Child trafficking – a call for rights-based integrated approaches

Fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, or Libya, more than one million people arrived in Europe in 2015, including children with families, as well as children separated from them. ¹ Several institutions have raised serious concerns about the risks of trafficking for children migrating to Europe. ² These developments have revealed weaknesses not only in the European Union’s asylum regime, but also in child protection systems in the region; ³ while GRETA, the Council of Europe’s anti-trafficking monitoring body, kept reminding governments of their obligations to prevent child trafficking and to protect migrant children from exploitation. ⁴ Nevertheless, also outside the turmoil of conflict, children ⁵ are tricked into, and trapped in, situations of dependency and exploitation: ending up as domestic servants in private households, on cannabis farms, in the hospitality and cleaning business, or in the clothing industry; promising job offers in major cities or abroad turn into prostitution; children are exploited through forced begging in the streets or pressured into criminal activities, such as pick-pocketing or drug dealing; girls are forced into marriage, followed by sexual exploitation.