Zahra Gor­don

The 2012 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (TIP) re­port pro­duced by the US De­part­ment of State iden­ti­fies lo­cal home­less chil­dren and chil­dren from dif­fi­cult fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tions as be­ing at high risk for sex traf­fick­ing and forced crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. Chissey Muller, project man­ag­er of the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM), says sta­tis­tics on traf­fick­ing are dif­fi­cult to gen­er­ate and usu­al­ly on­ly por­tray a small por­tion of ac­tu­al cas­es.

The IOM, an in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion with 146 mem­ber states, mon­i­tors and ad­vo­cates for hu­mane mi­gra­tion prac­tices. Since T&T be­came a mem­ber state in 2009, the group has dealt with on­ly one hu­man-traf­fick­ing case in­volv­ing a mi­nor. Muller said the case in­volved a young boy from an­oth­er Cari­com coun­try.

Gre­go­ry Sloane-Seale, pro­gramme co-or­di­na­tor of the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme, said he has heard many re­ports of home­less chil­dren be­com­ing vic­tims of traf­fick­ing, but has seen no con­crete ev­i­dence to sup­port these claims. He be­lieves street chil­dren are more sus­cep­ti­ble to traf­fick­ing, how­ev­er.

"All of the re­search avail­able does point to street chil­dren be­ing in one of the most vul­ner­a­ble groups, and def­i­nite­ly more so than chil­dren in homes and with fam­i­lies, by virtue of them be­ing off the radar and not in school or for­mal em­ploy­ment." Sloane-Seale said im­proved so­cial-out­reach pro­grammes, pro­fes­sion­al so­cial-out­reach work­ers, com­mu­ni­ty fam­i­ly-sup­port sys­tems and a greater aware­ness of the is­sues and sur­veil­lance of bor­der points are nec­es­sary.