Macau Daily News - Legal Instruction
Does Poverty grant the Rights to Child Trafficking?

NO. 464 - 2008.06.29 News

Brothers of age 6 and 8 in a town of North Greece were lost. Police had no trace of them and their corpses were finally found in a lift of an unoccupied new building. The father of the brothers was arrested. He and his wife admitted that a married couple with no children wanted to adopt their sons. However, some people got the wind of the transaction. The father hid his sons in the lift to cover up his bad deeds. Unfortunately the brothers died of dehydration.

According to statistics, North Greece is a poverty-stricken area. Selling one’s children is a common practice over there. People believe that giving their sons or daughters away to a wealthy family will give their children a better life and the parents can also receive money in return. And hence selling children is a win-win situation to the people in this area.

In fact, such an action already constitutes the crime of trafficking. The commitment of trafficking happens when a party receives money or other means of return through the action of giving away, transferring or obtaining underage children. The offender will be imprisoned for a maximum of 5 years. Take the news above as an example, if the Greek parents had successfully sold their sons to the couple, both parties will be sued for having committed the crime of trafficking.

In recent years, transnational adoption becomes a trend. Since the birth rate in developed countries goes down, more and more people are interested in adopting children. This phenomenon boosts the business. From some aspects, translational adoption is a good deed. It can lift the orphans in depressed counties out of poverty and provide them with a better off life. However, being driven by benefits, the charity nature of adoption deteriorates and has become a money-making business activity.

Some traffickers buy children from poor families and trade them at high price to those who want to adopt children in the developed counties. For example, in Cambodia, some poor parents will sell their children at USD 20 to 50. They believe that they are doing the right thing. Even the children being sold are very much looking forward to living in a developed country……

The primary objective of adoption is to give the children a normal, healthy and warm family and let them live under a safe and comfortable environment. However, life is not always perfect. Many children are being mistreated after being adopted. Some might even be abused. Parents who sold their children could not receive a penny. Buyers paid for thousands but could not receive the children. A lot of problems thus arose.

To avoid the nature of transnational adoption activities changes, many countries signed the Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Inter-country Adoption which was adopted in Hague. The Convention lays down a global standard on child adoption. Being a region which the Convention applies to, Macao SAR will definitely abide by its content.

(Note: With reference to Article 2, Law of Combat the Crime of Trafficking in Persons.)
(Source by DSAJ)

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