By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- The egregious practice of trafficking of humans, especially women and children, is not new and continues to flourish, but there is a growing awareness of the problem and a strong will is emerging around the world to end the practice, according to participants in the General Assembly Special Session on Children.

At a May 10 meeting on countering child trafficking, a variety of people working on the problem, from top government officials and representatives of international organizations to children themselves, discussed how to make parents and children aware of the danger, rescue children from abuse, and rehabilitate the victims and find them a new place in society.

"Trafficking in persons for economic exploitation is a severe abuse of human rights on a global scale. Trafficking destroys childhood and leaves a legacy of psychological, social, and health problems as these children grow up," said Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

"Trafficking is not just a human rights issue, it is also a development issue," said Natsios, who heads the U.S. delegation to the special session. "Development problems -- including poverty, economic deterioration, population displacement, lack of female education and opportunity, discrimination, and low value placed on women and children -- conspire to provide a source of poor and vulnerable individuals upon whom traffickers prey."

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 1.2 million children below the age of 18 are victims of trafficking, but because it is a hidden problem it is difficult to trace and counter, said Frans Roselaers, director of ILO's international program on elimination of child labor.

A new report by ILO on child trafficking and efforts to combat it entitled "Unbearable to the Human Heart," says that while most children continue to be trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation, a number of recent studies in Asia and Central and West Africa indicate that children are very often trafficked for other forms of labor including domestic service, armed conflict, service industries such as restaurants and bars, and various forms of hazardous work in factories, agriculture, construction, fishing, and begging.

Children trafficked to work in factories or domestic service may later be forced into prostitution or children trafficked for prostitution may be resold more than once, the ILO report says.

Some studies have estimated the number of children trafficked In West and Central Africa at 200,000 a year, yet for many parents in the region "the idea of harming a child is alien to reality," said Rima Salah, regional director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"Most African families believe that children must be pampered and given the best start in life. Yet those same children are exposed to high risk and are in difficult situations more than any other group in society," Salah said. "Lack of vocational training and educational opportunities, inadequate or non-existent protection, political and economic problems, the presence of armed conflict in some of the countries, and most importantly the families' lack of knowledge of the risks involved are responsible."

"I still remember the eyes of fathers and mothers. They were full of sorrow and despair when they learned about the fate of their daughter or son who they had sent to seek education, new opportunities, and a better life," she said.

Many of the participants, from Natsios, Salah, and Roselaers to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, talked of the haunting stories they heard from children rescued from their degrading servitude and the deep humility and degradation the victims described. Yet, they said, they saw a willingness to try to build a new life, to begin life again.

Robinson said that her office is drawing up principles and guidelines to help states draft anti-trafficking measures. They include not subjecting children to criminal procedures for their activities, protecting the rights and interests of child victims during court cases against traffickers, establishing programs for re-education of victims and locating family members, and providing care arrangements if victims cannot be returned home.

"The United States government is increasing its efforts to combat this trade in human beings," Natsios said. "The United States Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000 which calls for U.S. government efforts to eliminate trafficking as well as prevention, protection and prosecution at source, transit, and destination sites including the United States."

USAID anti-trafficking efforts focus on prevention and protection, and on addressing development-related causes of trafficking, the administrator said.

For example, in Bangladesh USAID is supporting the Bangladesh National Women's Lawyers Association in providing to trafficking victims legal aid, rehabilitation and repatriation support, he said.

"In Angola USAID has had a 2-year partnership with Street Girls Center, which is a local NGO providing basic literacy, vocational training, and rehabilitation to abused women," Natsios said. "In Liberia we support a similar program through a local faith-based program."

USAID support for anti-trafficking activities in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon and Guinea are through a sustainable tree crop program, the administrator said. "The program addresses forced child trafficking labor in West Africa's tree crop industry. It brings together cocoa producers and processors, labor unions, governments, and civil society groups to ensure small producers get a fair price for their harvest and the crop is not cultivated through child labor."

"We hope the international community will continue to ratchet up the scale of programming so we can begin to make a dent in this horrific blight on our civilization," Natsios said.