RENATE’s Child Trafficking Mapping Research – an update.

 
With the increased incidences of child trafficking worldwide, RENATE has commenced research which seeks to map the extent of child trafficking in Europe and the efforts underway to both combat and prevent its occurrence.
The research extends to seven European countries, all of which have representative members in the RENATE network. The participating countries are Albania, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Slovakia, The Netherlands and Ukraine.
Dr. Carrie Pemberton Ford, of the CCAHRT (Cambridge Centre for Applied Research in Human Trafficking) is currently finalising the research. In the first instance, the research is informed by  individual RENATE members working at grassroots level in the participating countries.
Additional factual data available from reliable sources such as the IOM, GRETA, TIP reports, UNICEF and UNODC reports enrich the research.
It is intended that once published, readers will gain a deeper understanding of the multiple challenges and hazards experienced by minors and youth in the current migration funnel accessing the European Economic Community. Such access is via the well-documented Mediterranean routes and the evolving counter-routes. Such routes are created by traffickers and people smugglers, profiting from the desperation of many fleeing their homelands in search of improved living circumstances.
The research highlights the full extent of the vulnerability of both indigenous and migrant children to issues around securing safety, gaining access to alimentation and paying off the debts incurred through migration either for themselves or their wider family.
The solutions arrived at, ranging from transactional sex, begging, selling contraband goods (cigarettes, CDs and other items in a long catalogue of illicit goods sold through criminal gangs) and other risky activities, bring countless thousands of children and minors into the trafficking nexus.      
Each child encountering danger, detention, deprivation and discrimination, is one too many.
Full research to be launched in June of this year.
Prepared by Anne Kelleher, RENATE Communications.