CHILD TRAFFICKING

  The Convention of the Rights of the Child and the Protocol of the Palermo  define as child  any person under the 18 years of age.   ILO and UNICEF   estimate that 1.2 million of children being trafficked every year while  the biggest percentage of children labor is placed in Africa, Central Asia and South America.   Children   belong to the most vulnerable groups for sexual exploitation and forced cheap labor.  Children from Eastern Europe, Africa and Middle East are being trafficked in order to work as domestic servants or in sweatshops, even as drug runners, while others  are forced into prostitution.. Trafficking of children also contains different ways of exploitation as   removal of organs and  recruitment as child soldiers. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29907&Cr=trafficking&Cr1=

 According to the website of Human Rights Watch in  July 2007:  “In over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war. It is estimated that  200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as soldiers for both rebel groups and government forces in current armed conflicts". According to the United Nations in Somalia there is a dominant trend of recruitment of young children by the armed groups. Recruitment of children it is also reported in Middle East were the boys are used as bombers and martyrs or being trained to use weapons by the Taliban’s and by the Palestinian militant group.  http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36698&Cr=Somali&Cr1

  Another important aspect of child trafficking is illegal adoptions. A distinctive example is that of children in Haiti.  Haitian children who lost their parents in the devastating earthquake in 2010 were being rescued and placed for adoption or sold to people who had no legal rights to the children. Many of the children are believed to have been sold for the purpose of organ trafficking and other exploitative purposes. During that time 10 American missionaries from a Baptist Church were arrested on the borders while they tried to smuggle 30 young children from Haiti into the Dominican Republic  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8491981.stm).

  On the other hand globalization encourages the tourism for organ transplantation. The black market trade of human organs is sustained by wealthy individuals, sometimes on long waiting lists for transplants, traveling to foreign countries for the procedure .Organized crime has  children in its sights, because a large number of children also require donated organs and children’s organs can also be transplanted into adults.  In 2007 it was produced a Russian film, “YARIK”, focusing on the merging problem of children abduction for organ transplantation in Russia (see the trailer)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umCWHWjJO6g