Call To Action For Collaboration To Prevent and Counter The Exploitation of Social Media For Migrant Smuggling

We, the G7 Ministers of Interior and Security, reaffirm our commitment to prevent and counter migrant smuggling. We will continue to cooperate through the G7 Coalition to Prevent and Counter the Smuggling of Migrants; we will continue to implement the 2024 G7 Action Plan to Prevent and Counter the Smuggling of Migrants; and we will advance the commitments Leaders made at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Canada, on June 17, 2025. These commitments include working collaboratively with social media companies to disrupt organized crime groups from using online platforms to advertise, coordinate, and facilitate migrant smuggling operations.

Migrant smuggling is a complex transnational crime that exposes smuggled persons to grave and life-threatening risks, undermines the sovereign right of states to manage their borders, and has links to other serious criminal offences like money laundering, trafficking in persons and drug trafficking.

Internet-enabled services, including social media platforms, are used by criminal networks at every step in the migrant smuggling process –from advertising irregular migration, recruiting low-level associates, facilitating encrypted communication and coordination from afar, all the way to making available online repositories of falsified documents for profit. These operations are often enabled by informal and unregulated financial transfer systems to facilitate illicit payments.

We acknowledge certain strides that social media companies are making to safeguard their platforms from criminal activity. We recognize the ongoing need for strengthened collaboration among governments and the technology industry to prevent and counter the smuggling of migrants. 

We invite social media companies to deepen our collaboration to address the use of online platforms by transnational criminal networks to smuggle migrants, including through the development of voluntary principles. Voluntary principles will provide a concrete framework to collaboratively enhance collective tools and capacities to prevent and counter migrant smuggling, reducing the deceptive use of their services by migrant smuggling networks. 

We are committed to a multistakeholder approach that leverages expertise and experience, building on existing initiatives, such as the Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling, and drawing on lessons learned to ensure sustained progress while respecting domestic legal frameworks and our respective international human rights commitments.