Gaps in New Zealand’s laws are enabling child trafficking

Imagine a child in New Zealand – your daughter or son, your neighbour, your niece or nephew, cousin, or grandchild – being forced into labour or sold for profit. Despite the obvious injustice, if they cannot prove that they were coerced or deceived by someone to get into this situation, under New Zealand’s current law their trafficker may never be brought to justice.

New Zealand’s law is not protecting children against trafficking

All forms of child trafficking in New Zealand should be illegal, but they are not. Gaps in New Zealand’s Crimes Act are allowing child traffickers to slip through the cracks and go unpunished for their crimes, or receive lesser punishments that don’t align with the severity of their crime.

In New Zealand’s Crimes Act, human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transfer, transportation, or receipt of a person for the purpose of exploitation, using the means of coercion and/or deception.

This definition is applied regardless of the age of the victim.

However, international laws (such as the Palermo Protocol) recognise that due to their increased vulnerability, children can be trafficked without traffickers coercing or deceiving them into an exploitative situation.

Why is a clear definition needed?

The absence of a clear legal distinction means traffickers can avoid prosecution by arguing that children were not coerced, even though international law acknowledges that children are inherently vulnerable and cannot consent to exploitation. This loophole allows some traffickers to evade justice altogether.

Current estimates indicate that worldwide, one in three of all detected trafficking victims are children. Furthermore, when children are trafficked, they are subjected to violence at a rate almost two times higher than adults.

In New Zealand, cases often remain hidden due to legal loopholes and underreporting, making it difficult to capture the full extent of this crisis.

Where is child trafficking happening?

Human trafficking is a crime that is being exacerbated by other national and international crises – financial instability, growing divisions between lower and higher income countries, conflict, climate change, natural disasters. In any situation where children are vulnerable and are looking for better opportunities, traffickers are likely to be there with false promises of hope, and intentions to exploit them for their own profit.

Trafficking is commonly done by people that the victims know. Child trafficking is not strangers in vans abducting children off the street, it is often facilitated by family friends, partners, community leaders, trusted family members. It is also increasingly occuring online throuh children’s growing access to the internet. Traffickers are targeting children through social media, games, and other digital platforms where they build trust before exploiting them.

The more that we can educate ourselves and others around us about what human trafficking looks, like the better protected our communities will be from this crime.

We can make change now

As an immediate, decisive step to protect our children, a definition of child trafficking needs to be added to New Zealand’s Crimes Act, legally clarifying that child trafficking can happen without the means of coercion and/or deception.

This would be simple yet highly effective change to make to our legislation to protect children in our communities, ensuring that there are no loopholes for traffickers to exploit.

Introducing a clear legal definition of child trafficking that is distinct from the trafficking of adults has been a key recommendation for the New Zealand Government in the Trafficking in Persons report since 2017.

However, this is only one of a number of legislative improvements New Zealand needs for effective protection against human trafficking.

New Zealand still does not have legislation in place to protect against slavery and exploitation in supply chains of New Zealand businesses.

Though the New Zealand Government has made it clear that introducing modern slavery legislation is not one of their current priorities, it remains an essential piece of legislation that is essential not only for our country but for those potentially suffering from unseen exploitation in the supply chains of New Zealand businesses.

Modern slavery legislation would help ensure that businesses’ supply chains are free from exploitation. Without it, New Zealand risks enabling the trafficking of children for labour in industries ranging from agriculture to manufacturing.

Now is the time to act. Without legislative change, New Zealand’s most vulnerable – children – remain at risk. Take a few minutes in your day to write letter to your MP, calling for an amendment to be made to New Zealand’s Crimes Act so that children are protected from traffickers, and for wider action, such as introducing modern slavery legislation, to be prioritised.