Invisible Little Slaves

Published on the occasion of the UN International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, on the 23rd of August 2011, Save the Children’s Report on the “small invisible slaves” – keeps the never ending debate on the child exploitation phenomenon open and actual. The quality of the information goes far beyond the numbers presented, even though essential, as it comes out of the permanent field research the child relief association is carrying on for years.

The Report strongly rings some alarm bells on the evident increase of the numbers of sexually exploited migrant minors but, most of all, on the continuous changes of the trafficking and exploitation strategies. Therefore, according to the research, “invisible” refers not only to the lack of documents, legal status or interest from those responsible authorities for their safety, but mainly – as the new trends show – to the increase of the in-door sexual exploitation, also due to the intensive Police activity curbing street prostitution. The places may vary from apartments to night clubs and massage centres, where the control of the exploiters increases, as the autonomy of victims decreases.

Another worrying data is related to the profile and origin of the minor victims: the main groups are made of Romanian girls (46%) and Nigerians (36%), followed by Albanians (11%) and by those coming from North Africa (7%). Together with them, as the latest researches points out, sexually exploited boys have become a more and more visible reality. Most of them are of Roma, Romanian and North African origin, and the peculiarity of their migration path is that they combine daytime car cleaning at the crossroads with the night time prostitution activities, or even with periods when they are literally “borrowed” by the clients and live with them for longer periods.

Besides this, Roma coming from Romania and Ex-Yugoslavia (but also minors from Morocco, Bangladesh and…Italy) are involved in street begging; it is mainly the Roma girls who do it, as according to some Roma groups’ behaviour, the boys after their 14th birthday must get into the business of copper selling.

The main demands of Save the Children Italy focus on the urgent need for the harmonization of the different, regional strategies on the fight against trafficking and exploitation, together with clear guidelines for the assistance of the victims and safer procedures for their identification, adopting an integrated approach that has been missing until now.

The report is only available in Italian.