Child Exploitation

Child trafficking is a form of child abuse. It is the exploitation of children for economic or sexual purposes, and includes the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of a child for exploitation. Children may be sold, illegally adopted, forced into early marriage, recruited into the armed forces, pushed into prostitution, or trafficked to work in mines, factories, or homes. In such environments they are exposed to extreme forms of abuse and are denied access to basic services and the meeting of their fundamental human rights. Trafficked children often lack basic legal status and support networks, making their condition virtually "invisible."

Children without parental care, living in poverty, and those in high risk environments such as war affected regions, are all highly vulnerable to trafficking. Conflict and post conflict environments pose the greatest risk to children since the breakdown in family and social systems, the increase in poverty, and large numbers of troops present, are all factors which make sexual and economic exploitation of children more common.

Prevention is crucial to reduce the incidence of children affected and includes the registering of all displaced children, and their temporary care until verification and family reunification activities can take place. All children, caretakers, and communities should be educated on the risks to children and protective steps to ensure children do not become separated and exposed to abuse and exploitation. Where possible, unaccompanied children should be placed in regulated and protective family environments such as kinship or foster care.

Governments, the police, border controls, teachers, and all organizations responsible for protection must work together to prevent trafficking, identify those children at risk, advocate for their safety, and prosecute those responsible. This includes awareness raising for communities, institutions, and personnel working with vulnerable groups, such as armed forces, peacekeepers, and humanitarian workers.

Support services for children who have been trafficked should include medical, psychosocial, family reunification, and legal elements, to facilitate the reintegration of the child into the community and to enable educational and economic opportunities which are in the child’s best interests.

This section of documents examines the nature of trafficking in more detail, and includes policy and practical information to prevent and respond to child exploitation.

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Trust Conference 2018: Panel - Orphanages as Trafficking Hubs

Thomson Reuters Foundation, 14 Nov 2018

A panel event on orphanage trafficking was held at Thomson Reuters Foundation's Trust Conference 2018 on 14 November 2018. This video captures the discussions of that event, including a statement from one young care leaver from Nepal who told her story of being institutionalized in the country.

Trust Conference 2018: Keynote Address - Kate Van Doore

Thomson Reuters Foundation, 04 Nov 2018

In this video, Kate van Doore, International Child Rights Lawyer of Griffith University Law School, discusses her experience with opening up an orphanage in Nepal, and another in Uganda, and then discovering that the children in these homes had living parents and families and that the orphanages had been made into money-making enterprises.

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Country Care Review: Philippines

Better Care Network , 16 Oct 2018

This country care review includes the care related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Country Care Review: Mauritania

Better Care Network, 11 Oct 2018

This country care review includes the care related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child as part of its examination of Mauritania's initial reports, as well as other care-related concluding observations, ratification dates, and links to the Universal Periodic Review.

Country Care Review: Algeria

Better Care Network , 21 Sep 2018

This country care review includes the care-related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Sexual and physical abuse and its determinants among street children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2016

Ayana Chimdessa & Amsale Cheire - BMC Pediatrics, 19 Sep 2018

The purpose of this study is to point out the experience of sexual and physical exploitation and its determinant factors among street children in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia.

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Community-based prevention of child trafficking in Southern Ethiopia

Asayeberhan Kastro & Karen Dullea - International Social Work, 19 Sep 2018

The focus of this article is on children trafficked or migrating alone from rural areas of the Wolaita zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region to the urban centres of Jimma or Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

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Child Protection Risks and Needs in Mali: Secondary Data Review

Child Protection Area of Responsibility in Mali and the Global CP AoR, 01 Sep 2018

This review of secondary sources refers to information on child protection risks and violence against children in Mali, collected from 2016 to 2018.

Are We Serving Orphans? How churches are transitioning to best-practice care

Ellen Livingood - Postings, 01 Sep 2018

This article by Ellen Livingood in Volume 13, Issue 9 of Postings describes the ways in which Christian churches and faith communities are moving away from orphanage volunteering to supporting other forms of care for children.

Inequalities in US Child Protection: The Case of Sex Trafficked Youth

Lisa Werkmeister Rozas, Jason Ostrander, and Megan Feely - Social Sciences, 13 Aug 2018

This article demonstrates how structural social work theory and critical consciousness development can be used to help facilitate a transition from a deficit model approach to an inequities perspective in a child welfare system that was working to improve the identification of and services for domestic minor sex trafficked youth (DMST).

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