It's estimated that one third of the world's human trafficking takes place in Asia. 30 percent of the victims are children. They often wind up working in sweatshops or in Southeast Asia's flourishing sex industry. Most of the children are nine years old or older, but there are much younger children who end up in street-begging gangs.
Agencies are reluctant to provide any concrete figures on the number of children being trafficked in Southeast Asia, though according to some estimates, over 60,000 children have been trafficked. But it's impossible to give precise figures, says Allan Dow, the communications officer for the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) project to combat the trafficking of children and women in Southeast Asia. "We don't know from country to country how many people are trafficked. But we do see through anecdotal evidence and other qualitative studies that we've carried out that the problem is growing. For example, we're seeing more and more people being caught in police raids." Sex industryAgencies dealing with the issue of child trafficking believe many of the girls and young women who are trafficked wind up in the sex industry. Poverty is one of the main factors behind child trafficking, says Alessia Altamura of ECPAT, an organisation fighting to end child prostitution, child pornography and the trafficking of children for sexual purposes, but it's not the only one. "We know of cases of children who were sold by their parents to buy a television set, for example. But nowadays, more and more children are aware that they will work in the sex industry. They see it as a way to get a mobile phone, a television or even a house." Many of the trafficking victims are simply seeking a better life, inspired by television soap operas. "If you come from a small village and your family is poor," says Allan Dow, "and you see these soap operas every night of people who are very wealthy, driving around in Mercedes Benzes and living in big beautiful villas in the capital, that's going to have an impact on you. You're going to want a piece of that action. We can't say that that is the driving force, but it's certainly a driving force."
Another factor, believes Alessia Altamura, is the low position of women in Asian society. "If families have to choose between sending their daughter or their son to school," she says, "they will prefer to keep the girl at home."
Traffickers
Criminal networks are responsible for some of
the child trafficking. According to Alessia Altamura (photo) of
ECPAT, "Organised crime is behind the trafficking of
countries far from the region, such as New Zealand, Australia, Japan and the
United States. In Southeast Asia, though, much of the trafficking is done by
small-scale organised crime networks."
But often the trafficker is a lone individual. The stereotypical image of a trafficker is a man who drives around the border area with a cigarette in his mouth and dark sunglasses. But the reality is quite different, says Allan Dow. "The person who's the recruiter is often a well-dressed woman who will approach a group of girls or a single girl on her own and befriend her and tell her, 'oh, you're looking for work. What a coincidence because I have a friend who runs a restaurant and he's looking for somebody to wash dishes. It actually pays pretty well and he's a nice guy. Do you want me to introduce you?' Now of course what happens is she takes the girl to an employer who then pays her a commission, and the girl ends up in sexual or labour exploitative situations."
Sweatshops
The trafficking
of children to supply the sex industry gets a lo t of media attention, but
agencies believe that most trafficking victims end up in sweatshops. "They're
looking for work," says the ILO's Allan Dow, "and during the migration, they're
approached by somebody who's offering them a job. And of course the job turns
out to be a fictitious job and they end up in illegal factories or sweatshops,
making jeans or T-shirts. They're locked up 8 or 9 hours a day and then they're
being worked 12 to 15 hours a day."
Often, the children receive little or no pay for their labour. The children are rented out by their parents to traffickers for six months to a year, and neither the child nor the family receives any money, says Lance Bonneau (photo) of the International Organisation for Migration. "The children work in a situation where they don't even realise that they're being exploited. They believe that payments are taking place, and what we find out is that often times, there's no payment at all. When the children are rescued by police or immigration services or non-governmental organisations and taken from that situation, they often have a difficult time realising that all the work they've been doing is for naught. It's actually one of the challenges we face when we try to work on reintegrating children with families, because often these children feel that they've somehow failed."
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Ma Su Ka (14) was one of the thousands of Cambodian children who wound up in the Thai capital, Bangkok. She was born and raised in Poipet, a town near the border with Thailand. "When I was five years old, my mother sold me to another woman. I had to wash clothes and cook. When I turned 10, the woman sold me to a Vietnamese lady who took me to Bangkok. I had to sell candies and snacks there. If I didn't earn any money, she would beat me. I never got a chance to go to school." ""One day when I was working on the streets, the Thai police saw me and arrested me. They sent me to jail for one or two months. Then a Thai policeman who spoke Khmer talked to me, and I was sent to a home for children in Poipet. But after a few months, I decided to escape and I lived for a while on the streets of Poipet. Then the woman who first bought me saw me. She sold me again, and I had to go back to Bangkok. The police arrested me again and I was sent back to this home." "I still don't understand why my mother sold me. When the woman told me what had happened, I felt sad and I cried, but I would like to find my mother." "Now I'm hoping to get an education, and when I'm older I'd like to teach people how to dance." |
Returning home
The International Organisation for
Migration and many non-governmental groups run programmes to get the child
trafficking victims back to their families in their home country.
The IOM
works very closely with government agencies to ensure that the children receive
the proper protection and care. "They would be referred to a shelter," says
Lance Bonneau, "where they would be provided with accommodation, food, a basic
health assessment, psycho-social support and counselling. Family tracing is done
to make sure that families somehow weren't complicit either knowingly or
unknowingly to the trafficking situation and that they understand the
circumstances so that they can receive the children back."
Unfortunately, says Alessia Altamura of ECPAT, once the children return home, they disappear from the radar screen of non-governmental organisations. "The problem," she says, "is that most of the time, we don't know what happens afterwards with these children. We simply don't have the funds to follow children up after they have been repatriated."
Stopping child trafficking
Child trafficking
is so widespread and pervasive in south-east Asia that it's virtually impossible
to stamp out the practice. Several countries in the region have tightened their
legislation to punish traffickers, but law enforcement is weak, says Alessia
Altamura: "So even though there are good laws, they
are not implemented because of corruption or other factors."
Organisations are also trying to educate people in the Mekong sub-region. The
ILO, for example, is talking to national and local politicians about reducing
trafficking. In addition, it runs income-generating projects to give teenagers
and adults reasons to stay home. "We also do it person-to-person and in small
groups in villages themselves," says Allan Dow.
"We develop information kits for people who are thinking about migrating to let them know what they should be aware of. If we can get directly into the mind of a migrant or a young person before they go, and explain to them some of the dangers and risks that they are facing, that might just be one more person that we prevented being trafficked."