Child Trafficking

Main Info

What is child trafficking?

Trafficking is "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation," as the definition from the Palermo Convention.

Simply put, child trafficking is the persuasion or force of taking advantage of a child by transporting them and further exploiting, forcing them to work, selling, and using for sexual means.

~Trafficking occurs worldwide, and children make up 27% of trafficked victims (around 10 million children)~

Trafficking can involve force, but children can also be trafficked through threats, coercion, or deception. "People in trafficking situations can be controlled through violent relationships, manipulation, lack of financial independence, or isolation from family or friends, in addition to physical restraint or harm" (SavetheChildren.org).

Children are most commonly trafficked to be:

• domestic or in construction workers

• on the streets as child beggars

• in wars as child soldiers

• on farms

• in traveling sales crews or in restaurants and hotels

• escort and massage services in brothels or strip clubs

Girls tend to be trafficked for forced marriages and sexual slavery; boys are typically exploited for forced labor or as soldiers.

• Girls around the world are often forced to deny income-generating opportunities and often traps them in a cycle of extreme poverty which increases their vulnerability to trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Tactics traffickers use:

Traffickers may work alone or in small groups exploiting a small number of children around their area. They could also be medium-sized groups that traffic and transport on a small scale. They are many large-scale groups working worldwide, transporting, exploiting many children, money laundering.

• Traffickers often groom their communities to gain their trust. They often persuade families by promising them a better future.

• They also may threaten families with violence.

• They potentially could use families for their money by asking them to pay a certain fee for documents or transport of the child, and have some form of profit from their child getting exploited. The families are often found in a loop because then the traffickers often require payment for "debt" that the family owes to the traffickers (NSPCC.org)

~Human trafficking earns global profits of roughly $150 billion a year for traffickers, $99 billion of which comes from commercial sexual exploitation~

Reintegration Into Society

Children are often sexually, physically or emotionally abused during their time being trafficked and often have brands, long term trauma, and physical injuries. It's very difficult to come back from and many children found various ways of coping with their trauma along with many organizations focused on assisting trafficking survivors.

Protecting trafficked children requires placing them in safe environment, providing them with social services, health care, psychosocial support, and reintegration with family and community, in their best interest.

UNICEF provides training of professionals including social workers, health workers such as psychiatrists, police and border officials to effectively deal with the issue. The organization applies similar training efforts as expectations for governments to tackle this issue themselves.

Special projects such as the NYC Child Tattoo Eradication Project are also in the works. This project specifically, removes a brand on a human trafficking victim for free because often times, many victims are branded so they aren't able to escape from their traffickers even after they are saved.