ASEAN-ACT& Meta Host Policy Hackathon to Combat Online Human Trafficking

The ASEAN-Australia Counter Trafficking (ASEAN-ACT) program and Meta, hosted a dynamic Policy Hackathon at the GCNT Expo 2025. This special side event—“Disrupting Trafficking into Online Scams”—brought together youth, tech stakeholders, and civil society partners to generate innovative policy solutions to a rapidly evolving threat: the trafficking of individuals into online scam operations.

Held on 29 July 2025 at True Digital Park, the event mobilized the creative energy of young participants to address one of Southeast Asia’s most pressing and complex forms of transnational organized crime. The hackathon provided a rare space for emerging leaders to pitch concrete ideas to disrupt trafficking networks that exploit digital platforms to deceive, entrap, and abuse.

Trafficking into online scam compounds has become a transnational crisis, affecting an estimated 500,000 people from over 60 countries who are deceived or coerced into forced criminality. Victims are often lured through fake job ads and misleading recruitment schemes on everyday social media, professional networking, and messaging platforms, then trapped in compounds to carry out scams under threats of violence, debt bondage, and psychological coercion. These operations are highly organized, adaptive, and exploit modern technologies like cryptocurrencies, fintech, and telecom infrastructure, with the challenge worsened by the complicity of powerful actors in regions where these compounds thrive without meaningful enforcement or accountability.

Rethinking Solutions through Collaboration

Recognizing the inadequacy of traditional anti-trafficking approaches to respond to the scale and sophistication of these crimes, the Policy Hackathon sought to break the mold. By convening young minds, tech companies, NGOs, and regional actors in one room, the event fostered cross-sectoral collaboration to design preventative measures and policy interventions grounded in digital realities.

The hackathon opened with a joint briefing from Meta, the AACT program, and partner NGOs to lay out the scope of the issue and identify entry points for action. Participants were then divided into collaborative groups for a focused ideation session, followed by a pitching round where teams presented their ideas to a panel of judges from Meta and other partner organizations.

Solutions proposed spanned technological innovations, regulatory strategies, awareness campaigns, and improved grievance mechanisms—each aimed at disrupting the recruitment pipelines, enhancing protections for jobseekers, and holding facilitators accountable.

Participants were encouraged to think boldly, with a focus on approaches that could be scaled or adapted across Southeast Asia. Special emphasis was placed on youth leadership, as young jobseekers are among the most vulnerable to recruitment into online scamming compounds—particularly in the post-pandemic era of digital job hunting and economic uncertainty. The top teams received recognition and small awards, and their proposals will be further reviewed by Meta and partners to identify solutions with potential for further development or integration into ongoing initiatives.

The hackathon marked a key moment in Thailand’s and the region’s efforts to adopt more agile, tech-savvy responses to human trafficking. As criminals leverage the speed, anonymity, and reach of the digital world, so too must the responses evolve. Events like this not only generate fresh ideas but also send a clear message: preventing human trafficking is a collective responsibility, and youth must be central to the solution.

By convening government, private sector, and civil society around an emerging threat, the Policy Hackathon at GCNT Expo 2025 demonstrated the power of multi-stakeholder engagement in driving meaningful change. The solutions generated today may lay the groundwork for tomorrow’s counter-trafficking strategies.