Child trafficking
form of human trafficking defined as the "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, and/or receipt" of a child for the purpose of exploitation
Child trafficking is a form of human trafficking and is defined by the United Nations as the "recruitment, transportation, harbouring, or receipt of a child" for the purpose of slavery, forced labour, and sexual exploitation. This definition is substantially broader than the same document's definition of "trafficking in persons". Children may also be trafficked for illegal adoption. Illegal adoptions violate multiple child rights norms and principles, including the best interests of the child, the principle of subsidiarity and the prohibition of improper financial gain. According to the anti-trafficking organization Love146, it is estimated that over three million children worldwide are being victimized in sex trafficking and child labour.
In 2012, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported the percentage of child victims had risen in 3 years from 20 percent to 27 percent. In 2014, research conducted by the anti-human trafficking organization Thorn, reported that internet sites like Craigslist are often used as tools for conducting business within the industry and that 70 percent of child sex trafficking survivors surveyed were at some point sold online. In 2016 NGO ERASE Child Trafficking estimated 300,000 children are taken from all around the world and sold by human traffickers as slaves.
In 2020, the United Nations noted that between 18,000 and 20,000 children were identified as trafficked globally (with regional variations); however, the challenges of lax reporting and accurate detection mean this number is certainly a bare minimum. Children in North and Sub-Saharan Africa make up the majority of trafficked victims with forced labour most common in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Child trafficking” as form of human trafficking defined as the "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, and/or receipt" of a child for the purpose of exploitation. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as form of human trafficking defined as the "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, and/or receipt" of a child for the purpose of exploitation. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1741825. The Library of Congress control number is sh2009006396. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2020.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Child trafficking” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.