The trafficking of children for purposes of sexual exploitation

Chapter 2
Conceptual and methodological issues
"Sexual exploitation goes hand in hand with other forms of exploitation, and cannot be divorced from the economic
exploitation of children in general, or the exploitation of female sexuality. It is therefore important to remember that the
sexual exploitation of children is a double, or even triple, abuse, involving the misuse of economic power, age relations
and sexual oppression." 14
1. Introduction
This research report's focus is on the trafficking of children for purposes of sexual exploitation. The
focus on this subject area was motivated by the following concerns:
• a significant increase in the incidence of the sexual exploitation of children for commercial
purposes in South Africa
• children increasingly being forced into prostitution
• several reports of the cross-border trafficking of children for the purpose of sexual exploitation,
and
• that attempts to campaign around this issue should be informed by empirical findings.
The trafficking of children for the purpose of sexual exploitation is regarded as those activities
which facilitate access to a child by an adult in exchange for money through a third party or parties
where all or most of the money goes to the third party and not the child.
Trafficking includes:
• the exchange of the child in marriage for money
• the abduction of a child by a person known or unknown to the child for the sole purpose of
sexually exploiting the child or for the dual purpose of sexually exploiting the child and using
the child as domestic labour
• the exchange of money between a trafficker and an authority figure in the child's life, for the
child to be used by the trafficker as a child prostitute.
• central to these activities is the transportation of a child from the community in which the child
lives.
2. Limitations of the Research
The research process was characterised by two main limitations. First, despite numerous efforts, we
were unsuccessful in obtaining information regarding the in-country trafficking of boy children.
While this partly relates to the low incidence of this phenomenon, it is further clearly clouded with
silence. Secondly, the research was conducted over a relatively short period due to the urgent need
to tackle issues around in-country and cross-border trafficking. As a consequence, we were not
always able to pursue all leads vigorously.
A third limitation that partly relates to the second is that of the scarcity of first hand accounts of all
identified forms of the trafficking of children for purposes of the sexual exploitation. This
particularly impacted on data collection with regard to the cross-border trafficking of children. This
data collection was also hampered by the lack of prohibitive laws against the practice. This has the
effect that police departments arrest children and then have them repatriated through the department
of Home Affairs. We were unable to establish the numbers of children who have been abused in this
way and subsequently repatriated. To present some indication of the nature of the practice, use has
been made of interviews with police officers and accounts provided by investigative journalists, in
the print media and specifically newspapers.
14 Anti-Slavery Society, submission to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Working Group on Slavery,
1984
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