Human-rights commissioner: official trafficking numbers ‘tip of the iceberg’ in Cyprus

Cyprus’ Independent Commissioner for Administration and Human Rights, Maria Stylianou-Lottides, issued a stark assessment on 30 July, stating that the 30 trafficking victims formally identified last year “do not reflect the true extent of the problem”. Speaking in Nicosia, she highlighted emerging threats such as AI-powered recruitment scams and deep-fake identity documents that make victim detection harder for border-control officers and labour inspectors. While applauding five recent convictions, Lottides said more proactive investigations are needed, including digital-forensics training for the police cyber-crime unit and closer cooperation with financial-intelligence analysts to trace illicit money flows. She called on the government to expand safe-house capacity and to guarantee victims’ right to continue working legally while cases proceed—a key factor in preventing re-victimisation. The commissioner framed trafficking as both a human-rights abuse and a threat to Cyprus’ attractiveness for foreign investment, warning that supply-chain scandals could deter the island’s growing cadre of tech start-ups and near-shoring service centres. She urged companies to integrate the EU’s forthcoming Forced Labour Regulation into their corporate-social-responsibility policies ahead of its 2027 start date. For global-mobility professionals the speech is a reminder that immigration-compliance programmes must now incorporate human-rights due diligence. HR teams should ensure that relocation vendors, temp agencies and cleaning or catering subcontractors have clear grievance mechanisms and provide workers with copies of contracts in a language they understand. Failure to do so could expose firms to administrative penalties and reputational damage under Cyprus’ revamped National Strategy for Migrant Integration 2026-2029. Lottides pledged that her office will publish a quarterly trafficking-risk bulletin starting in October, giving employers and assignment managers a new data source to benchmark their own due-diligence efforts.