By Rebecca Nhep and Kate van Doore

Orphanage trafficking is a type of child trafficking that involves the recruitment and/ or transfer of children to residential care institutions, for a purpose of exploitation and/ or profit. It typically takes place in developing countries where child protection services systems are highly privatised, under-regulated, and primarily funded by overseas sources. In such circumstances, residential care is used prolifically and inappropriately as a response to child vulnerability, including lack of access to education.

THE RISE AND FALL OF FRAUDULENT INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTIONS

The trafficking of children into orphanages in Cambodia was originally associated with fraudulent intercountry adoptions in the late 1990s. Orphanages were a transit destination where trafficked infants would be transferred, harboured and represented as orphans eligible for intercountry adoption. Each child would attract fees of up to USD $20,000 paid by adoptive parents. A number of stakeholders profit from this practice, including adoption agencies, brokers, buyers, child recruiters, officials involved in issuing fraudulent documentation and the directors of the institutions where children were harboured. Evidence of the widespread practice of trafficking of Cambodian children for intercountry adoption came to light in 2001. The industry was largely shut down as countries, most notably the US, closed their borders to adoptions from Cambodia. The primary US adoption agency and adoption broker at the centre of the largest racket were prosecuted in the US under visa fraud and money laundering charges. In Cambodia, human trafficking charges were brought against three orphanage staff involved in the trafficking; however, none progressed to prosecution, with charges in all three cases ‘quietly dropped’.

Since then, the Law on Intercountry Adoption and supporting regulations have been introduced in Cambodia to meet its obligations under the Hague Convention aimed at eradicating fraudulent international adoptions. Specific offences were also included in the 2008 Criminal Code to enable the prosecution of prohibited conduct with respect to the facilitation of adoption. Adoption was also included as a specific purpose for trafficking offences in the Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation 2008 (TSE Law). Intercountry adoption from Cambodia remains largely closed whilst critical child protection and care system reforms are implemented. Such reforms are necessary to ensure intercountry adoption is used as an option of last resort for children for whom all domestic possibilities have been genuinely explored and exhausted.

Brisbane: Law Futures Centre, Griffith University , 2021. 67p.

By Mouhamadou Kane and Mamadou Abdoul Wane

Taking children from Guinea-Bissau to Senegal and forcing them to beg on the streets has become the most visible form of human trafficking in both countries. Many Quranic teachers and intermediaries prey on vulnerable families in Guinea-Bissau. Offering religious instruction in Senegal, they take advantage of families’ ignorance of the fate awaiting their children once they are handed over. This criminal activity enables the teachers, who collect the money given to children as alms, to dispose of a large amount of illicit capital which they inject with impunity into important sectors of the economy such as real estate, trade and transport. Key findings • Deep poverty, religious fervour and ambition for their children drive many rural parents in Guinea-Bissau to place them in the care of Quranic teachers, or marabouts, based in Senegal. • Once trafficked to Senegal, the children are not taught the Quran, as promised. Instead, they are forced to beg for alms and to hand the takings over to the marabouts. • Although officials in both Senegal and Guinea-Bissau deplore the system, a combination of respect and fear of the marabouts’ power forestalls action. • It is left to non-governmental organisations to rescue the children and return them to POLICY BRIEF their families.

ENACT - Africa, 2021. 12p.

By International Organization for Migration and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.

Despite efforts, large numbers of children continue to fall victim to traffickers worldwide, due to inequitable social, economic, environmental and political factors that engender exploitative and discriminatory practices. A critical component of countering trafficking is reliable and up-to-date data, to empirically ground interventions, though actionable data are limited, and child victims are typically hard to reach. This report, based on analysis of extensive, globally sourced data, is the first of its kind and analyses primary data from more than 69,000 victims of trafficking of 156 nationalities, trafficked in 186 countries, who registered with IOM in its 113 countries of operation, using the IOM Victims of Trafficking Database (VoTD) - the largest available international database of individual victims of trafficking.

International Organization for Migration and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. 2023. 88p.

By Rebecca Nhep, Kate van Doore

  Orphanage trafficking refers to the process of children being transferred or recruited into orphanages for the purpose of exploitation and profit. Whilst much work is being done on strengthening child protection systems and deinstitutionalisation, orphanage trafficking as a driver of institutionalisation remains under researched despite being an issue that heavily impacts upon the ongoing institutionalisation of children. In some countries, an ‘orphanage industry’ has even emerged due to the high levels of tourist, volunteer and foreign donor interest in assisting orphaned children. As the first project of its kind in the world, this study assesses the legal, policy and procedural frameworks in both domestic and international law across Nepal, Uganda and Cambodia, where orphanage trafficking continues to undermine domestic efforts to stem the overuse of institutionalisation of children.

Brisbane: Griffith University, 2021. 66p.

By Elina Kervinen, Natalia Ollus

  HEUNI and the Assistance system for victims of human trafficking have analysed whether trafficking of children occurs in Finland and what forms of human trafficking may exist in Finland. In addition to trafficking in human beings, the report examines exploitation related to or indicative of the same, as well as risk and vulnerability factors that create conditions for such exploitation. In addition to minors, the report included young people 18–21 years of age, as many adolescents have been exploited as minors but have either only received assistance as an adult or have been victimised after reaching adult age. The report covers exploitation of children and young persons who are members of the majority population or have a foreign background, including children and young persons who are asylum seekers. The report includes both the cases of exploitation that took place in Finland and those that were identified in Finland. This means that the actual exploitation may have occurred in Finland, in a child’s home country or country of origin, or en route to Finland. The report answers the following research questions: 1) Which forms of trafficking of children exists in Finland, 2) What kinds of cases have been reported to authorities, organisations and other actors, 3) How these parties have acted in the cases reported to them, and 4) How trafficking in children can be identified and prevented in Finland. The focus of the report is on understanding and describing the nature of the phenomenon on the basis of individual case examples. The report utilises both quantitative and qualitative information obtained from an online survey directed at professionals and interviews with experts. We have also used statistics of the Assistance system for victims of human trafficking on child victims of human trafficking and case descriptions of the forms of human trafficking experienced by children. Between 2006 and 2018, the Assistance system for victims of human trafficking assisted 55 children under 18 years of age and 141 young persons (aged 18 to 21). These figures show how many children and young persons have been guided into the assistance system, but they do not describe the extent of the phenomenon in Finland, as many cases remain unidentified as human trafficking. On the basis of this report, it appears that the exploitation of children and young people is not always seen through the framework of trafficking in human beings: rather, it is understood as some other form of exploitation. According to the assessment by experts, as obtained from interviews and the survey results, exploitation that took place in Finland was most commonly sexual exploitation, such as forced prostitution, commercial sexual exploitation of a child or sexual exploitation that occurs or begins via the Internet. The report also reveals cases of forced marriage and forced criminal activity in Finland. Sexual exploitation and forced marriages are the most common forms of exploitation experienced by children and young people in their home country or country of origin. En route to Finland, children and young people have experienced many forms of sexual exploitation and labour exploitation. According to this report, sexual exploitation appears to be the most  identifiable form of exploitation related to human trafficking.

Helsinki: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United NationsHEUNI, 2019. 115p.

By Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings.

Following the recommendations of the 17th Alliance against Trafficking in Persons Conference, this publication analyzes how the protection of child victims of trafficking should be addressed within broader child protection frameworks. In particular, it focuses on how state-run child protection agencies should make and implement decisions about comprehensive, secure and sustainable solutions in the best interests of a trafficked child.

Vienna: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2018. 80p.

By Wendy S. Hesfor.

Violent Exceptions turns to the humanitarian figure of the child-in-peril in twenty-first-century political discourse to better understand how this figure is appropriated by political constituencies for purposes rarely to do with the needs of children at risk. Wendy S. Hesford shows how the figure of the child-in-peril is predicated on racial division, which, she argues, is central to both conservative and liberal logics, especially at times of crisis when politicians leverage humanitarian storytelling as a political weapon. Through iconic images and stories of child migrants, child refugees, undocumented children, child soldiers, and children who are victims of war, terrorism, and state violence, Violent Exceptions illustrates how humanitarian rhetoric turns public attention away from systemic violations against children’s human rights and reframes this violence as exceptional—erasing more gradual forms of violence and minimizing human rights potential to counteract these violations and the precarious conditions from which they arise.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2021. 282p.