Int’l groups say child migrants’ rights ignored worldwide
KIMBERLY JANE TAN, GMANews.TVMANILA, Philippines - International groups on Thursday said many advocate the rights of migrants, but only few remember that migrant children need to be protected too.
Representatives from the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), Save the Children UK (SCUK), Asia Against Child Trafficking (Asia ACTs), Apne Aap Women Worldwide, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Philippines, were one in saying that the rights of child migrants should be given more attention.
“Normally they (child migrants) are invisible and are not included in the existing protection mechanism provided," said Wannachan Chaimontree of SCUK during the International Conference on Gender and Migration at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza in Manila.
Children take part in international migration by having parents in transnational marriages, as refugees, asylum seekers, or work migrants. Sometimes children migrate with parents or with other relatives.
However, there are a growing number of undocumented migrants, including children who are born by parents without residence visas.
“Migrant children are usually excluded and seen as out of place," Chaimontree said.
The child rights advocate said these children may be identified based on their activities, work, or problems, such as: street children, working children, child domestic workers, trafficked children and children in conflict with the law.
“But these terms are insufficient in describing different migration situations of a child who may find himself or herself in more than one situation," said Chaimontree.
According to her presentation during a parallel session, these children become vulnerable to abuse because they are undocumented. They become discriminated upon, criminalized, and excluded from protection systems.
“Sometimes they are criminalized by just being migrants, we found in many areas that the police just arrested undocumented children on the street and put them in jail before deportation," she said.
Moreover, she said children who migrate on their own without papers, are born at transit and destination areas and those who are in conflict with the law are also vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
Ruchira Gupta of Apne Aap Women Worldwide said that undocumented child migrants are in danger of being kidnapped, robbed, abandoned, sexually abused, exploited, and trafficked.
Child trafficking
According to UNICEF’s “State of the World’s Children (SOWC) 2006: Excluded and Invisible," child trafficking takes many forms.
They may be forcibly abducted, tricked or seduced by the promise of earning a lot of money, not suspecting the kind of exploitation that they are bound to suffer.
They may also be transported to a place where they do not speak the local language, making it more difficult for them to escape. Without the legal documents, they wouldn’t have the access to the rights of a certified citizen.
Moreover, Unicef said obtaining specific facts or statistics about child trafficking is “notoriously difficult."
“Trafficked children are also almost invisible to the eye of the statistician," said the report.
Even without a reliable worldwide statistics compiled, the international organization estimated that about 1.2 million children are trafficked or are affected by trafficking each year.
A peek into the reality
Unicef’s report, “SOWC 2007: Women and Children, The Double Dividend of Gender Equality," said an estimated 1.8 million children across the globe are currently involved in commercial sex work.
The report said 12 percent of Filipino children between 5-14 years old are already involved in some kind of economic activity.
“As a result of adherence to traditional gender roles, many girls are denied their right to an education or may suffer the triple burden of housework, schoolwork and work outside the home, paid or unpaid," it said.
Majority of the trafficked Filipino children are female because of the high demand for housekeeping and services work, not to mention sexual exploitation, said the report.
It also said statistics of Filipino children being sexually abused, exploited and trafficked are very difficult to monitor so it calls for a more extensive study of the matter.
However, such a phenomenon is not exclusive to the Philippines.
SOWC 2006 said an estimated 8.4 million children work under horrific circumstances all over the world. Some are forced into debt bondage, slavery, prostitution, pornography or into armed conflict.
According to the same Unicef report, though the trafficking of children is “a shadowy practice with neither particular rules nor predictable sequences," some dominant regional patterns are still identifiable.
In West and Central Africa, SOWC 2006 said the most common form of trafficking is actually an “extension of a traditional practice."
Children are put in marginal positions within other families, effectively exploiting child labor. They are made to work in plantations and mines, even in conflict-stricken countries.
Meanwhile, child trafficking in East Asia and the Pacific is largely driven by poverty pushing children into prostitution, though some are also recruited for industrial and agricultural work.
The study said some are also recruited for domestic work and as mail-order brides.
Trafficking, on the other hand, is a big part of the child labor program in South Asia. More often than not, a child becomes the ‘payment’ for debts he or she incurs while with an abusive employer.
Additionally, a great number of children are trafficked for prostitution, work in carpet and garment factories, construction projects and begging.
Reflecting the demand for cheap labor and the trend of child prostitution in richer countries, children are trafficked from east to west in Europe.
Organized criminal gangs also exploit the open borders to force children into unskilled labor, entertainment and prostitution.
In the Americas and the Caribbean, child trafficking is driven by tourism, with the focus on coastal resorts, feeding the demand for abusive labor and prostitution.
The children who are trafficked into one form of labor to another are often made to work in carpet factories or hotels in the city, but are then trafficked into the sex industry in India.
The Challenge
The organizations said they were aware of the existing international and local laws supposedly protecting the rights of children, but they all deemed these not to be enough.
Amihan Abueva, regional director of Asia ACTs, said guidelines for the protection of children should be tied up with child protection networks and referral systems.
“Guidelines will just be another set of standards unless we come to really disseminate and train the service providers of being able to provide services the highest quality possible," she said.
Moreover, she said drafting policies is one thing, implementing these is another.
Abueva also urged people to work with the various departments of the governments to come up with the unified system of data collection especially in the issue of child protection.
Unicef’s Cristian Munduate seconded this by saying the challenge is to commit others to work with children and adolescents.
“We must include, promote, advocate and mobilize organizations to include children in their agenda because they are clearly being affected by migration," she said.
“We must continue to tap faith-based organizations, media and community leaders to help educate children and families on the dangers and negative effects of illegal immigration through the public information campaign on the issue," said DSWD Assistant Secretary Parisya Taradji.
Munduate also said children and adolescents should not anymore be “invisible" and be included in the recommendation to be drafted after the conference.
“We need to make sure victims are not re-victimized," said Taradji.
Meanwhile, Chaimontree said a child protection system will help such an initiative.
This system is an organized structure composed of responsible government agencies and groups of adults and children with a legal mandate to ensure the protection of all children from exploitation, abuse and neglect.
“Children should not be working. Children should be at school. Children should be taken cared of by their family and their community," she said.- GMANews.TV
Representatives from the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), Save the Children UK (SCUK), Asia Against Child Trafficking (Asia ACTs), Apne Aap Women Worldwide, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Philippines, were one in saying that the rights of child migrants should be given more attention.
“Normally they (child migrants) are invisible and are not included in the existing protection mechanism provided," said Wannachan Chaimontree of SCUK during the International Conference on Gender and Migration at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza in Manila.
Children take part in international migration by having parents in transnational marriages, as refugees, asylum seekers, or work migrants. Sometimes children migrate with parents or with other relatives.
However, there are a growing number of undocumented migrants, including children who are born by parents without residence visas.
“Migrant children are usually excluded and seen as out of place," Chaimontree said.
The child rights advocate said these children may be identified based on their activities, work, or problems, such as: street children, working children, child domestic workers, trafficked children and children in conflict with the law.
“But these terms are insufficient in describing different migration situations of a child who may find himself or herself in more than one situation," said Chaimontree.
According to her presentation during a parallel session, these children become vulnerable to abuse because they are undocumented. They become discriminated upon, criminalized, and excluded from protection systems.
“Sometimes they are criminalized by just being migrants, we found in many areas that the police just arrested undocumented children on the street and put them in jail before deportation," she said.
Moreover, she said children who migrate on their own without papers, are born at transit and destination areas and those who are in conflict with the law are also vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
Ruchira Gupta of Apne Aap Women Worldwide said that undocumented child migrants are in danger of being kidnapped, robbed, abandoned, sexually abused, exploited, and trafficked.
Child trafficking
According to UNICEF’s “State of the World’s Children (SOWC) 2006: Excluded and Invisible," child trafficking takes many forms.
They may be forcibly abducted, tricked or seduced by the promise of earning a lot of money, not suspecting the kind of exploitation that they are bound to suffer.
They may also be transported to a place where they do not speak the local language, making it more difficult for them to escape. Without the legal documents, they wouldn’t have the access to the rights of a certified citizen.
Moreover, Unicef said obtaining specific facts or statistics about child trafficking is “notoriously difficult."
“Trafficked children are also almost invisible to the eye of the statistician," said the report.
Even without a reliable worldwide statistics compiled, the international organization estimated that about 1.2 million children are trafficked or are affected by trafficking each year.
A peek into the reality
Unicef’s report, “SOWC 2007: Women and Children, The Double Dividend of Gender Equality," said an estimated 1.8 million children across the globe are currently involved in commercial sex work.
The report said 12 percent of Filipino children between 5-14 years old are already involved in some kind of economic activity.
“As a result of adherence to traditional gender roles, many girls are denied their right to an education or may suffer the triple burden of housework, schoolwork and work outside the home, paid or unpaid," it said.
Majority of the trafficked Filipino children are female because of the high demand for housekeeping and services work, not to mention sexual exploitation, said the report.
It also said statistics of Filipino children being sexually abused, exploited and trafficked are very difficult to monitor so it calls for a more extensive study of the matter.
However, such a phenomenon is not exclusive to the Philippines.
SOWC 2006 said an estimated 8.4 million children work under horrific circumstances all over the world. Some are forced into debt bondage, slavery, prostitution, pornography or into armed conflict.
According to the same Unicef report, though the trafficking of children is “a shadowy practice with neither particular rules nor predictable sequences," some dominant regional patterns are still identifiable.
In West and Central Africa, SOWC 2006 said the most common form of trafficking is actually an “extension of a traditional practice."
Children are put in marginal positions within other families, effectively exploiting child labor. They are made to work in plantations and mines, even in conflict-stricken countries.
Meanwhile, child trafficking in East Asia and the Pacific is largely driven by poverty pushing children into prostitution, though some are also recruited for industrial and agricultural work.
The study said some are also recruited for domestic work and as mail-order brides.
Trafficking, on the other hand, is a big part of the child labor program in South Asia. More often than not, a child becomes the ‘payment’ for debts he or she incurs while with an abusive employer.
Additionally, a great number of children are trafficked for prostitution, work in carpet and garment factories, construction projects and begging.
Reflecting the demand for cheap labor and the trend of child prostitution in richer countries, children are trafficked from east to west in Europe.
Organized criminal gangs also exploit the open borders to force children into unskilled labor, entertainment and prostitution.
In the Americas and the Caribbean, child trafficking is driven by tourism, with the focus on coastal resorts, feeding the demand for abusive labor and prostitution.
The children who are trafficked into one form of labor to another are often made to work in carpet factories or hotels in the city, but are then trafficked into the sex industry in India.
The Challenge
The organizations said they were aware of the existing international and local laws supposedly protecting the rights of children, but they all deemed these not to be enough.
Amihan Abueva, regional director of Asia ACTs, said guidelines for the protection of children should be tied up with child protection networks and referral systems.
“Guidelines will just be another set of standards unless we come to really disseminate and train the service providers of being able to provide services the highest quality possible," she said.
Moreover, she said drafting policies is one thing, implementing these is another.
Abueva also urged people to work with the various departments of the governments to come up with the unified system of data collection especially in the issue of child protection.
Unicef’s Cristian Munduate seconded this by saying the challenge is to commit others to work with children and adolescents.
“We must include, promote, advocate and mobilize organizations to include children in their agenda because they are clearly being affected by migration," she said.
“We must continue to tap faith-based organizations, media and community leaders to help educate children and families on the dangers and negative effects of illegal immigration through the public information campaign on the issue," said DSWD Assistant Secretary Parisya Taradji.
Munduate also said children and adolescents should not anymore be “invisible" and be included in the recommendation to be drafted after the conference.
“We need to make sure victims are not re-victimized," said Taradji.
Meanwhile, Chaimontree said a child protection system will help such an initiative.
This system is an organized structure composed of responsible government agencies and groups of adults and children with a legal mandate to ensure the protection of all children from exploitation, abuse and neglect.
“Children should not be working. Children should be at school. Children should be taken cared of by their family and their community," she said.- GMANews.TV
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