Children in Crisis
Are rich nations doing enough to help?
By Brian Hansen

In September, an extraordinary special session of the United Nations will discuss recent efforts to stop the global exploitation of children. Millions of children are kidnapped and used as soldiers or sold into sexual bondage or forced labor. Twenty million live on the streets of Third World cities, and tens of millions suffer or die because of malnutrition or are orphaned by AIDS. A preliminary U.N.. . . .

Read the Full Report (Subscription Required)
Buy Report PDF

Should the United States ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Marian Wright Edelman Founder and President, Children's Defense Fund. From The Washington Times, April 16, 2001	Patrick F. Fagan Fellow, Heritage Foundation. From Religion and Sovereignty, Feb. 5, 2001.

Trafficking in Boys and Girls

It is called child trafficking, and it is the ugly underworld of human trade. Children as young as 6 are forced to toil in sweatshops, agricultural fields and brothels. Trafficked children suffer horrific physical and mental abuses at the hands of their adult taskmasters. Many don't live to experience adulthood.

“It is incomprehensible that trafficking in human beings should be taking place in the 21st century,” U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said this summer. “It's incomprehensible, but it's true — very true.”

At least 700,000 persons — mostly women and children — are forcibly taken each year across scores of international borders and within dozens of countries, according to a recent State Department report. But the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other organizations say the number of children victimized may be significantly higher.

“What we do know is that the scale of the problem is enormous,” says Rima Salah, regional director of UNICEF's West and Central Africa division.

Child trafficking takes place in modern, industrialized countries as well as in the developing world, according to UNICEF and the U.S. State Department. Trafficking has long been prevalent in Albania, where young women and girls are frequently abducted or tricked through employment scams and sold to pimps and brothels in Italy, Greece and other European nations.

Child trafficking is also a problem in several West African countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the State Department report, Congolese girls are routinely trafficked to Europe — mainly France and Belgium — for sexual exploitation. Congolese boys are often taken to Rwanda, where they are forced into labor or military service.

Child trafficking is also prevalent throughout Asia, the State Department says. Indonesian girls are sold into sexual bondage in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and Australia. Burmese girls are trafficked to Thailand and other countries as factory workers, household servants and prostitutes. And South Korean girls are frequently trafficked for sexual exploitation to the United States and other Western countries.

Teenage prostitutes in Thailand are among thousands of youngsters often forced to work in the nation's infamous sex industry. (International Labour Organization/J. Maillard)

Child trafficking flourishes because it is a high-profit, low-risk venture, the State Department report says. It does not require a large capital investment, and unlike drugs or other material “commodities,” human beings can be used repeatedly.

Moreover, many governments make few efforts to crack down on trafficking. In some countries, corrupt police officers and other officials protect brothel owners and other exploiters of children, according to U.S. officials and children's advocates.

Trafficking tends to flourish in areas beset with poverty, political instability, militarism, civil unrest and natural disasters. Young people seeking to escape from such adverse conditions are especially vulnerable to traffickers' false promises of good jobs and better living conditions in other countries. In addition, war and civil strife often lead to massive displacements of populations, leaving orphans and street children extremely vulnerable to trafficking, the State Department report found.

Societal and cultural practices also contribute to the problem. In some societies, parents sell their children to more affluent friends, relatives or strangers in the hope that they will have better lives. Elsewhere, children — especially girls — are viewed as property that can be sold to pay off a family debt. In Indonesia, for example, the value of a girl's dowry can have a direct correlation with how much protection she and her children get when she marries, says Neil Boothby, director of the Children in Crisis program at Save the Children.

“Fundamentally, the problem is poverty,” he says. “But beyond that, there are a lot of attitudinal factors driving child trafficking. Does a father see his daughter as precious and deserving of education, or as a commodity? We're trying to dig down beneath that.”

Changing parents' attitudes toward their children is not easy in poverty-stricken regions, says Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF. “These are not evil people — they're just struggling so much with the issues of poverty,” she says.

The solution, she says, is education. “The closest thing to a silver bullet [to curtail trafficking] is education. We need to keep them in school.”

[1] Department of State press conference, July 12, 2001.

Footnote: 1. Department of State press conference, July 12, 2001.

[2] UNICEF press conference, Feb. 19, 2001.

Footnote: 2. UNICEF press conference, Feb. 19, 2001.