New Recommendations for Assisting Trafficked Children
An IOM study being presented today to Yemeni government local
authorities in Hajja governorate will recommend a series of actions
be taken to help child victims of trafficking in the country.
The report, presented by an IOM counter-trafficking expert to
Yemen’s Technical Committee to Combat Trafficking and
Smuggling in the country, is highlighting the need for
comprehensive rehabilitation assistance to be given to child
trafficking victims currently living in reception centres. Family
tracing, the provision of skills training, livelihood assistance
and employment opportunities to parents, monitoring the livelihood
and reintegration assistance given to children and parents
respectively and the creation of mobile medical teams to visit
vulnerable communities were among other needs identified by IOM.
Although Hajjah governorate is source of an important numbers of
trafficked children, there are now signs that victims are
increasingly coming from further inland. Trafficked children are
largely from single-headed households or are orphans. However, poor
rural families whose income can be increased by an average of 50 to
60 percent by the small amounts of money that children lucky enough
to return with some earnings, voluntarily send their children to
work out side the country.
As part of a larger, multi-pronged UNICEF counter-trafficking
programme, IOM has been carrying out an information campaign in
Yemen and training border guards to identify and assist trafficked
victims and personnel at Yemeni government-UNICEF funded reception
centres for trafficked children in Haradh and Sana’a.
But with children being re-trafficked on a regular basis, the IOM
study examined the feasibility of providing appropriate return and
reintegration assistance for child victims in Hajja, Hodeida and Al
Mahwit Governorates, it proposed livelihood assistance schemes for
their parents and development projects for their communities.
The counter-trafficking programme also includes drafting a
National Action Plan to combat child trafficking, proposing terms
of reference for the newly founded National Inter-Ministerial
Committee Against Child Trafficking and reviewing and commenting on
existing legislation.
For more information on the project, please contact:
Ricardo Cordero or Fiona El Assiuty
IOM Cairo
E-mail:
"mailto:MRFCairo@iom.int" target="" title=
"">MRFCairo@iom.int