Global Human Trafficking and Child Victimization

Abstract

COMMITTEE ON CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT, SECTION ON INTERNATIONAL CHILD HEALTHTrafficking of children for labor and sexual exploitation violates basic human rights and constitutes a major global public health problem. Pediatricians and other health care professionals may encounter victims who present with infections, injuries, posttraumatic stress disorder, suicidality, or a variety of other physical or behavioral health conditions. Preventing child trafficking, recognizing victimization, and intervening appropriately require a public health approach that incorporates rigorous research on the risk factors, health impact, and effective treatment options for child exploitation as well as implementation and evaluation of primary prevention programs. Health care professionals need training to recognize possible signs of exploitation and to intervene appropriately. They need to adopt a multidisciplinary, outward-focused approach to service provision, working with nonmedical professionals in the community to assist victims. Pediatricians also need to advocate for legislation and policies that promote child rights and victim services as well as those that address the social determinants of health, which influence the vulnerability to human trafficking. This policy statement outlines major issues regarding public policy, medical education, research, and collaboration in the area of child labor and sex trafficking and provides recommendations for future work. abstractA critical role of the pediatric health care professional is to advocate for the health and well-being of children and adolescents. Central to this role is the conviction that health and well-being depend on a guarantee of fundamental human rights. Victims* of trafficking routinely are deprived of *"Victim" is used here in its objective, legal sense as indicating a person who has been harmed as a result of some event or action or who has suffered because of someone else's actions. It does not refer to how the person may feel or perceive himself or herself as a result of the event(s) and is not intended to be used to label that person. 91

A Bibliometric Analysis of the Global Research Trend in Child Maltreatment

“…Although there were many definitions of child abuse [ 20 ], after reviewing some papers, we decided to choose the WHO’s conceptual definition of child maltreatment which also helped us to construct the search strategy [ 1 ]. To make sure that most of the results would be covered, we also added “child trafficking” and “child grooming” in our search query [ 21 , 22 ]. The search query was built by using the combination of words related to “child maltreatment”: child, maltreatment, abuse, violence, sexual, emotional, physical, trafficking, grooming (full strategy in Table S1 ) via the category “Topic” on the Web of Science.…”

Child Trafficking: The Construction of a Social Problem

“…Experts contend that the adequate training of these professionals is critical to ensure that victims are correctly identified and receive appropriate support [19], including cooperation with relevant agencies. In addition to these officials [24], from a comprehensive perspective, teachers [32] and healthcare professionals [48] would benefit from training to identify the signs of exploitation and effectively intervene.…”

Fatores de risco associados à exposição de adolescentes à violência sexual

“…O ato sexual praticado sem anuência da vítima é marcado por agressões, acarretando efeitos imediatos e tardios, como abortamento, exposição a infecções sexualmente transmissíveis, depressão, ansiedade, isolamento social, entre outros (23,31,32,40). Na exploração sexual, esse fator ainda é mais evidente, pois a vítima é visualizada como uma mercadoria que foi comercializada sendo, na maioria das vezes, submetida a situações que infringem seus direitos (23,35,36,(41)(42)(43)(44).…”