Trafficked children could become terrorists, specialists warn

Saudi and Yemeni authorities have agreed to make a more concerted effort to crack down on child trafficking between the two countries. This comes as child specialists in Yemen have warned that trafficked children are at risk of becoming terrorists as they might be lured into Islamic extremist groups on either side of the border.

“Trafficked children face a lot of problems. But the problem of child trafficking has seen a new trend, and that is when these children are adopted by terrorist or extremist groups,” Colonel Ali Awad Farwa, the general manager of the General Administration of Women and Juvenile Affairs at the Yemeni Ministry of Interior, told IRIN.

Farwa said trafficked children are usually teenagers, an age where their minds can be manipulated easily.

Jamal al-Shami, the Chairman of Democracy School, a local NGO dealing with child issues, said that trafficked children often feel a lot of resentment towards their own society and are susceptible to joining or forming terrorist groups or criminal gangs.

Trafficked children undergo tremendous hardships, and would take revenge against their society, which they think is responsible for their plights.

“Trafficked children undergo tremendous hardships, and would take revenge against their society, which they think is responsible for their plights," al-Shami said.

According to al-Shami, children who are trafficked to Saudi Arabia are often subjected to sexual harassment, insults, beatings, prostitution and are sometimes killed. He said over the past few months, a 16-year-old Yemeni child who was trafficked to Saudi Arabia returned home with HIV/AIDS.

What is more worrying is when these children go missing and no-one reports it, said specialists.

“Some children are missing when they are smuggled across the borders, but their parents don't report this,” said Farwa, adding that only three cases of missing children were reported in 2006.

Consent of parents

Farwa said that in most cases, children are trafficked with the consent of their parents, and for this reason no reliable data was available on the number of children smuggled each year into Saudi Arabia from Yemen.

Last year, Saudi authorities seized 900 trafficked Yemeni children, including girls.

“We are still waiting to receive these children from Saudi authorities,” Farwa said, adding that last year Yemeni authorities stopped 831 children from being smuggled to Saudi Arabia. Last month, security authorities prevented 27 children from being trafficked to Saudi Arabia, he said.

Photo: Muhammad al-Jabri/IRIN

Half of Yemen's 20 million inhabitants are under 15.

Children who are repatriated from Saudi Arabia are often sent to a reception centre at Haradh border area, 400km west of the capital, Sana'a. Another centre will be established in another part of Sana'a governorate, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs. During the first half of 2006, the Haradh centre received 457 children who had been trafficked to Saudi Arabia.

Child trafficking is mainly associated with poverty. About 43 percent of Yemen's 20 million inhabitants, half of whom are children under 15, live below the poverty line. Almost all children who are trafficked go to oil-rich Saudi Arabia to make money.

Children provide cheap labour, and that is why they can find job opportunities easily in Saudi Arabia,” said Farwa.

Most trafficked children come from the particularly poor northwestern governorates of Hajjah, al-Mahweet, Amran, and Saada.

“Increasing poverty, unemployment and inflation are among the factors that contribute to child trafficking. If we look at these factors, the child of today is more at risk than the child of yesterday,” Naseem-ur-Rehman, head of information and communication for UNICEF in Yemen, said.

“Very often in countries like Yemen, parents don't realise the risk to which a child is exposed when he leaves his country across the border,” Ur-Rehman said, warning that because of this ignorance, a child is exposed to a life of exploitation.

Ali Saleh Abdullah, Yemen’s Deputy Minister of Social Affairs, said that his ministry was making efforts to curb children trafficking. “We are trying to improve the status of poor families living in border areas in an effort to reduce child trafficking,” he said.

Yemeni officials have held meetings about child trafficking with their Saudi counterparts over the few past months. Farwa said the two sides have signed an agreement in which Saudi authorities have agreed to officially hand back trafficked children to Yemen.

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