ECPAT-USA Marks The International Day of the Girl Child with Concern About the Increasing Vulnerability of Girls to Human Trafficking During the COVID-19 Crisis

Twenty-five years ago at the Fourth World Conference on Women, the United Nations unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which has since served as the blueprint for advancing the rights and empowerment of women and girls. The inclusion of Section “L”, the Girl Child, as one of the 12 critical areas of concern was an important recognition that there are impediments and challenges in the lives of girls that must be addressed differently from women or boys.

Section “L”- Persistent discrimination against and violation of the rights of the girl-child - puts forth eight strategic objectives with a series of concrete actions needed to be taken by governments, the UN, and civil society to eliminate obstacles to the full enjoyment of the human rights of women and girls. Strategic objective L.7(d) “Eradicate violence against the girl-child” stresses the enactment and enforcement of legislation protecting girls from sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, child prostitution, and child pornography.

In the ensuing 25 years, there have been many advances in empowering the lives of girls, especially in expanding education and better health, but violence against girls changed little or has gotten worse. Gender equality between girls and boys in homes, schools, communities, and beyond does not exist in much of the world where a girl’s value is in her labor, her dowry, or the price she will bring for sexual exploitation.

According to statistics from the ILO (2017), there are nearly 5 million victims of forced sexual exploitation, and women and girls comprise 99% of that number. There are an additional 4 million victims of other forms of forced labor, with women and girls making up 58% of them. In the UNODC 2016 Global Report on Trafficking, data collected from 142 member states, girls make up 23% of all trafficking victims. Of that number, 72% are victims of sexual exploitation, 21% of forced labor, and 7% other. Human trafficking is one of the most profitable illicit crimes worldwide and is estimated to be a $150-billion business annually. These statistics are widely considered underestimates. DoSomething.org suggests that only about .04% of survivors of human trafficking are identified.

There is no recent or reliable data on the large number of girls trafficked in the United States because, as in the rest of the world, trafficking is an “invisible” crime. In 2016, the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children received 8.2 million reports, most of which related to apparent child sexual abuse imagery, but it also included cases of online enticement, child sex trafficking, and child sexual molestation. The majority of the victims of these crimes are girls. Although all girls are at risk of being trafficked, identified victims are disproportionately girls of color. The average age a teen in the U.S. enters into the sex trade is 12-14. Many girls are runaways, homeless, or were sexually abused as children.

Traffickers have been using online social media platforms during the COVID-19 crisis to prey on girls who have been spending more time with computers and cellphones due to school disruptions. Given the very real risk of online recruitment for sexual exploitation, ECPAT-USA has produced guides for students, teachers, and parents to inform each of these important groups on how to prevent students from online sexual exploitation.

ECPAT-USA has also been a staunch supporter of the EARN-IT Act in Congress, which encourages internet service providers to more aggressively examine the content of their platforms to protect children from online exploitation.

Human trafficking is a result of the failure of societies and economies to protect the most vulnerable and enforce rights under national laws (UNODC). In these precarious times, we must ensure that girls have equal opportunity and agency to lead our planet to a better future.

By Jackie Shapiro, ECPAT-USA UN ECOSOC Main Representative and former Chairperson of the ECPAT-USA Board of Directors

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