Mobile phones - many people have one, yet we use them for a variety of different purposes. Perhaps you are mobile-savvy and spend hours surfing the web and playing games on your handset. Or maybe you're someone who merely has a mobile phone in order to send text messages to your kids. Either way, most of us have come to place some amount of superficial importance on having a mobile phone.
But what if a mobile phone could do a whole lot more than let you check your emails or track down your kids? What if it could actually do something life changing?
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Trafficking hotline
In the Ukraine, now even the simplest of handsets could potentially save lives thanks to three of the country's leading service providers who have collaborated with the International Organization for Migration to set up a toll-free information hotline. Customers of Ukrainian mobile phone service providers KyivStar, UMC and life:) can dial '527' from their handsets in order to receive information and advice from the IOM on migration and trafficking issues, and potential migrants will also get information on legal methods of migration.
Human trafficking is a serious global issue, but currently has particular resonance in the Ukraine with the IOM estimating in a recent survey that 100,000 Ukrainians have been trafficked for various forms of exploitation since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Economic migrants
Post-Soviet Ukraine has seen large numbers of its population leave for western Europe and beyond as economic migrants, so it is therefore essential that the private sector involves itself in the battle against human trafficking. The mobile phone networks involved in the scheme are ideally placed to help since, between them, they have the capability to reach as many as 40 million Ukrainians and educate them further on migration issues. Such issues are clearly of great importance in Ukraine since the population has dropped by over five million in the last 15 years.
The public information officer for the IOM, Natalie Krivstova, recently spoke to Radio Netherlands Worldwide and welcomed the support of the mobile phone networks, although she believes it will take some time before it is possible to measure the effects of the initiative:
"We cannot say so far whether the situation with trafficking is getting better or not as we do not have anything to compare it with. Probably in a couple or three years we will do a survey again and see whether the phenomenon is increasing or decreasing."However, emphasis is still being placed on the importance of ensuring personal safety when travelling abroad, and all Ukrainians are being actively encouraged to dial '527' from their mobile phones in order to have any migration queries answered.
Tags: migration, mobile phone, soviet, trafficking, Ukraine