Writes Dionysus, Content Writer, Headline Diplomat eMagazine, LUDCI.eu
The nature of child trafficking is such that young girls and boys are tragically exploited, mostly for sex and forced labor. These children are often sold for money or traded for some valuables by their relatives, and in some other cases, ensnared by deceitful promises of a better life in another country or places. From Rohingya children being stolen and trafficked in Bangladeshi refugee camps and the use of child slaves in Ghana to children trafficked within Europe and other parts of the western world, there is always horrifying news about child trafficking.
The statistics on child trafficking
According to the International Labor Office, child trafficking affects about 1.2 million children at any given time. Although both girls and boys are being trafficked, girls are mostly targeted. Girls are two times more likely to be targeted than boys. Every year, millions of children around the world are sold for sexual exploitation, slavery, and labor, such as mining, agricultural work, domestic servitude, and in some cases, forced to fight in conflicts. And, these children often live without enough food, clothing, and shelter.
The key elements of trafficking
Trafficking, according to the United Nations, involves three main elements:
- The Act: Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons.
- The Means: Threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, or giving payments or benefits to a person in control of the victim.
- The Purpose: For exploitation, which includes exploiting the prostitution of others, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, and similar practices and the removal of organs.
How COVID-19 has affected child trafficking
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, which the WHO later declared a pandemic, children have had to depend on different online and e-learning platforms for learning, socializing, and communicating because the schools were closed and total lockdown and social distancing enforced by governments around the world. While everyone was forced to stay at home and could only communicate online, child traffickers continued with their nefarious trade online, targeting vulnerable children. According to the European Commission, during the lockdown there has been a 30% increase in demand for child pornography in some EU member states.
Tele-education and online trafficking
Although e-learning has provided an alternative approach to learning and academic work during this coronavirus crisis, it has also come with the dangerous likelihood of children being targeted and exploited online. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has raised concerns about the increased risks children are exposed to online learning.
Traffickers now use the internet to perpetrate their heinous crime by targeting unsuspecting and vulnerable children using various ways, including online forging relationships or offering foods and gifts. These criminals scout, manipulate, and trap their victims online before eventually meeting them in person. Traffickers and their enablers can be anyone – a relative, employer, classmate, online friend, acquaintance, and so on. This calls for everyone to be vigilant – individuals, parents, schools, and government agencies. Unfortunately, some of the teachers who spend a good time with these children online could, themselves, be enablers of child trafficking who pass information to traffickers.
Traffickers often look for children online who appear vulnerable, emotionally isolated from family and friends, timid, or depressed, as well as those who appear to have unsupervised time online. On the other hand, some children engage in dangerous behaviors online making them vulnerable to being targeted by traffickers. Behaviors, such as visiting X-rated sites, talking about sex with strangers, posting and sending personal information online and to strangers, and interacting with strangers online, expose these children and make them more easily targeted by traffickers.
Tele-education in the fight against child trafficking
However, tele-education is not only useful for children’s academic learning during this pandemic but can also present an easy way to educate children about the activities of traffickers. Tele-education can be a vital tool in the fight against child trafficking. Children could be provided with tools that are safe for online learning, which also educate them about the activities, the tactics, and dangers of child trafficking.
There must be a collective effort by parents, schools, teachers, big tech companies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, religious leaders, and other stakeholders to achieve this. As parents, communication is very vital in protecting the child from online exploitation. A child’s time on the internet should be supervised, while the child must be well-instructed on what risky behaviors are unacceptable online. Spell out what a risky relationship is and also discuss the dangers of chat rooms. It is also a good practice to use surveillance software. Pay attention to what your child is doing online and ask non-threatening questions. Assure your child to talk to you openly, and do not over-react if they are indeed talking to strangers online.
Schools need to upgrade their security methods in line with the new e-learning realities. Also, schools should teach and supervise good online behaviors while also making available school-based counseling services. Teachers must also be provided with the right tools and support to teach online.
Products and services from Information Technology and Social Media platforms must have improved safety features that are accessible to educators, parents, and children. IT and Social Media companies should promote and aid child safety referral services and helplines, and they should also have algorithms that survey and detect child exploitation patterns on their platforms. These companies should develop standard moderation policies in line with children’s rights while applying built-in protection measures.
The role the government should play in this fight cannot be overemphasized. It is their job to create awareness of online child safety and strengthen vital services to protect the child. The government needs to train education and social service workers on the impacts of COVID-19 on children’s education to tackle the increased risks children face online.
Conclusion:
The targeting and exploitation of children online is a major problem, especially with the mass-adoption of tele-education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic that forced children to learn online also forced child traffickers to ply their trade online, leaving our children exposed to manipulation and exploitation as they try to learn online. However, the same technology used to facilitate trafficking can also be used to fight it if all of us, including the schools, tech companies, and governments, do our bit.
The battle is now! Contribute your time, money, talent, or resources in the fight against child trafficking now to ensure a safe place for our children!
