Memorandum submitted by The Children's
Society
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Children's Society is a leading
national charity, driven by the belief that every child deserves
a good childhood. We provide vital help and understanding for
those forgotten children who face the greatest danger, discrimination
or disadvantage in their daily lives; children who are unable
to find the support they need anywhere else. Our network of projects
helps over 50,000 children and their families each year. Through
our pioneering research and influential campaigning, we defend,
safeguard and protect the childhood of all children.
1.2 Our direct action supports children
in trouble with the law, guiding them away from a cycle of crime
and custody. We work with children who are forced to run away
from home or care, protecting them from abuse, crime and prostitution
on the streets. We ensure that disabled children are protected
and are given the choices that other children enjoy. We help refugee
children rebuild their lives in new communities, surrounded and
supported by friends. And we are expanding our work with young
carers, children whose parents misuse alcohol or drugs and with
traveller children.
1.3 Through our work with refugee children
and children at risk on the streets we have increasingly recognised
that we are working with trafficked children. We do not believe
this is necessarily a result of an increase in the numbers of
trafficked children we come into contact with. It may reflect
both our, and other agencies', increasing expertise in identifying
trafficked children.
2. SCALE AND
TYPE OF
ACTIVITY
2.1 We work with children and young people
who have been moved for the purposes of the following types of
exploitation (in no particular order):
— Illegal working (eg in cannabis factories,
nail bars and garages).
— Sexual slavery (including domestic
abuse and commercial prostitution).
2.2 Sometimes the children we work with
are subjected to multiple forms of exploitation. Commonly they
will experience a combination of violence and sexual exploitation,
at a minimum. There are particular vulnerabilities around children
from abroad (including children seeking asylum, Roma children
and those from the EU) but we are also aware that both they and
British born children are moved around the UK to be exploited.
3. DIFFICULTY
OF IDENTIFYING
THOSE WHO
HAVE BEEN
TRAFFICKED
3.1 We come into contact with trafficked
children in a whole range of ways including:
— referrals from local authority children's
services departments,
— referrals from education professionals,
— concerns raised by other young people
who we are already working with,
— exploited children who come to us
after hearing about us from peers,
— being approached for assistance by
the young person's exploiters, and
— referrals from the Police.
3.2 Typically we will not know a child has
been trafficked when they come to us. It is our strong belief
that it is only through a relationship of trust that a child will
feel able to disclose abuse. Typically the children we work with
will have come into contact with a whole range of agencies including
the Border and Immigration Agency, Police, children's services,
legal representatives, health professionals and education professionals.
When they come to us is often the first time they have had the
space to build a trusting relationship.
3.3 We believe the following factors are
amongst those that prevent children from disclosing that they
are being exploited:
— An adult, adversarial asylum process
which forces them to defend their account, does not fully investigate
their protection needs and prevents them from building any kind
of relationship with the professionals in those systems.[142]
— The process of challenging age when
children go to claim asylum. A large number of young people who
claim to be children are age disputed each year, which can lead
to them being placed in adult systems incorrectly, and therefore
at risk of exploitation. We support children who are told by their
traffickers to say they are adults, despite sometimes being clearly
under 18, but their age is not challenged.
— Difficulties NGO staff face being
listened to. We have identified children who we believe have been
exploited but have struggled to have those concerns taken seriously
by all of those agencies involved.
— We have worked with several children
who were arrested and prosecuted for illegal working and immigration
offences (particularly documentation offences under Section 2
of the Asylum and immigration Act 2004, and the Fraud and Counterfeiting
Act 1981) when they were discovered. It is very difficult for
children to feel safe enough to disclose with the threat of prosecution
hanging over them.
— The difficulty disclosing abuse for
fear of being returned to an exploitative situation. This is particularly
problematic in light of insecure immigration status. We have discussed
this further in the next section.
4. TREATMENT
OF THOSE
WHO HAVE
BEEN TRAFFICKED
BUT HAVE
NO LEGAL
RIGHT TO
REMAIN
4.1 One of our major concerns centres on
the difficulty of obtaining immigration status for trafficked
children. A discovery that a child has been trafficked can cause
their asylum claim to fail because of the limitations of the 1951
Refugee Convention and the way it is interpreted. Some of the
children we work with are desperate to go home, having experienced
abuse and loneliness, and may not be able to believe they have
been betrayed by someone they trusted. We believe there is a serious
risk that children will choose to return to their exploiters,
and will subsequently be re-trafficked.
4.2 This creates a barrier to successful
prosecutions as there is no guarantee of security for the child,
and so we are unable to reassure them about the consequences of
giving evidence. There is also a human cost, as it makes already
frightened children more afraid and leaves them in limbo with
no certainty about the future.
4.3 We believe the immigration reservation
to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child creates a two-tier
system both in principle and in practice. In relation to trafficked
children it means they are often treated as immigrants first,
and their needs as children are overlooked. The most effective
remedy would be to remove the reservation in its entirety. Simply
removing trafficked children from the reservation would have little
beneficial impact, as we suspect the vast majority of trafficked
children are never identified.
5. EFFECTIVENESS
OF CO-ORDINATION
5.1 We believe joined up working, though
greatly improved at a strategic level, is still very far from
reality in practice, resulting in cases of prosecutions of trafficked
children and young people.
5.2 We believe the culture of the Border
and Immigration Agency is very problematic in this context. We
have long argued that the asylum system is designed to root out
those who are suspected of cheating the system, and consequently
does not have the sensitivity, compassion and flexibility to identify
those who have suffered abuse, or to help those who do not fit
the very narrow 1951 Convention terms on which someone can be
considered a genuine asylum applicant. We would welcome a lead
for trafficked and unaccompanied asylum seeking children from
the Department for Children, Schools and Families to ensure that
protection needs are at the centre of their treatment.
5.3 We have been very concerned by the Border
and Immigration Agency's proposal to try to keep children safe
by introducing tighter immigration controls. A recent example
of this is Section 16 of the UK Borders Act 2007 which gives the
Secretary of State the power to impose open-ended reporting and
residence requirements on people with limited leave to remain
in the UK. The Minister has indicated this is primarily targeted
at unaccompanied asylum seeking children, who will have to report
regularly to the immigration service. We believe this is detrimental
to the progress being made to tackle trafficking as it is another
measure that we know frightens children and young people who fear
being picked up and detained when they report, and does not consider
the role that children's services are supposed to play in keeping
children safe.
6. FURTHER INFORMATION
6.1 We are a member of the ECPAT UK coalition
and support the evidence provided in ECPAT's submission.
12 February 2008
142 For more information please see, Going It Alone:
Children In the Asylum Process, The Children's Society, 2007. Back
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