Orphanage Trafficking and the Sustainable Development Goals

This article examines the intersections of orphanage trafficking, a form of child trafficking and modern slavery, and the sale and sexual exploitation of children with reference to the Sustainable Development Goals. It outlines the contextual challenges of these intersections highlighting the special protection needs of children residing in institutions and outlines how orphanage tourism and funding undermine care reform efforts of national authorities. To address these issues, we make recommendations to address both the in-country and external causal factors that drive and enable orphanage trafficking suggesting that governments of host and sending countries should work in tandem, under the framework of international cooperation, to implement practical measures to combat orphanage trafficking.