Empowering Families: A Deterant to Child Trafficking

Empowering Families: A  Deterant to Child Trafficking

Family reunited after learning that their 2 yr. old daughter had been referred for international adoption without their permission.

It is the disturbing reality of poverty that some grow richer by exploiting the poorest members of society for personal gain. Although the poor have little in the form of possessions, their labor, bodies, and children remain sought after commodities. Factors including extreme poverty, lack of employment, inadequate access to education, political instability and armed conflict all impact a community’s ability to protect its most vulnerable citizens from the many forms of human trafficking.

Child traffickers are not easily identifiable; they insert themselves into communities by gaining the trust of local leadership and families struggling to meet their children’s most basic needs. They promise educational sponsorship and employment opportunities, assuring families and community members that their children will be well cared for. The attraction and promise of a perceived higher standard of living for their children is often sufficient motivation for many families to relinquish them to virtual strangers. In many cases, parents are led to believe that host families have been located for their children, and are encouraged to relinquish them so that they may attend boarding schools or move into sponsored homes that are capable of meeting the children’s needs. Sadly, many of these children are trafficked for the purposes of servitude, the sex trade, and even international adoption.

FPA collaborates and actively works with communities that have fallen victim to this type of exploitation, as we believe that family preservation through community empowerment is the most effective way to combat these abusive practices. Our program is currently working within a rural community that relinquished many of its children to what they believed was a sponsorship program hosted by a US adoption agency. A local Ugandan (a facilitator for this agency) convinced a number of families, including the local parish pastor, to relinquish their children to him for what he convinced them was a long term “educational sponsorship” program.

To many in this rural community, the facilitator’s offer to bring their children to live and study kilometres away was seen as a humanitarian effort, as it is not uncommon for children to attend local boarding schools with funding from sponsored programs; however, this perceived act of kindness was anything but altruistic. Paperwork, including the children’s birth certificates, death certificates of family members, and relinquishment letters were forged during this time, effectively rendering these children “orphans” by international standards and approved for international adoption by Ugandan law. These birth families, facing the challenges of day-to-day survival and trusting in the good intentions of a fellow Ugandan, gave their children to an individual who was ultimately willing to exploit their vulnerabilities for personal gain. Had this adoption agency been successful in their endeavor to place these children with waiting families outside of Uganda, they would have  effectively severed the relationships, histories and futures to be shared,  between these children and their loving families.

At the Family Preservation Alliance, we believe that the most effective way to combat this and any form of child trafficking is to address the root of the problem – the intense poverty and the struggle to meet the most basic survival needs – a reality faced by many families every day. By providing access to sustainable food supplies, clean water sources, safe shelters for families at greatest risk, and the opportunity to educate children locally, families (and communities) are able to focus on their own empowerment, both economic and social. Sustainable access to these necessities ensures family members are not spending countless hours searching for foodstuffs, water or shelter, and their children are not walking up to 5 miles to and from school each day, leaving them susceptible to not only nature’s elements but abuse at the hands of unscrupulous individuals. Empowering and strengthening families ultimately improves the quality of life for the entire community, leaving it less vulnerable to the exploitation of individuals willing to pillage the community’s most precious resource – its children.