So Many Questions

How genuine is the government’s concern for the plight of our children? In Child Protection Week, Chris Barron asked Joan van Niekerk, president of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect . . .

Are unabridged birth certificates going to stop child trafficking? No. We have very porous land borders with our neighbours and this is where the greatest risk of trafficking actually happens. Not through the airports? There have been such incidents, but the greatest risk is through our land borders. That’s the area that we really need to tighten. So the new visa requirements won’t have much impact on trafficking? No, not at all. Are they based on any kind of research that you know of? No. And that is the problem in this country. We don’t know how many children are trafficked. Do we know how many are missing? We don’t know that either. In rural areas children go missing and they’re never reported. Sometimes there’s an attempt to report them, but the police are not necessarily responsive to parents. When I was at Childline we often got complaints that police would not accept a report of a missing child. So the actual number of missing children could be higher than we think? Yes, I do believe that. One of the problems we have is that once children are trafficked into prostitution they often become drugdependent, they’re often rewarded for their behaviour. So they are resistant to reporting they’ve been brought to an area. Because they’re rewarded and they’re controlled or intimidated. That is why research on the issue is so difficult. Children hide themselves or are hidden. If these visa requirements are not research-based, how do you explain them? Quite frankly, it’s closing the door after the horse has bolted. If we really want to prevent child trafficking we should be protecting children in the environment in which they’re being raised. So there’s no quick fix? No. In fairness to the home affairs minister, he always has expressed a genuine, I think, interest in the protection of children. Wouldn’t you expect a minister who is genuinely concerned to at least consult the professionals? Indeed. There should have been consultation on this, and there needs to be much broader consultation on the issue of children and trafficking generally in this country. Is most of the trafficking internal? Definitely. Are the police out of their depth? In some instances, yes. We did some research a couple of years ago and included police consultation in that research and also consultation with prosecutors. The police said quite bluntly that in some areas they were afraid of the people controlling the child prostitution and would not go into those areas. We also had a situation in one city where the prosecutor told us the brothel using children was right next door to a police station. I went to the person in charge of the police station and her concern was that police themselves were exploiting the children. Having sex with them or taking payments to look the other way? Both. What concerns me in this country is that the protection services respond only after the harm has been done. What we’re missing are effective primary prevention strategies. Because it’s not just trafficking that is the biggest problem for our children, it’s the fulfilment of basic needs. Where these needs are not fulfilled is where these children become vulnerable. The need for a stable family environment, for instance? And the need to have your basic requirements met. Food, clothing, quality education, quality healthcare. It’s the lack of these things that makes children so vulnerable to being sucked into sexual exploitation of any kind, including the sugar daddy situation. So it boils down to weak government? And the fact that we are putting our resources in the wrong place. I just read that Jacob Zuma is getting an increase of 5%. It’s just wicked. Not to mention R250-million on his private residence? Well, that’s beyond the pale. It’s just unbelievable that our politicians can look at their own needs above the needs of the children in this country. They all make a noise about children being the future, but where is the investment in this future? Are the relevant NGOs getting enough funding? Definitely not. There are NGOs that are reducing programmes, cutting back . . . So as the situation gets worse, funding for the organisations trying to deal with it is drying up? Which means they have to reduce their services to children. I am appalled at the workload they’re trying to carry, their constant battle just to get a minimum subsidy out of government for services that, by law, government should be providing. Is government simply not responsive? It is not responsive. But to me the real ethical issue is money they are wasting. The money that is going on feeding our parliamentarians in parliament when they are paid sufficiently . . . That budget should be coming to children whose nutritional needs are not being met.