Today is United Nations Day Against Trafficking in Persons.
This year, the theme is ‘Leave No Child Behind’, and is aimed at bringing into sight the plight of children entrapped into situations of exploitation. The global campaign urges accelerated action to end child trafficking.
Rev. Chris Frazer is Convenor of the Modern Slavery and Labour Exploitation Advisory Group. They have released their annual newsletter (download below) and it’s well worth the read.
What follows is an excerpt from Chris’ excellent article.
Children represent a significant proportion of trafficking victims worldwide, with girls being disproportionately affected. Statistics highlight the grim reality that 1 in 3 victims of human trafficking globally is a child.
The causes of child trafficking are as diverse as the ways in which children are exploited.
Children are subjected to various forms of trafficking, including exploitation in forced labour, criminality or begging, trafficked for illegal adoption, recruitment into armed forces, and online and sexual abuse and exploitation.
Root causes are many, including poverty, inadequate support of unaccompanied children amidst rising migration and refugee flows, armed conflicts, dysfunctional families, and lack of parental care.
When outlining what needs to be done to reduce children's vulnerability, the report stresses the urgent need to address prevention by targeting root causes such as extreme poverty and inequality.
Bringing this to our own front doorstep, we need to be very aware that child exploitation doesn’t just happen somewhere far away, it is present in every country and that most certainly includes here in New Zealand. Its sobering to realise, for example, that New Zealand has the 5th worst child abuse record out of the 31 OECD countries.
The UN information on this global day makes it very clear when they assert that civil society organizations, the private sector, and communities have a vital role in raising awareness, providing support services, and advocating for policy reforms.
We all have a role to play!
What is needed is to stop pointing fingers as to whose issue is it, it’s everybody’s issue! A pragmatic response is when we ask, “How are we going to do this?”
