Twenty-two organisations from 12 different countries joined forces for a new Research and Innovation EU project which aims to strengthen the fight against trafficking in human beings (THB), at the nexus of advanced technological solutions, understanding, awareness raising, and training to disrupt the trafficking chain (online and offline) at an early stage and address the culture of impunity.

In addition, VANGUARD aims to provide an improved intelligence picture of THB, with particular focus on THB for purposes of sexual exploitation, labour exploitation, and forced criminality. This will be achieved through developing a modular and trustworthy suite of tools for detecting, identifying, investigating, and preventing online-facilitated THB activities and THB-related activities at (border) checkpoints based on the analysis of online multimedia content and multimodal streams, by leveraging the latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI).

VANGUARD project kicked-off on November 2023 in a two-day meeting (07-08 Nov.) on the premises of CERTH in Thessaloniki, Greece, covering a comprehensive agenda and coming to a clear action plan for the upcoming months. At this meeting, more than 30 attendees who represented all the partners had the opportunity to set up the preliminary communications and rules that will facilitate the project implementation.

The Project Officer enthusiastically welcomed this attempt while highlighting the significance of any potential security, ethical, and legal difficulties. He also mentioned just few issues, primary among them the sustainability of the project’s solution and underlined the need for continuous collaboration and a multidisciplinary approach to effectively tackle THB behaviors, resulting in effective policy making initiatives.

VANGUARD is being coordinated by M4D group together with the Visual Computing Lab (VCL), both groups of CERTH-ITI and will last for 36 months.

VANGUARD is funded by the European Commission with a total amount of about 5 Million Euro.

The Consortium

Coordinator: CERTH (EL) Partners: GGMH (DE), ICMPD (AT), UCSC (IT), WAT (PL), KU Leuven (BE), ΚΕΜΕΑ (EL), CEA (FR), ICCS (EL), FUNDEA (ES), ENG (IT), ATOS IT (ES), ITTI (PL), RAD (RO), BayHfoD (DE), MJ (PT), MCH (ES), GPI (MD), HELLENIC POLICE (EL), EPBGB (EE), RBP (RO), GIBP (MD), CENTRIC (UK)