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Children trust official pledges to end trafficking
By James East on 11 Sep 2007
Government promises are easy to make and often go unfulfilled. That is commonly the experience of adults attending the round of international conferences that are part of the packed humanitarian calendar.
But when children meet senior government officials - such as in a recent forum on trafficking - those end-of-conference pledges should have extra weight, especially when some of those children being addressed have experienced the terror of trafficking or come from areas of the Mekong where their peers are at risk.
Addressing a press conference towards the end of The Mekong Youth Forum, which brought together 30 young people from Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and China to Bangkok, there was a cynical media question as to why the children should believe any pledges made.
A 17-year-old Chinese teenager, known as "Tracy" to her friends, told the journalist: "We believe from the bottom of our hearts that adults will not lie to us."
Earlier in the day she and her delegate friends had faced the adults – the senior officials from their countries charged with combating trafficking – to explain what they wanted them to do to stop trafficking.
Their asks included things like doing more to protect migrant children, improving access to education so children had alternatives to child labour, giving marginalised children access to birth certificates so they could have an identity and all that goes with it, getting schools to do more to educate children about the risks of trafficking, and teaching mothers and fathers to be better parents and not to put their children in danger.
The government officials who sat opposite told the children they were listening and would share these recommendations with a high-level meeting of Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) countries that will meet in Beijing, China, in December.
Some also explained that progress was being made in their countries and that they were committed to listening to children's views about a range of topics. For example, in Thailand, provincial and national assemblies of children were meeting; in Vietnam grassroots children's media clubs produced radio and media articles; and Myanmar's delegate promised that the five-year national plan of action would include the children's recommendations.
Trafficking is a complex issue to solve. Causes include poverty, unemployment, lack of education, weak laws, corrupt law enforcement, and a poor understanding of human and child rights. These combine to create the conditions of exploitation, and the demand for cheap labour.
The children are taking part in the COMMIT (Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking) process, whereby the six countries of the region work together to ramp up the fight against trafficking across borders.
Dr Susu Thatun, the senior policy advisor of child protection and trafficking, who is also an advisor to the process, was present for most of the forum. She said, "Look at the absolute trust children have in the adults and in their governments. We need to earn that trust and we must deliver on that trust. I ask myself, 'Do we deserve that trust?' "
The forum was jointly sponsored by World Vision International, Save the Children, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and supported by the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking. World Vision’s Asia-Pacific regional advocacy team is helping to co-ordinate these anti-trafficking advocacy efforts with a multi-country advocacy approach.
Regional advocacy director Laurence Gray said he was delighted children were being listened to. "The children are being given a chance to input, to be treated as citizens and the governments are accountable to them for what they are doing to tackle trafficking."
One Myanmar youth delegate and orphan, who used to live on the street but now lives in World Vision home, said he was glad he had come. He had learned a lot and met other children to share their experiences. "I feel happy because those other children had a lot of other difficulties too. I will share what I have learned. My friends told me before I left that I would have to tell them what I did."
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