End Child Exploitation - UNICEF’s previous campaign

UNICEF UK ran the End Child Exploitation campaign from January 2003 to the end of 2005. The campaign drew attention to the shocking scale of child exploitation globally and called for the world to take action and protect children abused through commercial sexual exploitation, trafficking and child labour.

The campaign raised £7.2 million for UNICEF’s work to protect children from violence, exploitation and abuse worldwide. The campaign also led to our campaigners lobbying parliament for legislation which would provide a guaranteed level of protection to the child victims of trafficking.

This long-demanded legislation has in 2007 finally been given the green light, as a result of the UK’s decision to sign the Council of Europe Convention on Trafficking in Human Beings. We are now asking the government to sign and ratify the Convention urgently and to urge other governments to follow suit.

Reports published during the End Child Exploitation campaign

Three reports were launched during the campaign:

• End Child Exploitation - the faces of exploitation, the first of the three reports, published in January 2003, gives a general introduction to the three overlapping aspects of child exploitation – the worst forms of child labour, child trafficking and the use of children in the commercial sex trade. Each of these aspects is examined in turn, with discussion of the root causes of the problem as well as an assessment of the scale of the abuse based on latest statistics. The report ends with a description of some of UNICEF’s ongoing programmes to combat child exploitation.
• End Child Exploitation - stop the traffic!, the second of the End Child Exploitation campaign reports published in July 2003, focuses on the horrific issue of child trafficking. It begins with an introduction to the problem itself , the report then goes on to examine known patterns of child trafficking in various areas around the world, including in the UK. It concludes with a call to stop the traffic - through international and regional initiatives, through targeted intervention in countries that are key sources for the traffickers, and through the formulation of strong legislative measures in destination countries such as our own.
• The third of our End Child Exploitation campaign reports, End Child Exploitation - Child labour today exposes the exploitation of children as workers. The report explains the nature and scale of the problem and the growing international concern to eradicate the worst abuses.