A report from Save the Children has found that one out of every three victims of human trafficking in Italy are children, with many being forced into the fields for gruelling farming work and others being sold into sexual slavery.
There were officially 757 new cases of trafficking and exploitation identified in 2021, according to the Save the Children charity, which found that one-third of victims were under the age of 18. The report, “Little Invisible Slaves”, also noted that there was more of a prevalence for victims to be females, who comprised 168 cases compared to 96 males.
The main country of origin of victims was Nigeria at 46.7 per cent, followed by Pakistan (8.5 per cent), Morocco (6.8 per cent), Brazil (4.5 per cent) and the Ivory Coast (3.3 per cent). Among the forms of exploitation, sexual was the most commonly recorded, comprising 38 per cent of victims, while labour represented 27.3 per cent.
The report, which mostly focussed on the agricultural regions in the Latina and Ragusa provinces, found that many children began working the fields at the age of 12 to 13, receiving around just 20 or 30 euros per day in recompense.
Save the Children noted that it can be full-time work, but more often than not it consists of part-time work, with some children being brought into the trade as young as 10 years old to “lend a hand” during the harvest. Typically the children are given the tasks of either picking and packaging fruits and vegetables, while others are made to spray plants with pesticides, often without protection such as masks.
The trafficked children in these regions, the report claimed, all suffer from a lack of education, as well as basics needed for a full childhood such as green areas to play or sports centres. They are almost all isolated from other children as well, with the exception of when their family accommodations are close to one another.
It is the isolation in such farming regions that enables traffickers to more easily exploit children sexually, the report said, with abuse being easier to hide and “blend in better” in the countryside.
One instance cited was that of a little girl who was sold by her parents to her mother-in-law in exchange for 5,000 euros, a turkey, and some alcohol. The girl was ultimately sold to a child prostitution ring. While the mother-in-law was apprehended by the authorities, the parents who sold their child were said to have “disappeared”.
Many other parents, often migrants themselves dependent on exploitative employers to remain in the country, are too afraid to speak out about abuses for fear of losing owed wages or being kicked out of the country.
Speaking to the charity, lawyer Liliana Battaglia warned because of the isolated nature of the children that “the cases of sexual exploitation of minors are undoubtedly many more than those ascertained from a procedural point of view. It is very difficult to bring them out. Who goes to look for the children who live in the greenhouses or who work in the flower picking?”
The charity pointed to mass migration as a principal factor in lowering the standards and wages of farm workers in Italy, with the entrance of Romania and Bulgaria into the European Union in 2007 being noted as having “marked a setback and also a progressive worsening of wages and working conditions.”
“Then there was the Arab Spring and a new wave of mass immigration from North Africa of people willing to work cheaply. Exploitation has gradually appealed to the immediate needs and hardships of the most vulnerable sections of the territory: the North African community, then Eastern Europeans, and finally Central African migrants, in a spiral of progressive impoverishment of working conditions and violation of rights,” the report added.
Raffaela Milano, the Director of Save the Children’s Italy-Europe programs, said: “We wanted to give a voice to children and adolescents who live every day in a real cone of shadow, suffering very serious violations in their access to health and education.
“This report tells us that workers exploited in agriculture, as well as being direct victims of this condition, are also parents, mothers and fathers of ‘invisible’ children who grow up in our country deprived of essential rights.”
Milano called on the government to immediately “recognise the existence of these children” so that they are all registered as being residents of the country to ensure that they are provided with healthcare, access to education and other services essential for their development.
Arguing that the exploitation of migrant children has been “ignored”, he went on to call for the government to extend its programme to crack down on illegal hiring practices in the agricultural sector to add in a specific initiative to protect children from being exploited.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.