Donors may unknowingly support human trafficking in orphanages: study

A recent study found that donors who believe they are helping orphans abroad may be unwittingly contributing to a human trafficking system that involves deceiving families and exploiting children for labor or sexual purposes.

Rebecca Nhep, senior technical advisor at Better Care Network, an international network of organizations focused on finding solutions for children worldwide who are separated from their families, published the study “The Role of Clientelism in Facilitating Orphanage Trafficking” last month in the Journal of Human Trafficking.

The research shows that the client-client relationship plays a role in the ‘recruitment, transfer, exploitation and concealment of child exploitation within unregulated residential care institutions’.

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The investigation focuses on unregulated residential care facilities, particularly in Cambodia and Myanmar. Orphanage trafficking is a form of child trafficking in which a child is typically transferred to a residential facility for sexual exploitation or use for profit, Nhep said.

Those who engage in orphanage trafficking usually lie about the orphan status of the child by falsifying various documents, including birth certificates, parental death certificates, and abandonment certificates. The lie about the orphan status of the child is intended to meet the necessary criteria for admission to a residential care facility or to raise funds from donors who are willing to sponsor a child in need.

In a statement to The Christian Post, a spokesperson for Nhep said the issue is particularly relevant to people of faith.

Research shows that Christians in the United States are strong supporters of orphanages, donating $2.5 billion annually to residential care.

“There are countless ways for Christians to help end human trafficking in orphanages and support vulnerable children,” Nhep told CP in a statement. “We must start by becoming informed donors and volunteers and focus our support on community-based services for families.”

Many victims of trafficking in orphanages are born into impoverished families in need of assistance. According to Nhep, parents are often “deceived with promises of support and education, leading them to hand their children over to orphanages set up to exploit children.”

“The more well-meaning international donors and volunteers give their time and resources to orphanages, the more incentive unscrupulous orphanage operators have to recruit children from vulnerable families,” she stressed. “Instead, our resources could be spent on community-strengthening services that keep families together.”

The research shows that potential donors are also being misled. Children sometimes have to lie and tell false stories to raise money.

“Furthermore, patron-client relationships were used to gain children’s cooperation in portraying them as orphans for the benefit of donors, volunteers, and visitors, thereby perpetuating the false narratives of orphanhood presented in donor communications,” the study found.

According to the study, clientelism refers to “enduring, dyadic, asymmetrical relationships established between clients and patrons to facilitate mutually beneficial exchanges.” The research conducted for the study involved semi-structured interviews with 14 qualified social workers from Cambodia and 10 from Myanmar. The 24 social workers interviewed for the study were people who were currently or had previously supported the “transition or closure” of multiple residential care facilities.

Participants in the study noted that residential care facility directors often relied on their clientelistic networks to target children from lower-middle-class families. These types of clientelistic relationships can be formed in a number of ways, such as directors offering financial assistance in exchange for a parent admitting their child to a residential care facility.

“Numerous cases were cited where clientelism was manipulated to facilitate the sexual exploitation of children in RCFs. In every case involving sexual exploitation, directors were identified as perpetrators engaged in sexual crimes or the procurement of children for child sexual exploitation,” the study said.

“Clientelistic relationships were used by directors to target and manipulate children and their families. Sometimes this was a precursor to the establishment of RCFs specifically set up to facilitate sexual exploitation.”

The study recommends, among other things, raising awareness among families about human trafficking in orphanages and ensuring that child protection social workers are educated about the risks of clientelism in residential care facilities.