Child trafficking is one of the worst forms of child labour. Although no precise figures exist, an estimated 1.2 million children - both boys and girls - are trafficked each year into exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflict, or commercial sex work.
ILO Convention No.182 (1999) on the Worst Forms of Child Labour classifies trafficking among “forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery” and thereby a WFCL to be eliminated as a matter of urgency, irrespective of the country’s level of development.
The trafficking of children, internally in countries, across national borders and across continents is closely interlinked with the demand for cheap malleable and docile labour in sectors and among employers, where the working conditions and the treatment grossly violates the human rights of the children, characterized by environments that are unacceptable (the unconditional worst forms) as well as dangerous to the health and the development of the child (hazardous worst forms). These forms range from bonded labour, camel jockeying, child domestic labour, commercial sexual exploitation and prostitution, drug couriering, child soldiering and exploitative or slavery-like practices in the informal industrial sector.
The ILO’s International programme on the Elimination of Child Labour develops comprehensive programme interventions against child trafficking in the context of the situation and the realities in each country or region and takes into account the national, sub-regional and regional specificities of the root causes of children’s vulnerability, mechanisms and routes used by traffickers, and the nature of exploitation that takes place, as well as the legal and cultural contexts.