The government is facing renewed calls to introduce a system of guardianship for victims of child trafficking after research showed that more than half of those identified as victims go missing from care.
A petition is being launched today by Ecpat UK, the campaign to end the sexual exploitation of children, and the Body Shop, demanding that the government pledges to look after trafficked children. They often end up in prostitution, domestic servitude, criminal rings or the drug trade.
An opinion poll found that 86% of adults believe the government must establish a system of guardianship so that every identified child has someone to take parental responsibility for them. Almost half (44%) said they believe the way the British authorities deal with trafficked children is unacceptable.
The campaign has attracted celebrity supporters including Joanna Lumley, Ben Kingsley, Robert Pattison and Yoko Ono.
"It's hard for us to comprehend what victims of child trafficking have gone through or to even believe that such a repulsive crime could ever take place here, but it does," Lumley told the Guardian. "Children who have been trafficked will often have faced appalling situations of exploitation and abuse. They desperately need the support of a designated adult who, in the absence of a parent, will care for them, support them and prevent them from facing further exploitation and harm from their traffickers. Having been rescued once, it is all too easy to let these vulnerable children fall through the net."
The actors Sienna Miller, Matt LeBlanc and Rob Lowe, model, Naomi Campbell and singers Craig David and Martine McCutcheon have also backed the campaign.
Research by the Home Office's Centre for Exploitation and Online Protection has shown that 55% of children identified as trafficked go missing from local authority care and are never found. Charities working with victims believe this is because their trafficker has either gained control over them or they run away in fear of being found by their trafficker. Last year, the Guardian exposed the case of a council reception centre for trafficked children near Heathrow, from which 77 Chinese children went missing in less than three years.
"Children who have been trafficked will often have faced appalling situations of exploitation and abuse," said Christine Beddoe, director of Ecpat UK. "They desperately need the support of a designated adult who, in the absence of a parent, can take decisions on the child's behalf and ensure they have access to safe accommodation, education and the medical, practical and legal support they need to help rebuild their lives."
The campaign is the first concerted attempt to bring the issue of child trafficking into the wider public consciousness. One in five British adults still do not believe that children are trafficked to the UK. In reality, says Ecpat UK, hundreds of children – some as young as 11 – from over 50 countries are exploited in the UK every year. Last month, the UK's Anti Trafficking Monitoring Group, made up of charities including Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery International and Unicef, said Britain was breaking the European convention against trafficking and was breaching UK law.
It said that children who may have been trafficked are too often treated as criminals and that the government has presided over an ongoing scandal of trafficked children going missing from care, said the group. The system, it concluded, was "not fit for purpose".
The petition will be open for signatures around the world and the UK section will be delivered to the prime minister in 2011.
Child trafficking petition urges guardianship system for victims | Law | The Guardian
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