From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trafficking of children is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation.

Exploitation includes forcing children into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, or the removal of organs. For children exploitation may include also, illicit international adoption, trafficking for early marriage, recruitment as child soldiers, for begging or as athletes (such as child camel jockeys or football players), or for recruitment for religious cults.^[1]

According to international legislation, in the case of children the use of illicit means—such as 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—is not relevant in determining whether an act is a crime, because a child can not legally give informed consent.

It is a form of trafficking in human beings as defined by the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. It is also one of the worst form of child labour as defined by the ILO convention 182.

Child trafficking is a crime under international law and under the national legislation of many countries.

• Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UN General Assembly, 2000)

• Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour or Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (ILO, no. 182, 1999)

Under both of the above-mentioned instruments, any person of less than eighteen years of age is considered to be a child.

United States Federal law criminalizes sex trafficking of children under Title 18 U.S.C. 1591 and Title 18 U.S.C. 2421-2423. Section 1591, a civil rights statute, makes it illegal to "recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide or obtain by any means a person" knowing that either the person will be compelled through "force, fraud or coercion" to submit to a sex act, or that the person is under 18 years of age and will likewise be forced to commit a sex act. Sections 2421-2423, part of the 2003 PROTECT Act, criminalizes transport of minors for sex acts. It also criminalizes travelling to engage in illicit sex in another country. This provision of the law empowered federal prosecutors to address American's exploitation of minors in foreign countries.

1. ^ http://www.uefa.com/uefa/keytopics/kind=2048/newsid=462974.html

• Child laundering
• Commercial sexual exploitation of children
• International adoption
• Military use of children
• Trafficking in human beings

• "A Child in Danger is a Child that Cannot Wait - Columbia and Child Prostitution in Today's World" WNN - Women News Network Sept 16, 2007
• "Traffic Cop - The Story of Raymond Bechard and Child Trafficking" by Antonella Gambotto-Burke Men's Style Magazine October 2007
• 'Asia's sex trade is 'slavery' - BBC
• Europe warned over trafficking of children - BBC
• Fears of rising child sex trade – The Guardian
• 'Tracking Africa's child trafficking - BBC
• 5,000 child sex slaves in UK - The Independent
• 'Streets of despair - The Observer
• Trafficking in Minors - United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute
• Child Laundering How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children, David M. Smolin.