Guy Degan: You’re watching UNICEF Television.

International experts on child rights along with government
and NGO representatives had gathered in Florence, Italy to
examine global issues on trafficking and sexual
exploitation of children. Hosted by UNICEF’s Innocenti
Research Center for Child Rights, it’s an opportunity to
share information on child trafficking and discuss
recommendations.

A head of the Third World Congress against Sexual
Exploitation of Children and Adolescence in Brazil in light
of this year research into trafficking of children developed
by the center confirms that insufficient data makes the
global scale of child trafficking difficult to accurately
assess. Child trafficking is also often viewed in connection
with only sexual exploitation or prostitution. The centers
researches add that children are also trafficked for criminal
activities to conflict, exchange of deaths or for adoption.
One of the central recommendations of UNICEF’s
Innocenti Research Center is for countries to listen to the
needs of trafficked children and adopt a specific child
rights approach to human trafficking.

Marta Santos Pais: What we have seen in many countries is that by adopting
an overall approach to protection of human trafficking we
have felt to understand who were the children at greater
risk, where they lived, who are the families that were
affected by these, and how we could prevent the risk of
being seduced and taken into trafficking roots.

Guy Degan: Highlighting the need to use clear definitions for trafficking
and child exploitation, Nevena Vokovic Sahovic of the
United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child wants
that legal protection for trafficked children caught up in
criminal activities is still insufficient in many countries.

Nevena Vukovic Sahovic: Quite often you see -- you hear the government
representatives having attitude that “Okay, it’s normal for
that group of people that the normal people or something --
” this is what they do, this is how they live, so it’s kind of
acceptance of almost offense-like attitude.

Guy Degan: Throughout the weeklong series of meetings, delegates in
Florence will also address the importance of preventing
sexual exploitation of children in tourism and crimes
against children on the internet.

This is Guy Degan in Florence, Italy reporting for UNICEF
Television, unite for children.