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Jane, 17, from Nigeria

Jane was born in Nigeria. Her parents had died and she lived with her brother and aunt in Benin City, when she was trafficked to the UK. Before she was taken to the UK, a voodoo ritual was done on her and she was threaten that she would die if she didn’t cooperate with her traffickers.

When she arrived in the UK the immigration officers realised she was being trafficked and placed her in a safe house with another trafficked Nigerian girl who had also received voodoo threats. Fearing for her life and conscious of the alleged debt she owed to the traffickers, the other girl contacted them and both girls were trafficked again, this time from the UK to Germany.

Jane was arrested on arrival in Germany and her trafficker was allowed to go. Although the police was certain she was a child, she was kept in a police cell for two nights and wasn’t given anything to eat. Then she was sent to a detention centre where she spent four months. Her trafficker’s lawyers tried to get hold of her in the detention centre.

Jane was eventually moved to a safe house and started attending school but she suffers severe depression and has an eating disorder.

Jane wouldn’t have been re-trafficked if she was properly looked after following her identification as a victim of trafficking. Scarce knowledge of trafficking and lack of focus on the protection of victims is among the main reasons why children like Jane are let down so badly.

The Three Small Steps Campaign is calling on the government to appoint a national Child Trafficking Rapporteur responsible for annual reporting on national statistics, trends and emerging issues.


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faq


Who supports the Three Small Steps Campaign?

Three Small Steps is a joint campaign of World Vision UK and ECPAT UK with the support of Anti-Slavery International, Save the Children, NSPCC, the Anti Trafficking Legal Project (ATLeP), BarnardoŐs, The Body Shop Foundation, CHASTE, The ChildrenŐs Society, EveryChild, ISS UK, Jubilee Campaign and UNICEF UK. Many of the campaign calls have been supported by Members of Parliament from different party groups.



How can I contact the campaign organisers?

You can e-mail us on: 3smallsteps@ecpat.org.uk or visit our group on Facebook.



The government signed the Council of Europe Convention and has already adopted plans to work towards its ratification by 2009 or 2010. Is it realistic to expect more than that?

We have to look at what the government does from the perspective of the children who have been trafficked in the UK or will be trafficked in the near future. What about them? Their suffering will not stop until 2010. They need the best possible protection now. We believe the government can do better than that. If it really gives trafficked children the priority it says it does, then it will put into place those measures from the Convention that are essential for children much earlier than 2010.



The Home Office decided to develop its own Code of Practice, which will set out how the Border & Immigration Agency will help to keep children safe from harm. IsnŐt this a sufficient guarantee that trafficked children will be protected?

No. We are indeed very concerned that the Home Office wants to impose a two-tiered system where different standards are set for citizen and non-citizen children. With the exception of the Border & Immigration Agency and its subsidiaries, all other relevant agencies have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children under section 11 of the Children Act 2004. Unlike the police and even the prison system, the Border and Immigration Agency has vehemently opposed suggestions that it should accept responsibility under this legislation. If the government wants to protect all children, all its agencies should subscribe to the same standards. A withdrawal of the reservation on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child would make such divisions untenable.

The government has established a number of new institutions tasked with combating human trafficking recently. Your campaign is asking for another body Đ a national watchdog. How can you justify this?

The appointment of an independent national watchdog, or Rapporteur, is not going to duplicate the existing bodies but complement them and help them achieve more within their mandates and in coordination between them. International organisations of which the UK is a member have called for this and the Council of Europe Trafficking Convention recommends it too. It will make a difference in the systematic collection and analysis of the now scarce information and will allow independent oversight of anti-trafficking efforts and their coordination. There are indications that this institution is making a difference in the fight against trafficking in those countries where such a body is established.



The government says the Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group (IDMG) on Human Trafficking is doing the work that you suggest should be done by an independent watchdog.

That is not really the case. The IDMG has a very different remit and is not an institution but a quarterly gathering of government ministers. Its work is very important in the fight against trafficking. But, it is just not possible for this body to carry out the activities that are proposed within the remit of an independent watchdog.



DonŐt many of these children pretend to be victims of trafficking in order to benefit from the standards of living in the UK?

No. The circumstances over which it becomes clear that a child has been trafficked are difficult to simulate, as it is difficult to simulate the trauma child victims of trafficking suffer. In most of the cases these children do not simply disclose they have been trafficked. To the contrary, because of fear for themselves and their familiesŐ safety and because of threats from their traffickers, they tell a different version of their story to hide the fact that they are victims of trafficking. Many of the children do not know and nor do they use the term trafficking. The current system for unaccompanied asylum seeking children cannot be seen as an incentive because very few children are given refugee status or humanitarian protection. Children in the asylum system live in constant insecurity about their future and face possible return to their countries of origin, from which they may have been trafficked and to which it may still be unsafe for them to return.



According to the Home Office, many of those who come to the UK to seek asylum falsely claim to be children in order to receive preferential treatment. IsnŐt this also the case with trafficked ÔchildrenŐ?

The Home Office disputes the age of a very high number of asylum seeking children. Apart from their age it disputes their country of origin, mother tongue and other aspects of their identity and their story. Although there is no official statistics published on the number of age disputed children who are found to be adults or children, we are aware that the Home Office wrongly disputes the age of children in fifty percent of the cases. When trafficked people do not disclose their true age, this could be due to different factors, the main one being the instructions they have received from their traffickers. Even if a trafficked person has lied about their age, they are still victims of trafficking in need of protection and should be treated as such.


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