CHILD TRAFFICKING
One of the most pressing issues of concern that is currently disturbing our contemporary globalize world, is the issue of child trafficking. Perhaps, In a study conducted by the United Nation’s Children Emergency Funds (UNICEF), it argued that about one million and three hundred thousand children are being trafficked annually, also in a separate survey conducted by the united state’s department in 2004, found out that an estimated six hundred to eight hundred thousand children are being trafficked yearly.
Further more, the first internationally agreed upon definition of child trafficking is embodied in united nation’s protocol to prevent, suppress, and furnish trafficking in persons, especially children, supplementing the UN convention against transnational organized crime (2000), as follows:
The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by of the threat or use of force or other means of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payment or benefits top achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. The exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slave, servitude or the removal of organs.
In a different conception, though with the same meaning, child trafficking refers to any act or transaction where by a child is transferred by any person or group of persons to another for remuneration or any other consideration. This refers to the process that puts children in a situation of commercial exploitation as its practicable now in most countries of the world especially African countries. There are different of child trafficking which include child labor, child slavery, child prostitution and pornography, children used in armed conflict, children used for crime and also domestic child servant.
More over, if we take children in armed conflict for example, we will come to understand that it means the involvement of children as combatants or supporting workers in armed conflict, whether by government forces or rebel forces, whether recruited forcibly or voluntarily. Article 3(a) of the international labor convention 182 includes specifically the case of “forced or compulsory recruitment of children for used in armed conflict,” and Article 3(d) which covers “work which, by its nature or circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children” would include the broader case of children used in armed conflict, as such work can universally be seen as likely to harm the safety of the children. This is reinforced by article one of the optional protocol to the convention on the rights of the child on involvement of children in armed conflict, which requires states to take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained eighteen years of age do not take a direct part in hostilities.
Besides, children who have voluntarily joined government forces that are presently involved in hostilities may not strictly be considered part of this category, but information about them has been included to give a broad picture of the situation.
In Nigeria for example, in 2003, the government passed the child rights Acts which comprehensibly deals with child trafficking. Mean while, it also ratified the UN protocol to prevent, suppress and furnish trafficking persons, especially women and children in 2001, and passed a national law on trafficking in 2003 entitled “Trafficking in persons (prohibition) law enforcement and administration Act 2003.” Though Nigeria is one of the countries in the world that passed such law on trafficking, more still needed to be done in terms of its enforcement because available are showing that hundreds of thousands of children are being trafficked yearly, with an estimation of one million, eight hundred thousand of them are vulnerable to trafficking, out of which 80% of them are girls below the age of eighteen years.
As a matter of urgency, all hands must be on deck for us to reverse the trend. However, we must acknowledge the efforts of international donor agencies and international non governmental organizations, and also our own domestic non governmental organizations, in their attempt towards reversing the menace of child trafficking. Governments the world over and most particularly Nigerian government, should as a matter of urgency deploy more resources, commitment and political will that adequately help in ending child trafficking. One key important thing that we have to understand is that, any society that failed to place the issues of children as their priority, that society will have no future at all.
LONG LIVE WORLD CHILDREN!!!
Ibrahim Mohammed Ma'aji
