Fighting Child Trafficking and Exploitation – An Interview with Mark Beavan
Written by: Virginia SAGANHA
Mr Beavan speaking in the UNICEF committee - Credits: ILYMUN Press
Mark Beavan, Detective Chief Superintendent with Devon and Cornwall Police in the UK, currently serves as the Head of the Crimes Against Children Unit at INTERPOL. With over 21 years of experience in law enforcement, he leads international efforts to combat child exploitation and abuse, focusing on dismantling criminal networks, rescuing victims, and ensuring offenders are brought to justice.
In this interview, Beavan discusses the challenges of protecting children from both online and offline threats, the role of international collaboration, and how advanced technologies—such as artificial intelligence—are shaping the future of child protection. He also highlights INTERPOL’s partnership with organizations like UNICEF and the importance of a united global approach to safeguarding children.
At the UNICEF committee, he presented information on an issue that had happened that morning. A 42 year old, convicted perpetrator and sex offender, was pretending to take 20 children on an excursion and had been giving them private photography lessons.
Virginia: If there was a situation like this, what would be INTERPOL’s response?
Mr.Beavan: INTERPOL would look to share information as quickly as possible with its other member countries to ensure that all of the police officers in those countries are aware of the risks and the dangers. So in this case they would share information about the perpetrator, any information related to the description or photographic identity which can be shared with law enforcement to their mobile devices so that they can keep eyes and ears on the ground to try and locate this individual.
Virginia: Compared to other situations that happen at INTERPOL, would you consider this one a very serious one?
Mr.Beavan: This is very serious, as this is a convicted perpetrator of very serious sexual offenses against children in the past and so it is absolutely likely that the individual still has a sexual interest in children. The risk of physical harm to the children that she is with at the moment is extremely high.
Virginia: How does your work at INTERPOL align with the goals and mission of UNICEF to protect children?
Mr.Beavan: INTERPOL has a mandate to keep the world safe, that’s its overarching objective and has a particular focus within one of its departments that the vulnerable committees command and to look after women and children who are particularly vulnerable in certain circumstances and of course child and sexual abuse defenses are high priority for INTERPOL. I know that UNICEF absolutely has a mandate as well in relation to keeping children safe from harm across the world, so the two align for sure.
Virginia: There are pretty large networks of child trafficking and this makes this issue harder to solve as some of the condemned perpetrators can still access the outside world and continue child trafficking. So what do you think should be done to solve this issue?
Mr.Beavan: The problem with child trafficking, or one of the problems, is the sharing of informations between countries to put in better control at the borders between countries so one of the reasons that organised crime groups or perpetrators working alone in this space is their ability to move children across borders without being detected so much better coordination between the countries in between border control is the key to disrupting this methodology.
Mr Beavan interviewed by Written Press member Virginia - Credits: ILYMUN Press
Virginia: What role do you see technology and artificial intelligence playing in the fight against child exploitation?
Mr.Beavan: Huge huge role, so firstly, artificial intelligence is being used by perpetrators themselves to generate images and videos of children and also to facilitate payment mechanisms for the people that they are sharing material with, and from the criminal perspective there is absolutely a space for artificial intelligence and links to new technologies to help law enforcement by processing information more quickly. So at the moment you will find that lots of law enforcement investigators have to spend hours of their time exposed to large volumes of data, extremely long videos, quite distressing videos to watch as well in relation to this crime type. So what that technology can do to analyse the data and remove the need for police officers to have to go through that information. One, it is better for the welfare of those investigators but also increases the accuracy of processing that information so notwithstanding the risks with the AI having to learn how to behave, so the accuracy may not be great to start with but certainly moving forward is definitely something that will massively help law enforcement tackle this crime type.
Virginia: Does INTERPOL also use AI to solve this issue?
Mr.Beavan: Absolutely, yeah, so there's huge investment from INTERPOL to work with industry partners like Google, Snapchat and Meta, to try to think ahead of some of the tools that we could use to help fight this huge issue. Because the problem of course with the internet and social media is that it's great at connecting all people, and so people with good intentions and even people with bad intentions.
Virginia: How does UNICEF measure the impact of the children protection programs and INTERPOL as well,like how do they make sure that what they are doing is effective?
Mr.Beavan: Prevention is always a tricky one to measure, just by its very nature, so if you prevented something you would necessarily know about it and be able to measure it, but the way that we tackle it at INTERPOL is that there are certain things that we can measure. We have notices and diffusions on our system, on your data basis, so we’re able to track just how much information is being passed from member countries and in relation to this crime type. So if there's a particular method that criminals are using, then that can be recorded in a green notice.
One of the things that we do at INTERPOL is monitor how many green notices we have on our system, and also in relation to child sex offenders who are traveling around the world, there are notices for that, so we’re able to monitor the prevalence of how much is being reported by our member countries, and so that’s one of the ways that we can keep track but it is difficult with regards to knowing just what the impact is. One of the other things we do is that we count the number of case referrals that are sent out and we also list the number of children that we are told about who are safeguarded by law enforcement. But the figures are probably nowhere near what is actually happening. So it’s difficult but we do our best to try and keep track of how prevalent and what the impact is and with regards to being successful in safeguarding children.
Virginia: What do you think is the best way to have fair judgement and consequences for these offences?
Mr.Beavan: Yeah, that’s a good question, so I think it’s always important to get an impact statement from the victims, so other than those children that are too young to be able to articulate the harm that has been cause to them, but to the children who are able to speak and explain just how much it has affected them. I think then to use that in the criminal justice process will help influence what prosecutors and judges determine in relation to punishment for those offenders. I think it’s really important to keep that focus on the victim, that impact of the victim. And it’s the job of partners like UNICEF and INTERPOL to really lobby against governments and to recognize just how harmful this impact is and has a long lasting effect for the victims in many cases.