evidence-based strategy, policy and legal expertise
Under this component, guidance is provided to align legal frameworks with the TIP and SOM Protocols, as well as other international standards. Additionally, support is given to develop tailored planning and policy documents informed by data and available evidence. The work also includes developing more effective prevention strategies that apply crime prevention principles and are aligned with TIP and SOM routes, where possible involving more than one project country. Emphasis is placed on establishing and strengthening practical mechanisms for inter-agency cooperation. |
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Outcome 2: Investing in people: building rights-based and gender equal operational capacity to break the TIP and SOM business model
This component draws on UNODC’s wider capacity building expertise to ensure that all activities are located within a clear and realistic capacity building strategy, taking into account not just knowledge and skills of individual practitioners but also wider institutional issues ranging from rotation policies to resource availability to political will and cross-border cooperation mechanisms. |
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Outcome 3: Activating agency-to-agency communication and facilitating bilateral and international cooperation
The project supports both formal and informal judicial cooperation in a number of ways. It places particular emphasis on the development of fast, less formal channels of communication and cooperation at an operational level along selected routes. |
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Outcome 4: Supporting the identification, screening, referral and protection of victims of trafficking and migrants in vulnerable situations to exploitation and abuse
Support is provided to establish or improve identification procedures and referral mechanisms for victims of trafficking in persons, vulnerable smuggled migrants, and other vulnerable migrants. |
