Written by Dionysus, Content Writer, Citizen Diplomat eMagazine
While young people have been glued to their screens more than ever since the start of the pandemic, cases of sexual exploitation of children on the Internet have reached an unprecedented peak around the globe, according to new figures obtained by various organisations.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), commercial sexual exploitation of children refers to “the exploitation by an adult with respect to a child or an adolescent – female or male – under 18 years old; accompanied by a payment in money or in kind to the child or adolescent (male or female) or to one or more third parties.”
The United Nation’s specialised agency sees it as “a serious violation of the rights of children and adolescents and a form of economic exploitation similar to slavery and forced labor, which also involves a crime on the part of those who use boys, girls, and adolescents in commercial sexual activities.”
Some worrying facts and statistics
Up to 40.3 million people are being trafficked around the world, with 1 out of 4 of these victims being children, according to figures from the ILO.
At least 50,000 victims of human trafficking were reported in 148 countries in 2018, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC).
27 percent of all human trafficking victims around the world are children. According to Save The Children, 2 out of every 3 child victims are girls.
Sex trafficking is part of the world’s fastest-growing criminal industries, with up to $150 billion generated annually from trafficking and around $4,000 to $5,000 made per trafficked person, depending on his or her place of origin, according to the IADB.
Victims of sex trafficking are mostly runaway girls that were abused sexually as children, according to Do Something, a global non-profit organization based in the US. The reports also claim 1 out of 7 runaways that were announced missing were most likely victims of sex trafficking with 88% in social services when they ran.
Young people from certain backgrounds and with particular experiences are more likely to be targeted by traffickers. According to childrensrights.org, 60% of child sex trafficking victims in the United States have a history in the children welfare system. Children in foster care are targets due to lack of family, and thus, emotional relationships and support.
The average age when victims were first trafficked is between 15 and 17, according to Statista. This is according to a survey of 253 survivors.
Although the trafficked are mainly men, women and girls can be trafficked, especially those who are trafficked and forced to recruit others.
The pandemic and the rise in sexual exploitation of minors
The sexual exploitation of minors has increased from the pre-COVID 19 pandemic period of late 2019 to date, multiple findings reveal. The social restrictions and the economic crisis increased the risk of falling into trafficking, according to a report published in Vienna, this February, by the UNODC.
In addition, criminal networks have been able to take advantage of the social, economic, and political situation by focusing recruitment during lockdowns on the digital sphere, including social networks, according to the study, “The Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Human Trafficking in Persons and the Responses to the Challenge.”
“Women and girls have been recruited, often locally or online, for sexual exploitation, especially in private apartments,” the executive summary of the UNODC report reads in part. “Out of school and needing to support parents who have lost their livelihoods, children have been increasingly targeted by traffickers at the local level and online.”
According to the organisation, the victims are “trafficked for sexual purposes, forced marriage, forced begging and for forced criminality.”
This study is developed with the information provided by different organisations focus on victims of trafficking in 46 countries, the head of the UNODC’s fight against human trafficking, Ilias Chatzis, explains.
Even before the pandemic, the majority of the victims were women: of every ten people rescued from mafias in 2018, five were adults and two were girls, which represents 70% of the total, according to the UNODC.
There is also concern about the increase in attempts to recruit children for sexual exploitation, both in their local communities and through the Internet.
The UNODC report reads:
“Nowadays, internet-based trafficking has become increasingly varied; spanning from simple setups of advertising victims online, to traffickers’ use of communications platforms to broadcast exploitation abroad, to interacting with potential victims or transferring money between trafficking group members.
“There have been cases of traffickers who have coerced victims into establishing rapport with customers in chat rooms monitored by the traffickers, and there is ample evidence of the growth of child sexual abuse material online of which some is related to trafficking in persons.”
The study reveals that minors are increasingly the target of criminals who use social networks to capture victims with methods such as “sextortion”. That crime consists of using images obtained from someone as blackmail to sexually exploit them.
“During the period of the covid-19 emergency measures, more child abuse has been reported, including new forms of exploitation, such as live sexual abuse,” the study notes.
Why online child exploitation is on the rise now
In the middle of the lockdown in many countries, the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the Europol feared that the sexual exploitation of children via the Internet is increasing and is particularly dangerous for children in poverty. And here are the reasons the exploitation of children online is growing during the pandemic.
More demand for child pornographic content on the dark web
Unfortunately, the pandemic is also bringing out the worst in humans. The demand for pornographic material is currently increasing immensely, on legal websites and in the illegal area, according to a new Europol report.
Late in 2021, a porn network on the dark web was burst with over 400,000 members by German prosecutors. According to City A.M., prosecutors said the platform had been active since around 2019.
The dark web is an area of the internet that “cannot be indexed by search engines, is not visible in a standard web browser, requires specific means (such as specialized software or network configuration) to access it, and uses encryption to ensure user anonymity and privacy,” according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. It’s the internet’s black market, where you can find weapons as much as drugs or child pornography.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reported in 2020 during the pandemic that the demand for child pornography had doubled.
Marie Michelle Muñoz, a child protection officer who works for SaferKidsPH, a UNICEF supported organization, told OCCRP that data shows that “images of sexual abuse of children has increased 100% during March 2020, compared to last year.”
Also, there an increase in attempts to access illegally blocked child sexual abuse material websites during the lockdown. Isolated and “bored” offenders who express increasing interest in image trading in online offender communities appear to be on the rise.
According to the Internet Watch Foundation, an organization that in part takes down images, videos, and websites with child sexual abuse online, there have been close to nine million attempts alone in the United Kingdom. However, the scale could be bigger, warned the experts.
“We need to face up to the fact there is a demand… for this material,” CEO of the IWF, Susie Hargreaves, said. “Given that this data comes from just three tech companies, 8.8 million attempts is a conservative picture and the scale is much bigger – possibly millions more.
“The fact so many of these attempts have been blocked suggests the scale of the issue of public demand is quite staggering, and something we need to remain vigilant against”
However, according to her, the number in the UK is a fraction of what the real number is on a global scale, but the UK serves as a fueling ground for the problem worldwide.
Hargreaves said: “While the UK hosts less than half a percent of all child sexual abuse material in the world, UK sex predators are helping fuel the worldwide trade in some of the most depraved content on the internet.
“Unprecedented rise in screen time”
As earlier established, children, in particular, are at risk of becoming victims of sexual exploitation over the Internet. During the lockdown, 195 countries closed schools and educational institutions, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Over 1.3 billion learners, who are mostly children, stayed at home more and as a result, are also increasingly online.
During the beginning of the pandemic, UNICEF’s Dr. Howard Taylor, the Executive Director for the Global Partnership to End Violence, explained that “the coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented rise in screen time.”
According to Taylor, “school closures and strict containment measures mean more and more families are relying on technology and digital solutions to keep children learning, entertained and connected to the outside world, but not all children have the necessary knowledge, skills, and resources to keep themselves safe online.”
UNICEF, therefore, warned that this puts more than 1.5 billion children at risk of being recruited by stalkers online.
Economic collapse hits the poorest hardest
We know that in times of crisis, marginalized groups tend to bear the brunt of the consequences. When people face financial difficulties, children are more isolated and less attached to supportive networks than in normal times, and the sale of children for sexual exploitation increases.
Millions of people are in a desperate situation and can only feed their families with great difficulty. In this context, it can be tempting to sell boys and girls online to the wealthy from other parts of the world to survive. In this way, young people and children become commodities in their environment – often even in their own homes.
Girls from extremely poor backgrounds are particularly vulnerable as the effects of the coronavirus are causing economies to collapse. More than 114 million people around the world lost their jobs in 2020 alone as global stock markets plummeted, according to the World Economic Forum. And now, according to Save The Children, after the lockdown, many girls have not been able to return to school, are “forced to drop out of school or denied access to income-generating opportunities.”
Conclusion
The coronavirus pandemic has not only accelerated the business of child sex trafficking to the disadvantage of the poor. But also, perpetrators have had more time and more private freedom, quite quietly.
While the strictest lockdown measures are a thing of the past now and young people are back on school benches, the question remains: can we expect a return to the pre-pandemic normal?
While we can’t predict the future, if nothing is done, the new normal will be the use of social media and different digital tools and apps to communicate, lure, and recruit minors.
However, sexual exploitation of children over the internet, in their homes, or their communities is cruel abuse to humanity. Sextortion, child sex tourism, child trafficking, and non-consensual dissemination of intimate images are all crimes that fall under this menace which has been another sort of pandemic growing in the middle of the COVID pandemic.
Featured photo by Rosivan Morais, Pexels
