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Billion-dollar Child Trafficking Industry Remains Global Problem
UNICEF reports that some 1.2 million children are trafficked each year in a thriving $10-billion business. These children are bought and sold for the sex industry and other exploitative work situations. The international trade in children is not limited to girls. For example, thousands of boys as young as five are trafficked from South Asia to the United Arab Emirates each year to work as camel jockeys. According to the report, South East Asia accounts for one-third of the domestic and international trade in women and children. Child prostitution in Thailand has increased by 20 percent over the past three years. In China, some 250,000 women and children are victims of trafficking each year.
“We think of children as our future,” says Joe Mettimano, World Vision’s child protection policy advisor. “But exploitation abuses and squanders the future, tearing apart not only these children’s individual lives, but also the fabric of their countries and cultures.”
Among its many child-protection programs, World Vision provides rehabilitation and counseling to children exploited as child soldiers in Africa as well as teaching children in Sri Lanka and the Philippines about their human rights.
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