Free children of sexual exploitation

The suspended death sentence handed down to Zhang Shuxia, former deputy director of obstetrics at Fuping County Maternal and Child Healthcare Hospital in Shaanxi province, for selling seven babies once again highlights the problem of child trafficking.

Child trafficking is a global problem. Up to 4 million women and girls are bought and sold into marriage, prostitution and slavery every year. According to UNICEF, more than 1 million children, most of them girls, are forced into the sex trade every year.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children is increasing across the world. Instead of showing signs of abating, as we hope, child prostitution is growing. There are many reasons for this, including increasing trade across borders, rising poverty and unemployment, low social status of girls, lack of education (including sex education) of children and their parents, inadequate legislation, lack of or poor law enforcement, and the eroticization of children by the media, a phenomenon increasingly seen in industrialized countries.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women has called attention to the levels of state participation and complicity in the trafficking of women and children across borders. Because of their often undocumented status, language deficiencies and lack of legal protection, kidnapped children are particularly vulnerable in the hands of smugglers and corrupt and heartless government officials.

Special social and cultural reasons also play a role in forcing children into the sex trade in different regions. In many cases, children fleeing abusive homes in industrialized countries are forced to enter the sex trade. In Eastern and Southern African countries, many children who lose their parents to AIDS lack the protection of caregivers and are, therefore, more vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation.

Although children from Eastern European countries, such as Russia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic, are increasingly vulnerable to exploitaion, the highest number of children forced to work as prostitutes is in Asia. Traditional practices that perpetuate the low status of women and girls in society are at the root of this problem.