Young victims of natural disasters targeted by child traffickers

CHILDREN isolated by this month’s devastating natural disasters in China and Burma will become the prey of child traffickers, a weekend conference in Cork was told.

A number of speakers at Saturday’s Combating child trafficking conference in University College Cork said the turmoil would allow unscrupulous dealers to target young boys and girls for slave labour and sexual exploitation.

Advocacy officer with UNICEF Ireland, Kieran O’Brien, said a lot of its work in the aftermath of such disasters was to quickly reunite children with their parents.