Speech About Child Trafficking

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” As late South African president Nelson Mandela once said, children reflect the way society assists them preparing for the future, however, there are cases of children who fall victim to the horrendous tradition of child trafficking. According to Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children , child trafficking is defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation. It is a violation of their rights, their well-being and denies them the opportunity to reach their full potential” by the United Nations Children’s Funds (UNICEF)

Most importantly, cooperation on a regional and international level is required in order to ascertain Southeast Asian countries compliance with existing anti-trafficking legislation and the validity of prosecutions of those complicit in human trafficking. Currently, there are various international initiatives, such as an INTERPOL database on the identifying of victims and extra-terrestrial legislation regarding child sex tourism in 44 countries worldwide , in development or in place, which allows authorities to share information, monitor suspects and extradite and prosecute offenders. For example, the Thai Immigration service has been able to monitor and prevent entry of foreigners with prior offences related to illicit sexual activities on a greater scale by using a Child Sex Offender Registry . Countries such as Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States then offer to notify a country when someone on the registry is travelling to their country. As a result, Thai immigration officers were able to prevent several such offenders from entering the country. Moreover, legal frameworks for the protection of children should be strengthened, because insufficient legal coverage and consistency and problems related to implementation are challenging to overcome. Although projects such as UN-ACT have been able to improve legal cooperation, more action is still necessary to be taken to tackle the issue. Consequently, it is of particular importance that penalties are proportional with the offences and that all forms of child exploitation are criminalised, because former legislation lacked in terms of prosecution and effective deterrence and punishment for offenders. In conclusion, initiatives to collect and analyse data on child trafficking have proven to be beneficial, because they enable government and