Renewed concern over child trafficking plots
After dawn raids in London arrested 21 people on suspicion of child trafficking, charities have warned that the problem is growing into a major global problem, with thousands of African children brought to the UK and forced into slave labour or prostitution.
Others are thought to come to Britain in order for their new guardians to commit benefit fraud.
A report by the United Nation’s children’s agency, UNICEF, claims that thousands of children may be being trafficked into Britain because of a legal loophole.
The executive director of UNICEF UK David Bull said that the UK was failing to answer the challenge set by the problem of trafficking.
“There are certainly hundreds of children being trafficked and we believe the systems for spotting and identifying those children are so far very inadequate.”
“We are talking about 1.2 mn children a year being trafficked in the world. Many of them are coming to European countries. Our country needs to do everything it can,” he told Channel Four News.
Mr Bull said that the UK did not have the resources of other nations with which to protect children in danger of being forced into slavery or prostitution by organised gangs.
“We only have one safe house in the UK and it is about to be closed down,” he said.
“We don’t see this as an immigration issue but a child protection issue. We hope also that the government will see it as a child protection issue and will put in place the measures which are necessary to ensure the protection and care of those children is the very first priority.”
“Prosecutions of traffickers are also important but the first priority must be to protect those children,” he stated.
Anti-trafficking campaigner Carron Somerset said that the UK social services did not have appropriate facilities to care for children smuggled into the country by people traffickers, or to help them deal with the abuse they invariably suffer once they arrive in Britain.
Ms Somerset remarked: “Social services can provide services but they are not, we think, adequate for trafficked victims who have been through the most horrendous experiences that most children would never have been through.”
Home Office Minister Caroline Flint today described child trafficking as a “hidden crime” and acknowledged that the Government did not know many children were brought to the UK in this manner.
She remarked: “We are improving through the Sexual Offences Bill, to make sure that children who are trafficked for sexual offences are covered by the law. There is already a law against trafficking for prostitution and there are laws against illegal immigration into this country which affect children as well.”
The arrests in London today were part of the investigation into the death in 2001 of a Nigerian boy named Adam by police, who is thought to have been the victim of a ritualistic killing.
