The Children’s Rights Alliance is the Irish partner for The Body Shop and ECPAT International  (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) global campaign entitled: ‘Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People’.  The aims of the three-year campaign are to:

• Raise awareness of the 1.2 million children trafficked globally on an annual basis.
• Influence governments worldwide to implement stricter anti-trafficking policies and legislation.
• Empower ordinary people to make a difference.

Since 2000, 509 separated children have gone missing from State care in Ireland with only 58 accounted for – it is feared that many of the missing children have been trafficked.  Between January and June 2011, 7 separated children went missing and 5 remain unaccounted.  Read Case Studies

The petition, the largest ever collected by The Body Shop globally [6.8 million signatures in 50 countries], was launched in July 2010 and submitted to the UN in September 2011. Over 165,000 people in Ireland signed the petition, calling on Government to:

1. Identify child victims and enforce laws to prosecute child traffickers;
2. Provide child victims with the support they need to escape their traffickers and rebuild their lives;
3. Implement the Irish Government’s National Action Plan to Prevent and Combat Trafficking in Human Beings 2009-2012; and
4.  Ratify the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

   

But, on 21 July 2011, following the petition handover to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald TD, a Government official gave the Alliance news that 'positive steps' would now be taken to ratify the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

Ireland is one of only three countries in the EU not to have ratified the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

A handcream,Soft Hands, Kind Heart, was launched to help raise money to fund support activities aimed at improving the lives of separated children and 'aged-out minors', a group at high risk of trafficking.  All monies raised by the sale of the handcream will fund three projects overseen by the Alliance.