There are lots of common wisdoms about human trafficking, so-called ‘facts’ that have been long disproved or, maybe even worse, that have never even been tested. And yet they are out there, endlessly repeated, misleading and quite often getting in the way of work that is based on reality and proven practice. Sometimes the ‘wisdoms’ take the form of half-truths, accurate but incomplete, so that the actions based on them are built on shaky foundations.
Some obvious examples are the oft-repeated ‘fact’ that more women are trafficked than men. That may be true if we look at the figures related to trafficking into commercial sex (although even then not necessarily, because in some places men and boys are the ‘preferred’ victim), but it’s probably not true for example about trafficking into agriculture or fisheries. The truth is that the data we have are quite unreliable and it is nigh on impossible to know exactly how many people, male or female, are trafficked. The statements about women come from the fact that the strength of the women’s lobby meant that data were collected on female victims of trafficking long before people thought of collecting data on trafficking as a whole, and the focus in the early years of data collection was precisely on the sex trade.
Another oft-repeated generalisation has it that more girls are trafficked into child domestic labour than boys, but that has been shown not to be true in many instances. The reality is more complex: very young boys and girls are trafficked into domestic labour in fairly equal numbers, but boys are often moved into other forms of exploitation as they get older while girls stay in domestic servitude and so outnumber boys in the older age groups. As you can see, generalised ‘statements of fact’ can be misleading and in fact downright wrong.
One of the obvious ways to replace these common wisdoms with proven facts is through training, backed up by reading of reliable sources. Hopefully this website will help with that. I also regularly do face-to-face training also, though, and have just returned from facilitating the annual training course on child trafficking at the International Labour Organization’s International Training Centre in Italy. The participants in the course, who come from all over the world, always bring interesting facts and questions to the course, and this time posed the same question over and over again: is it really true that the first and most important protectors of children are their parents?
They questioned the common wisdom that children should always live with their parents because their parents will look after and protect them. In relation to child trafficking in some of their countries, they said, this is clearly not true, because parents may be involved in handing their children over to the traffickers, either because they do not realize the danger their children face or sadly because they know but are ready to trade their child for money or some other consideration. In such cases, parents are clearly not only not protectors of children but actually a risk.
The class was an interesting and dynamic mix of different nationalities, and at first there was a sense that the students from the less developed countries of Africa and Asia saw the problem of child trafficking as mostly ‘theirs’. The truth is, though, that the students from highly affluent countries of Europe and the Americas also had plenty of examples of children in their countries being trafficked. The children may live in what is commonly known as a ‘functional’ family – one where there is financial stability, not so many children that the parent or parents can’t cope, and where it may be clear to everyone that the parent(s) really care for the children and want to do everything possible to help them be happy, healthy and successful. Despite this, both girls and boys, often adolescents, from such families end up among the trafficking statistics every year.
This sits uncomfortably with the ‘vulnerability’ model of child trafficking, which focuses on identifying children at risk solely on the basis of cumulative vulnerability factors such as poverty, unemployment, child labour trends and other definable forces at work in breaking down a child’s normal protections and making her or him more vulnerable to trafficking. It also raises the question of what loving parents in a stable family can do to protect their children from trafficking and, indeed, from other things that do them harm.
Whenever these questions arise, someone will at some point mention the Hollywood movie Taken (with Liam Neeson – great film and a must-watch if you haven’t already seen it!). This story of a father hunting down the traffickers who have abducted his teenage daughter and her friend is a very good example of how children from well-to-do families, with parents who love them (in this case, in fact, three parents because the girl in question has mother, father and stepfather, all of whom adore her) can nevertheless fall into the hands of traffickers.
An important sub-plot of the movie is the tension between the girl’s father (played by Neeson) – a former agent “in the service of his country” (read CIA or Special Forces or similar) who, as he says, “knows the world” and is not ready just to sign a parental consent form to allow his 17 year-old daughter to fly to Europe for the summer unaccompanied (she’s travelling with a friend, but that doesn’t count) – and her mother, who has no qualms in letting her go and can only warn her ex-husband that he’ll lose his daughter’s affections if he doesn’t sign the form.
The Neeson character subsequently sets conditions on his signing the form (the daughter must phone home regularly, advise changes of address, provide a fixed phone number at her accommodation and so on) but clearly these are not going to help if the girl is unlucky enough to be ‘spotted’ by someone working with traffickers to pick up young girls to sell to high-paying clients.
So, three loving parents, one who understands abduction and trafficking, and still the girl finds herself a breath away from ending up as a sex slave, whisked off to a land she doesn’t know and from which she will never emerge alive. There can be no better example of the limits to what a parent can do to protect a child.
Inevitably, discussion of Taken led to a long discussion, reprised several times during the week of the training, of what ‘parenting’ really means and whether it is becoming a lost art. Was the father over-protective? Was the mother negligent, careless or just naïve? How can parents of an adolescent, in particular, find a balance between showing trust and encouraging independence, and insisting on parent-imposed ‘regulations’ that might seem extreme or over-protective?
As part of the discussion, there were numerous examples among the class of where parents had been lamentably ‘absent’ when children had been in danger.
I gave the example of an incident a few years ago in my home town – a cosmopolitan city with little unemployment and adequate social services – in which two 14 year-old girls had been finger-raped by a gang of young men outside a city nightclub at 4 am on a Tuesday morning. The men, of course, filmed the incident on their mobile phones and added to the girls’ pain and distress by circulating the vision among their friends.
The ensuing media coverage touched on just about everything from the misuse of mobile phones to the ethnic make-up of the group of men, to the responsibility of licensed clubs to maintain law and order not only on their premises but on the street outside. Incredibly, no-one asked what to me was surely the central question: what were two 14 year-old girls doing outside a city nightclub at 4 am on a school day (the school day bit is optional – the question should be asked regardless of which day of the week it was)? And where on earth were their parents?
But the examples of ‘bad parenting’, for want of a better word, seems to suggest that it is not an exact science (or clearly defined art). Everyone would agree that, up to a certain age (usually defined in law but in reality very flexible depending on the child and on the parent and indeed on their relationship), parents have responsibility for their children. But this begs the question of what that ‘responsibility’ means. Does it mean providing basic needs: an identity (through registration at birth), accommodation, food, clothing and — most commentators would insist — education? Or does it go beyond that, presuming that parents will also provide a framework of (ideally negotiated and discussed within the family) rules, regulations and parameters which are designed to provide protection for the child but which may also limit the child’s freedom to act?
The major international convention guaranteeing protection to the child – the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) – does not offer much practical guidance. It underlines the fundamental human rights of all people, without exception, and stresses that the family “as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community”. The convention states that the child, “for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding”, and that the child “should be fully prepared to live an individual life in society”, but these noble statements only serve to illustrate that somehow, somewhere, and by someone, a balance must be struck between ensuring that the child’s rights are protected but that this does not disempower parents to impose reasonable rules and limits that may be necessary to ensure that the child is protected from potential danger.
It seems to me that, since the heady days of the sixties, when we all talked about individual freedom from the constraints of tradition, family and often society at large, we’ve lost the plot on parenting. There was clearly an over-reaction to the understandable desire to allow young people the freedoms that they craved, and parents began to step back, leaving children and young people in a vacuum in which somehow they were supposed to find their own way, unguided by the rules and regulations parents had traditionally set.
As a result, I believe we now find ourselves in a situation where a whole generation of parents has grown up not knowing how to set rules and regulations. Rules and regulations are not necessarily bad. They are good when they have been negotiated and discussed within the family, based on fairness and a shared understanding of why they are necessary. They are good when they embody mutual respect among all members of the family and a need to help everyone to achieve their aims of happiness, success and independence. They are good because they allow each member of the family to know her or his responsibilities within the framework that has been agreed. And they then allow parents to know better when they can say ‘no’ without unreasonably limiting the child’s rights.
So how do we help the next generation of parents to handle this difficult but essential element of parenting? Especially in a context where their own parents may not have raised them to understand the responsibility of the parent to protect the child – including from her or his own desires? It’s not an easy task, but it surely has to begin in school, with support also from those who construct the world of the child and adolescent: media, entertainment professionals and importantly the people children look up to and follow: singers, actors, sports stars and other celebrities. That’s a particularly difficult ask, because these sectors often work within entirely different rules to the rest of society. But surely protecting our children and adolescents from harm is worth the effort of seeing what we, as adults, can do?
This is to be continued. There’s much more to say on this topic and I am only just getting up steam!