No Evidence 1 Million Children Trafficked in South Africa Yearly

According to Unicef, child trafficking is when children are recruited, transported, transferred, harbored or received for the purpose of exploitation. The children are often forced to work or are sexually exploited. 

The United Nations has counted and collected information on trafficking victims worldwide since 2003 and over this period, they have information on about 225,000 with a peak of 24,000 in one year. This includes children and adult victims. 

AfricanLII, an organization that distributes public legal information in Africa, reviewed the United Nations report and explained that while most African countries now have proper laws in place, some countries do not use these laws and report no investigations and no prosecutions. One study quoted by the UN report estimated that 357 million children lived in conflict areas in 2016. Every one of them would have been at risk of exploitation by armed groups or other traffickers.

Other available child trafficking data is based on research done in individual cities such as a study done in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, in the West African Region. In this 2016 study, 243 children who were working as prostitutes were counted. They found that most children in prostitution in the city were from Burkina Faso (63%) and Nigeria (30%), two countries that do not share borders.

The crime of human trafficking is complex and dynamic, taking place in a wide variety of contexts and difficult to detect according to Migration Data Portal. This can make tracking and counting of victims difficult. We do know that children make up almost a third of all human trafficking victims worldwide, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Additionally, women and girls make up the majority of human trafficking victims. 

In our investigation we found no support for the claim that one million children are trafficked each year in South Africa.