EDITORIAL - Young victims

Some foreigners settle in the Philippines to train terrorists. Others come here for sex trafficking. In both activities, children are among the victims, according to local law enforcement agencies and their foreign partners in fighting transnational crimes.

A report said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation is monitoring several US citizens for engaging in child sex trafficking in the Philippines. Other governments have also coordinated with Philippine law enforcers in busting international child prostitution and cyberporn rings with operations in this country.

Lucrative profits from the illicit activity, however, have made sex rings continue to proliferate. Human traffickers also find an abundance of young victims, particularly in developing countries such as the Philippines, who are offered by parents themselves for sexual exploitation. The Internet has been a boon for sex traffickers, making it easier to conceal operations and money trails. Public vigilance can alert law enforcers to suspicious activities especially involving children.

Children not only suffer from sexual exploitation but are also used as mules by drug traffickers who are aware that minors can escape prosecution in this country. In conflict areas, children face another type of exploitation: they are recruited by armed groups as lookouts, couriers and even as soldiers. Photographs and video have shown children bearing rifles and undergoing training with adult gunmen in the jungles of Mindanao. 

So far, no Filipino child has been deployed as a suicide bomber, like the girl who blew herself up in a market in Nigeria. And so far, homegrown terrorists have not set up a contingent of child soldiers like the one shown in a video supposedly of underage recruits undergoing training by the Islamic State.

Local governments, through the barangay network, can prevent various forms of child exploitation. The campaign against child abusers must be intensified especially because young victims of human traffickers and armed thugs, if not rescued from exploitation, can grow up to become exploiters of children themselves.