FINAL REPORT - Save the Children Italia Onlus

IPARTFINAL REPORTDevelopment of a Child Rights Methodology to Identify and Support Child Victims of TraffickingSome of the girls are sexually exploited and detained illegally in the country before beingtrafficked, entering a local (internal) trafficking network, and they are either sexuallyexploited in the streets, in apartments or clients’ houses or kidnapped and included inexternal trafficking networks.“From our experience with the cases we have seen so far (both in the case of childrenand adults) they said that, before being exploited somewhere else, they had been sexuallyexploited and kept closed in apartments at Iafli where they had clients.”C.L., Social Alternatives Association, IaşiMany are the locations where children are approached and also sold, these including thestreet, pubs, discos and nightclubs (sometimes isolated, only known by a few people) butalso schools and other institutional environments. Other places where children are soldare hotels, lorry parking, ringroads or outskirts of cities, and family houses.Trafficked children are systematically subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman and degradingtreatment, including rape and degrading sexual acts, physical beatings and also the use ofpsychological threats. In some circumstances, the victim’s inherent right to life is violated.“I was with my sister when they sold me.They tried to rape her, but recently she hadsuffered a surgical intervention. I told them to take me instead.”M.A., 19 years old, trafficked childAccording to the research findings, from the moment when children cross the bordersand their passports and travel documents are confiscated, their liberty and freedom ofmovement are largely restricted. Very often, once they reach the destination countries,they are confined in closed places (e.g. are locked in apartments or not allowed to leavehotels) or closely monitored by the exploiter on the street and coerced and controlledthrough the use of violence. Many of the girls who were interviewed declared that theywere beaten even if they made money, and that somebody was watching them all thetime. Being watched all the time, beaten and intimidated, trafficked children lose theirconnections with family and friends. This limits their chances to escape.When girls are trafficked by their “lovers”, then kindness is used together with violence asa means of control and to establish a relation of dependence of the girl on her trafficker.Usually, when the girls arrive in the country of destination, they are disorientated and donot understand what is happening. Before the departure, most of them, were convincedthey would find a legal job abroad and decent living conditions. Eventually, either theyare told they were trafficked or it is them who begin asking questions of the traffickers.In this case it is very likely that traffickers react violently to intimidate them.Children are exploited and often sold in closed apartments, brothels, clubs (stripteaseclubs), pubs and hotels (in client’s rooms).“In the countries of destination the majority of them were exploited in strip clubs or illegalbrothels.The victims told me the sale was organised under the form of transactions, whichtook place in clubs or brothels.They gathered more girls for different persons to see andbuy them”.C.L., Social Alternatives Association, IaşiFINAL REPORTDevelopment of a Child Rights Methodology to Identify and Support Child Victims of TraffickingDebt bondage is one of the main controlling mechanisms that traffickers use withvictims. Very often, victims do not realise that this method is abusive and illegal, becausethey think that it results from an agreed transaction, based on fair or almost fair prices.Often children are also convinced that their traffickers protect them, as long as theybring an “income”.Once forced to provide sexual services, children are told each client’s price and are giveninstructions on how to treat clients in order to get more money and how to convincethem to buy more drinks. The money that children are allowed to keep hardly is enoughto cover their personal expenses and only in very rare cases girls manage to raise moneyfor paying off their “debt”.Each time the victim succeeds in raising the money they owe the traffickers, they are soldto other traffickers, owners of hotels, bars or other places where girls are forced toprostitute.Children are forced to prostitute on average for 10 hours a day and whenever a clientrequests it, and their living and housing conditions are described as inhuman. Traffickedchildren returned to Romania, say that when trafficked, they lived in cabins or very smallrooms where they slept and worked. They said they never received medical care whenthey needed it. Traffickers use alcohol and drugs to make sure that girls do not fight andare easy to manipulate. As a matter of fact, many of the girls assisted by IOM Bucharestand Save the Children Romania declared that the exploiter forced them to smoke certaincigarettes or to drink something that caused a “strange feeling”.“You begin to believe that you cannot do anything else but take drugs or die.”M.C.,18 years, trafficked childOther girls declared that the clients in the places where they were exploited had guns andused drugs. In addition, the promise of freedom is just a way through which thetraffickers manipulate the girls.5.3 TRAFFICKING OF CHILDREN FOREXPLOITATION IN FORCED LABOUR,ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES AND BEGGINGProfiles and factors of vulnerabilityThe main difference between sexual exploitation and exploitation for labour or otherpurposes is the victim’s gender: girls are mostly exploited for sexual purposes whileboys are mostly exploited for begging and illegal activities.IPART25UN Covenant onCivil and PoliticalRights, adopted on 16September 1966 andentered into force on23 March 1976, art. 8;UN Convention onthe Protection of theRights of All MigrantWorkers and Membersof Their Families,art.11.26UN SlaveryConvention, art. 1 (a)and art. 1(d).From the interviews of trafficked children returned to Romania emerges the fact thatmany of the girls are actually sold into slavery which, together with slavery-like practices,are included in the definition of trafficking of the Palermo Protocol and the CoEConvention and are expressly prohibited by several human rights internationalinstruments 25 . Amongst these practices are debt bondage and any practice “whereby achild or young person under the age of 18 years, is delivered by either or both of hisnatural parents or by his guardian, to another person, whether for reward or not, with aview to the exploitation of the child or young person or of his labour” 26 .Generally trafficked children do not understand they were purchased and that they haveto pay off their debt to the trafficker or pay for the exaggerated costs incurred for theirtransport (including high interest rates), as well as for their food, accommodation andclothes. Once in the destination country, the trafficker informs them that he will letthem go only once they have paid off the debt. From that moment, children enter a debtbondage cycle, from which it is very difficult to escape.There are many factors occurring at various stages of a child’s development, whichcontribute to increasing his/her vulnerability to being exploited through labour.The victims come from large families (with at least three children) confronted withimportant financial problems. Family relations are marked by the concern for survival,parents thinking that children should contribute and help them to overcome theproblems. Most of the children haven’t completed compulsory education because theirparents’ financial problems prevented them to pay any money for school supplies.Most trafficked children had previously “worked” in the streets of Romania (begging orstealing). Working abroad was perceived as a “progress”, or as a new and more effectiveway of earning their living.Many families of the trafficked released children are characterised by a series ofdysfunctions that are considered to favour trafficking: single parenting (related to limitedschool attendance and early engagement in work), conflicts between parents ortraumatizing experiences (children from these families want to live away from theirparents, most of them want to live in the streets).3637