Human trafficking is a grave human rights violation that involves the exploitation of children, women, and men through force, fraud, or coercion for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sex. Of the estimated 25 million victims trapped in modern-day slavery around the world, nearly a third are children. There are several reasons why traffickers disproportionately target minors.
Vulnerability
Children are among the most vulnerable groups to trafficking due to their age, size, and developmental stage. Traffickers often take advantage of minors’ innocence, naivety, and lack of experience to manipulate and deceive them. Younger children in particular may not understand the concept of exploitation or commercial sex and are more easily lured by promises of love, protection, adventure, money, or even basic needs like food and shelter. Older minors may be tricked by job opportunities, modeling contracts, or romantic relationships.
Compared to adults, children have fewer resources and less capacity to resist or escape traffickers’ control. They depend on adults for basic survival needs, have limited knowledge of their rights, lack financial independence, and have underdeveloped decision-making skills. This makes them easier targets for traffickers to isolate from family and community support networks.
Poverty
Poverty and lack of economic opportunity are strongly linked to human trafficking risks. Children living in extreme poverty or born to families struggling to meet basic needs are particularly vulnerable. Traffickers often promise minors education, lucrative jobs, marriage, or a better life to entice them and their families. Some impoverished parents even sell their children or are deceived about the nature of their child’s work, falsely believing it to be an opportunity for education or professional training.
Key facts and statistics on poverty as a risk factor:
| 73% | of human trafficking victims around the world come from Asia and the Pacific regions, where some of the highest rates of extreme poverty persist |
| 166 million | children worldwide are engaged in child labor, accounting for almost 11% of all children aged 5-17 years old |
| 115 million | boys and girls participate in hazardous work, putting them at extreme risk of trafficking |
Poverty forces minors into a cycle where they must work simply to survive. Traffickers exploit this desperation by luring minors and their families with promises of income. Limited access to education also puts impoverished children at higher risk.
Discrimination
Societal discrimination by gender, ethnicity, migrant status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other factors compounds minors’ vulnerability. Traffickers often target marginalized children facing stigma, social isolation, or lack of institutional support and protections.
Key examples include:
- Girls face heightened risks in cultures that condone gender discrimination or consider girls less valuable than boys
- LGBTQ youth forced from their homes due to family rejection are vulnerable to grooming by traffickers offering shelter and community
- Undocumented migrant children lack legal protections and resources in destination countries
- Children with disabilities are presumed to be less credible and face challenges seeking help
- Indigenous children marginalized from dominant ethnic groups can become targets
- Castes, ethnicities, and religious minorities heavily discriminated against in certain cultural contexts
By preying on children already marginalized, traffickers more easily evade detection by law enforcement or child protection agencies. They manipulate children’s isolation and desires for acceptance, coercing them with promises of love, family, and belonging.
Social and Cultural Norms
Harmful social and cultural norms in some societies also drive demand for child trafficking. For example:
- Child marriage: When girls are sold as child brides, they may be forced into domestic servitude or sexual slavery.
- Sex tourism: Weak law enforcement enables sex trafficking of children in tourist destinations.
- Debt bondage: The tradition of indentured child labor to pay family debts persists in some areas.
- Child soldiers: Rebel militias forcibly recruit boys and girls for combat roles.
- Domestic work: Cultural acceptance of child labor in private homes enables abuse.
- Familial trafficking: The normalization of child labor within families puts minors at risk when families fall on hard times.
Shifting these harmful attitudes, beliefs, and practices requires raising public awareness, educating communities, enforcing robust laws, and empowering local organizations and leaders to advocate for children’s rights.
Lack of Child Protection Systems
Weaknesses in child welfare and protection programs also enable traffickers to target minors who lack safeguards.
Key gaps include:
- Underfunded social services unable to identify or assist at-risk children
- Poor regulation of residential care facilities such as orphanages and group homes where abuse often occurs undetected
- Lack of child-sensitive procedures in law enforcement and justice systems
- Failure to register vulnerable children such as migrants, refugees, or stateless populations
- Birth registration gaps that enable trafficking of undocumented children
Strengthening national child protection systems to prevent abuse, exploitation, and unnecessary family separation is critical. Showing high-level political will, increasing funding, improving inter-agency coordination, and engaging communities help enhance protections.
Effects of Conflict and Crisis
Children separated from families and displaced by conflict, natural disasters, or other humanitarian emergencies are extremely susceptible to trafficking. Crises disrupt communities, leave children unsupervised, force migration, overwhelm existing resources, and weaken oversight mechanisms – advantages traffickers exploit.
Key statistics on children in crisis settings:
| 30 million | children worldwide are displaced due to conflict and violence as of 2017 |
| 1 in 4 | human trafficking victims are children globally, but in conflict zones, it’s estimated 3 out of 4 victims are minors |
| Over 500,000 | Rohingya refugee children fleeing violence in Myanmar now shelter in overcrowded camps in Bangladesh where traffickers are active |
During natural disasters like typhoons or earthquakes, temporary shelters and evacuation centers also become high-risk trafficking zones. Heightened poverty after crises further tempts impoverished families to hand children over in desperation.
Online Exploitation
The internet and social media enable new avenues for traffickers to recruit and exploit child victims. Young people’s online activities make them vulnerable in ways previous generations did not face.
Key risks include:
- Predatory ads for modeling, acting, or other jobs resulting in forced labor or sexual exploitation
- Traffickers grooming minors online by posing as romantic interests
- Exposure to pornography warping perceptions of healthy relationships and boundaries
- Deceptive games, apps, or websites tricking children into sharing compromising photos/videos then blackmailing them
- Livestream child sexual abuse where paying viewers direct abusers
- Minors exploited into forced cybersex shows, online pornography, or prostitution through social media recruitment
Limited parental supervision of technology use or children’s secrecy exacerbates these threats. Building digital literacy and safety skills for both youth and caregivers is essential.
Demand for Child Exploitation
Underpinning child trafficking is continued demand for the unlawful exploitation of minors. As long as consumers seek out sex with children or goods and services produced through child slavery, traffickers will profit from supplying them.
Key examples of driving factors behind the demand include:
- Perpetrators seeking younger victims they can more easily control and manipulate psychologically
- Mistaken notions child sex abuse does no harm or myths like sex with virgins can cure HIV/AIDS
- Belief that younger women and girls in prostitution are cleaner or less likely to have diseases
- Pornography users gradually seeking ever younger victims for satisfaction
- Clients in some cultures where child prostitution is socially acceptable or overlooked by corrupt officials
- Consumers wanting cheap goods and services they know result from child exploitation
- Employers seeking children for domestic work because they are compliant and work for low or no pay
Ending child trafficking requires not just disrupting supply but also dramatically reducing demand through robust criminalization and prosecution of exploiters alongside education on protecting children’s rights.
Conclusion
In summary, human traffickers disproportionately target minors due to factors like age and developmentally-related vulnerability, poverty, discrimination, inadequate child protection systems, crises disrupting oversight, the internet facilitating access to victims, and ongoing consumer demand for the exploitation of children.
Protecting youth requires implementing preventative measures like:
- Expanding economic opportunities for at-risk families
- Educating communities on children’s rights and how to identify trafficking
- Improving state oversight and regulation of orphanages and foster care
- Securing vulnerable groups like refugees or disaster victims
- Teaching internet safety in schools
- Running awareness campaigns aimed at curbing exploitative behaviors
- Boosting law enforcement capacity to identify victims and prosecute traffickers
With concerted effort across multiple sectors, governments, businesses, NGOs, communities, and individuals can all help dismantle systems enabling traffickers to profit from child exploitation and instead protect minors’ safety and human rights worldwide.