Ireland fares badly in fighting child trafficking

IRELAND IS among the bottom ranking EU states in making progress to combat child sex trafficking, an international report has found.

Ireland was graded on the State’s efforts to combat child trafficking compared with more than 40 other countries, by ECPAT, a network of organisations working to eliminate child prostitution.

It was released as part of a worldwide campaign by cosmetics company, The Body Shop, urging customers to sign a petition on child sex trafficking.

Ireland made some progress in tackling child trafficking but ranked 13th out of 20 EU states and 22nd out of 43 states worldwide, the report found.

Ireland’s progress was mainly based on the publication of the Government’s action plan on trafficking. This plan was “aspirational”, said Jillian Van Turnhout chief executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance which backs the campaign.

Ireland was among the bottom EU states because it was not identifying the crime and did not have clear systems in place to help a child being trafficked or at risk, she said.

The report recommended that the Government should ratify an optional protocol on the sale of children which was part of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The campaign was one of the last things that Body Shop founder Dame Anita Roddick had asked for in the days before her death in 2007, Chris Davis, head of global campaigns at The Body Shop said at the Dublin launch yesterday.