AdopTalk

By CHLOE JOHNSON
Staff Writer
Laconia Citizen - Laconia,NH,USA

Selling babies on the black market for adoption is only one segment of a world-wide human trafficking industry.

Adults and children are bought and sold for other purposes, including sexual exploitation and forced labor. Many are lured into slavery by false promises of education, employment and prosperity, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF.

The organization estimates the industry generates up to $10 billion annually, making it the second most profitable organized crime after drug trafficking.

Though the United Nations reports that at least one million people are traded each year, it says exact figures are hard to obtain because trafficking is hidden. Many people in such circumstances are subject to arrest and detainment as illegal aliens as well as encountering mental and physical abuse, according to the organization.

UNICEF estimates that half of the victims are children. They are smuggled across international borders or moved from rural areas to urban areas within their own country. Young people are recruited as soldiers or forced into hazardous working conditions, marriage, prostitution or pornography.

An increase in demand for adoption has helped propel the trafficking of babies and young children, UNICEF reported last year. In some cases, mothers in need sell their children, and in others, infants are stolen at birth.

International adoption provides an incentive for child trafficking, according to a report by The New South Wales Law Reform Commission in Australia. Donor countries' poverty and ineffective legislation combines with receiving countries' money and demand for children to create trafficking.

The United Nations has adopted protocols applying to the sale of children for the purposes of sexual exploitation, child labor or illicit adoption.

"Trafficking is among the worst violations of child rights in the world," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said in a statement in 2004. "If we are to put an end to this brazen trade, we need courageous government leaders who will criminalize the trafficking of children in all its forms. Failure to do so is an abuse of children."

The U.S. Congress recently passed the 2005 Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Act. It is intended to strengthen anti-trafficking efforts, particularly by increasing focus on reducing demand for trafficking victims.

It was presented to President Bush this month for his signature.

EDITORS NOTE: It wil be interesting to follow and see if he signs since the US never ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

# posted by Senior Mom @ 6:03 PM