193 – Child Institutionalization and Human Trafficking

This episode is brought to you by Vanguard University and the Global Center for Women and Justice, who offer an incredible anti-human trafficking certificate. Whether you're a frontline responder, a social worker, in the ministry, a healthcare provider, or simply a community member who wants to help, this program is built for you. Head over to gcwj.org/ahtc to take the next step and apply today. ---Chad Salitan joins Dr. Sandie Morgan and Dave Stachowiak again, to further discuss the TIP Report and its special topics. Chad serves in the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons office as a Deputy Coordinator for the Reports & Political Affairs Section to lead the U.S. government’s diplomatic engagement on sex trafficking and forced labor. Chad and Sandie discuss the many challenges that need to be restored in this special topic of child institutionalization. Key Points Lumos estimates that 80 to 90 percent of children in these institutions actually have at least one living family member, oftentimes even a living parent. We know that there is no substitute for a family setting in the growth and safety of a child. Voluntourism, or volunteer tourism, is where someone visits a country and pays to go volunteer at the orphanage for a very short time frame. While the tourists think their money is going towards helping the children, it actually ends up in the pockets of directors. Voluntourism additionally leads to child finders, meaning people go into local, impoverished villages and incentivize children to go into these institutions for more tourist opportunities. Ill-managed institutions can consist of institutional complicity, where the actual organization itself that’s running the institution is guilty in organizing or somehow facilitating the trafficking of the residents in the institution. In regards to donations, make sure the organizations are legitimate by informing yourself on their credentials, policies, and ultimately what’s really happening there. As a result of a lack of family environment, children leaving or aging out of institutions have increased vulnerability because they are starved for attention, lack a social support network, do not have social maturities such as trust appropriateness, and overall fall short in managing risk. Resources TIP Report – PDF TIP Report – More Resources 192 – What is the Trafficking in Persons Report 161 – Orphan Care in Tanzania with Brandon Stiver 132 – Ensure Justice: Principle and Practice Lumos Organization  Disability Rights International  Charity Navigator Are you enjoying the show? If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to subscribe or rate the podcast on iTunes by clicking here. Click here for FAQs about podcasts and how to subscribe. Haven’t been receiving our newsletter? Visit our homepage to join today. Contact us with questions, comments, or suggestions at [email protected]. Transcript Dave: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 193, Child Institutionalization and Human Trafficking. Production Credits: [00:00:10] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Dave: [00:00:30] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak. Sandie: [00:00:35] And my name is Sandie Morgan. Dave: [00:00:37] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. On the last episode of 192, we talked about the Trafficking in Persons Report with our guests Chad Salitan and he is returning here on this episode. Chad is in the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons office as the deputy coordinator for the reports and political affairs section. He works with the management team to lead the U.S. government’s diplomatic engagement on sex trafficking and forced labor. If you didn’t listen to episode 192, it’s a great starting point to the Trafficking in Persons Report. And Sandie, we’re going to dive in a bit on one of the key topics in the report here. Sandie: [00:01:22] Welcome back, Chad. Chad: [00:01:24] Thank you. Sandie: [00:01:25] We are looking at some of the special topics and I’m sure we could do an entire series of podcasts, but one of them that particularly impacted me, everybody remember my background in pediatric nursing, is the impact on children because the hallmark of global efforts to end human trafficking has been a trend too. And you all know me well enough, I’m going to use air quotes for rescue, “rescue” and house survivors in shelters. And for children, that’s often a fairly permanent placement. I have friends that I dearly love who make visits to orphanages overseas regularly. And so, Chad I think this special topic is so, helpful. So, maybe we can start with kind of a summary of how that became a special topic and then we’ll talk through that report. Chad: [00:02:24] Great. Yes, I think we could spend a lot of time on this. How it really came to the attention of this office in earnest a few years ago. We place a heavy emphasis when we’re looking at foreign government efforts on what’s the government response to official complicity. Meaning, how are they enforcing the trafficking law when it’s government officials that are the traffickers? We consider that particularly heinous and since the Trafficking in Persons Report is a judgment of government efforts, we really want to take a special lens when it comes to what’s happening there. And we sometimes use the word orphanages other times you know child institutions, but basically, places where children are now wards of the state, the parental rights have been taken away or anything along those lines. You know a lot of those are publicly run and there are a whole host of problems that we’re going to get into on this podcast about the problem with placing a lot of children in public institutions. What particularly we’re seeing in our research was the worst of the worst that we can get into in depth, but we are seeing basically orphanages that were turning into brothels being run by state employees. So, that’s really what kicked it off for us here and since then we’ve only snowballed in terms of our problems that we’ve collected with child institutionalization. Sandie: [00:03:48] Wow. Well, let’s just start off with how that institutionalization increases vulnerability for these kids. Chad: [00:03:56] Yes absolutely. So, you know what we’re seeing in the research, and I’ll give a hat tip to the NGO Lumos out of London that’s do...