La Strada Documentation Center

Shared empathy, a powerful weapon against child exploitation

Document number
2088
Date
2008
Title
Shared empathy, a powerful weapon against child exploitation
Author/publisher
Lorne Walters
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Media/News,
Keywords
Best Interests Principle, Child Victims of Trafficking, Separated Migrant Children, Unaccompanied minors, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Child protection systems, Corporate social responsibility, Multi-stakeholder partnerships: Child Trafficking, Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, Roma minority
Summary
"...During the first European Roma Summit, organized in September 2008 in Brussels by the EU Commission, I was approached by a few concerned Roma representatives to write an article (available here in French) about the psycho-sociological mechanisms and consequences inherent to the transgenerational transmission of violence against children, specifically with regard to the exploitation, involving or not trafficking, of Roma children, particularly vulnerable to these predatory practices including from within their own community. From our informal discussions, I learned that, not withstanding an unexpected, apparently politically driven backlash from all sides (including, oddly enough, certain NGOs) to keep such matters strictly "off the agenda", a small but determined number of forward looking Roma leaders have nonetheless been courageously transgressing prevailing pseudo-humanistic taboos tending to trivialize or even deny the "touchy" issue of Roma exploiting Roma children, involving or not organized crime..."
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