Combating Child Trafficking for Labour and Sexual Exploitation : Conference Proceedings - Boole 1, University College Cork, 17 May 2008

These conference proceedings reflect the diversity and scope of the papers presented at the 'Combating Child Trafficking for Labour and Sexual Exploitation' Conference which took place in University College Cork on May 17th 2008.

This conference was a response to the growing concern about child trafficking and child labour in both the minority and the majority world contexts and featured speakers from Ireland, the UK and India.

It evolved as part of an ongoing collaboration between the Hope Foundation (based in Cork and India) and the Department of Applied Social Studies, UCC.

Increasingly, children are being bought and sold within and across national borders.

Children are trafficked for a variety of reasons including domestic work, sexual exploitation, marriage, illicit adoption and begging (Rafferty, 2007).

The nature of trafficking implies that it is flexible and changing.

As soon as those working to combat it come to think they understand it, further layers of complexity are often revealed. Because of this the greater the co-operation and openness among organisations and academia, the greater the possibility of coming together in developing workable responses that have a chance of succeeding.