Child Sex Trafficking: Causes, Impact, and Policy Solutions

Introduction

Sex trafficking is broadly defined as the recruitment, harboring, provision, transportation, or acquisition of an individual for the primary purpose of a commercial sex act. When the victim has not yet attained 18 years of age, the law recognizes coercion or force as irrelevant to establishing the crime. More generally, victims are subjected to debt bondage, involuntary servitude, or slavery. In recent years, child sex trafficking has become a major epidemic not only in the United States but across the world. While many people are aware of the issue, they are often uninformed about the extent of the uncontrolled exploitation of children and its full impact. Given the severity of this crime, it is increasingly important to understand it and to develop appropriate policy measures to reduce its prevalence.

The Problem of Child Trafficking

Child sex trafficking is defined as the recruitment, movement, provision, or obtaining of an individual under 18 years of age through coercion or force for the purpose of sexual acts ("What is Sex Trafficking?" n.d.). This crime has become an ever-growing epidemic across the globe, even though many people may have heard of it only in passing. The extent of uncontrolled sexual exploitation of children worldwide remains largely unknown, as the issue does not receive the sustained public attention it deserves. Perpetrators exploit children in an inhumane manner solely for personal financial gain.

Despite the increase in child sex trafficking, the practice has always constituted a profound violation of human dignity, involving the systematic infringement of core human rights. Child trafficking is considered an affront to human dignity because victims face wide-ranging threats to their well-being, health, development, and even their lives. HIV/AIDS represents a clear and present danger, as trafficked children are increasingly forced into sexual servitude. Children coerced into military and paramilitary roles in conflict zones face additional grave threats to their lives and physical safety.

Child trafficking is widely recognized as an abominable practice, though most people lack knowledge of the specific health risks involved. This knowledge gap makes developing effective countermeasures particularly challenging. At the individual level, trafficking is accompanied by both physical and mental health threats. Access to care for vulnerable children is severely restricted by the exploitative and clandestine nature of the crime. Children rarely encounter healthcare providers, and even when they do, their conditions are likely to go unrecognized and unreported. Compared to the literature on trafficked women, the healthcare needs of trafficked children are poorly documented — a gap that is compounded by the fact that child victims may not understand the nature or degree of their conditions, nor be aware of their rights (Beyrer, 2004, p. 16).

The severity of child sex trafficking is difficult to fully measure because of the significant challenges in enumerating trafficked children worldwide. Nonetheless, the problem has a wide geographic distribution. Most organizations working on this issue estimate that approximately 1.2 million children are trafficked globally each year. The most commonly affected regions include West Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Latin America — particularly Colombia and Mexico. Because many child victims are trafficked for cheap, controlled labor, they frequently end up working in homes, factories, restaurants, farms, and construction sites.

Several factors contribute to child trafficking globally, including the widening gap between rich and poor, structural economic forces, increased demand for cheap and forced labor, and the use of children in armed conflicts. Regardless of the measures undertaken to address the problem, child trafficking is expected to continue so long as these root causes remain unaddressed. The ongoing sexual exploitation of children has further fueled the rise of child sex trafficking specifically.

The Extent of Child Sex Trafficking

According to Rafferty (2013), the trafficking of children — including for commercial sexual exploitation — is one of the fastest-growing and most financially rewarding criminal enterprises in the world (p. 559). Children are increasingly targeted by offenders who move victims within their home countries or transport them across international borders. Offenders treat victims as commodities to be bought, sold, and resold for sexual exploitation or labor. Research consistently shows that girls are disproportionately trafficked into the sex trade; girls and women account for approximately 98% of victims trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. These victims are exposed to severe threats to their health and well-being due to the extremely low safety and health standards that prevail in exploitative settings.

Understanding the nature and extent of child sex trafficking depends on ongoing prevention programs and research into commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) within specific countries and regions. Most existing literature on the subject relies on victim profiles, case studies, and in-depth country reports that document the growth of this phenomenon. This literature tends to contain more statistical data and trafficking profiles than the corresponding literature on the trafficking of adult women.

Based on available literature, the number of children trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation has been rising while the average age of victims has been falling. Countries in South America such as Paraguay have experienced notable increases in reported incidents, with some victims as young as 8 years old. In recent years, more than 60% of child sex trafficking victims have been reported to be under 10 years of age, with some as young as 6 (Gozdziak & Bump, 2008, p. 6).

Several factors are attributed to the rise in child sex trafficking cases, most notably the growth of the sex tourism industry. While some women recruit male prostitutes, men remain the primary sex-tourist exploiters of children, particularly in the Caribbean and Latin America. The expansion of sex tourism has directly contributed to trafficking children for pornography and prostitution. A second contributing factor is the relative ease of obtaining travel documents for minors, reflecting the absence of stringent cross-border child protection measures in many countries. Third, many children — particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean — are exploited to provide income for their families. Fourth, children who have experienced sexual abuse at home are at elevated risk of becoming victims of sex trafficking through involvement in prostitution. Additional contributing factors include poor economic and living conditions, the low social status of women, and drug and alcohol abuse. In some cases, families allow traffickers to take their children after being promised well-paying jobs or being misled by false promises.

The impact of child sex trafficking on victims is severe and far-reaching. Trafficked children experience negative effects on their physical, psychological, and social-emotional development as a result of exposure to dangerous and unhealthy living conditions. In some cases, an enslaved child is raped approximately ten times per night (Harden, 2013). Victims are stripped of their human dignity — their names are often replaced with numbers upon entry into a brothel. Many turn to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism for the physical, psychological, and social-emotional trauma they endure. Some also resort to criminal activity, contributing to broader social harms.

The rise in child sex trafficking is further enabled by weak governmental policies and legislation. Many countries, such as Cambodia, have inadequate child protection infrastructures and government institutions riddled with corruption. For example, anti-trafficking laws in Cambodia do not permit law enforcement to conduct undercover surveillance on suspects, leaving authorities at a significant disadvantage against traffickers. Officers in such countries report being unable to gather sufficient evidence for prosecution even when violations occur directly before them (Hume, Cohen & Sorvino, 2013). Weak child protection systems and widespread corruption — particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean — continue to facilitate the growth of child sex trafficking.

Conclusion

Child sex trafficking is a growing global epidemic driven by factors including the rapid expansion of sex tourism, poor economic conditions, exposure to sexual abuse within families, deceptive promises by traffickers, and weak child protection infrastructures. While the crime continues to have devastating effects on victims and society, public knowledge of its true nature and scope remains inadequate. Most people are aware that child sex trafficking exists, but few understand the extent of the exploitation or its consequences. Although governments and law enforcement agencies have adopted various measures to address the problem, these efforts have been insufficient to reduce its prevalence meaningfully. These agencies should therefore pursue additional strategies — including partnerships with social workers, development of a national law enforcement training curriculum, expansion of victim-centered approaches, and mass public education campaigns — to more effectively combat this crime.

References

Beyrer, C. (2004, December). Global child trafficking. The Lancet, 364, 16–17.

Farrell, A., McDevitt, J., & Fahy, S. (2008, December). Understanding and improving law enforcement responses to human trafficking: Final report. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/222752.pdf

Gozdziak, E. M., & Bump, M. N. (2008). Data and research on human trafficking: Bibliography of research-based literature. Institute for the Study of International Migration, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.

Harden, N. (2013, November 11). Eight facts you didn't know about child sex trafficking. The Huffington Post.

Hume, T., Cohen, L., & Sorvino, M. (2013, December). The women who sold their daughters into sex slavery. CNN.

Kotrla, K. (2010). Domestic minor sex trafficking in the United States. Social Work, 55(2), 181–187.

Rafferty, Y. (2013). Child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation: A review of promising prevention policies and programs. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 83(4), 559–575.

Shared Hope International. (n.d.). What is sex trafficking? http://sharedhope.org/learn/what-is-sex-trafficking/