An aluminium pot factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Reporter#11455/Demotix. All Rights Reserved.
Human trafficking is generally associated with negative connotations: slavery, harsh working conditions, criminal activities, sexual exploitation, and smuggling. These issues become even more worrying and emotive when the people involved are ‘children’. This makes it difficult to have rational discussions about what is actually happening and about the measures that could be taken to ameliorate the situation, if required. My starting point in this piece is that human trafficking—adult or child—is very closely associated with labour migration. Unless we recognise the overlaps between the two, any response may worsen the situation of people considered as ‘trafficked’.
The 1989 UN convention on the rights of the child legally defines childhood as the first eighteen years of life. The 2000 UN protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons especially women and children—from now on, simply ‘the protocol’—confirms that anybody under the age of eighteen is a child. This delineation in turn defines the mobility rights of both groups, as it is thought that only adults can knowingly consent to movement. Indeed, the protocol uses consent to distinguish between migrating and trafficked adults, however it considers children who cross borders for work as trafficked by default. This perception is compounded by the fact that many are compelled to find work in precarious, unregulated and exploitative sectors of the economy.
