July 30 marks World Day against Trafficking in Persons, an initiative promoted with the aim of raising awareness of human trafficking victims and the protection of their rights. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, between 2017 and 2018, 74,514 victims of trafficking were detected in more than 110 countries. In 2018, about one third of the overall detected victims were children.

As a consequence of physical distancing and restrictions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual spaces have become more important than ever. Many families are also managing schooling from home, and as a result many of us are spending more time online. Many counter-trafficking and violence experts are concerned about how criminals are also adapting, and the increased the risk of online sexual exploitation and abuse of children, including trafficking. The methods used by traffickers are also changing to take advantage of the current situation. Some traffickers seek to recruit children online, in digital platforms. Using digital platforms such as social networks or instant messaging applications, "cyber criminals" actively pursue children, who become an easy target in their search for acceptance, attention or friendship.

Given this, it raises the question: What can families do to prevent child trafficking in digital media?

For this purpose, we provide a list of recommendations:

  1. Explain to your children how easy it is to create a fake profile on social media. Behind a fake profile can be a lone trafficker or a extensive criminal network looking for potential victims to exploit and abuse.
  2. Teach your children about the risk of talking to strangers in the digital world. Traffickers are aware of the risk of monitoring and surveillance when using technology, that’s one of the reasons they may initially contact potential victims on open groups in social media and move communication to encrypted or anonymized services, such as WhatsApp messaging on cellular phones.
  3. Build trust with your children. Under no circumstances their privacy should be violated (sneaking into their accounts or mailboxes). The generation of trust is vitally important, especially when children need to be accompanied or make inquiries about suspicious activity or people for the purpose of child trafficking.
  4. Discuss with your children the importance to avoid taking and sharing photos and videos with strangers. Traffickers can use them to maintain control over the victims by threatening their distribution.
  5. Good privacy settings help ensure that you have control over who can see your publications. In this way, you can prevent strangers from seeing your posts, photos or videos. Traffickers seem to master the intricacies of linking means of coercive control with digital technologies. They can use photos and videos of their victims to share to assess their suitability for some modelling or sexual job.

In the last 15 years, the number of children among trafficking victims has tripled and the percentage of children has increased fivefold. Faced with this situation, States and intergovernmental organizations have developed a variety of international legal instruments to combat child trafficking, such as the Palermo Protocol. However, the responsibility to combat child trafficking also falls on us as a society, guaranteeing children a comprehensive development and a dignified life: this is known as the best interests of the child.

 

[1] Unicef, Digital Coexistence Awareness Guide, 2017 (Spanish).

[2] UNODC, Global Report On Trafficking un Persons, 2020 (Spanish).

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