The title of our blog has two curious inclusions – the Euro € and the Dollar $. They are there for a purpose. They serve to remind you that in our generation children have become commodities which can be purchased, used and sold. It is the first time in history that children have been used in such a widespread and callous fashion.
Children growing up in poor communities of the world can now be sold to criminal groups and trafficked to a foreign country where they are kept in slavery and used as sexual objects for as long as possible. Then they are discarded.
In some countries of the world children have a monetary value which enables them to be purchased, hired and sold in much the same fashion as any other commodity at the supermarket. You have to go far back in history to see children used for slavery in such a callous fashion, and never has it been on the scale we see today.
In many ways tourism and the globalised world have created much of this situation. In Thailand during the 1990’s we found that It was the coming of foreign paedophiles willing to pay big money for child sex who created the opportunity for criminals to begin trafficking children. Still today there are well-organised criminal rings trafficking children within Asia, Central America and Eastern Europe.
Children are subjects not objects. They need to be respected as subjects of affection and not objects used for monetary gain or sexual pleasure.
Ron O'Grady
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