Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

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Technical issues and challenges
One of the key issues and challenges for the research was how we classify miss-
ing children. Children go missing for many reasons. In South Asia, many are ab-
ducted and put into forced labor. Others are persuaded to leave home by somebody 
they know, and are subsequently exploited in the sex trade or sold to work as domes-
tic help. Some simply run away from home, or are forced to leave because of difficult 
circumstances such as domestic violence or the death of a parent.
The issue of missing children is also linked to, although not limited to, child 
trafficking. This is a highly secretive and clandestine trade, with root causes that are 
varied and often complex. Poverty is a major contributor but the phenomenon is also 
linked to a range of other “push” (supply side) and “pull” (demand side) factors. The 
push factors include poor socio-economic conditions; structural discrimination based 
on class, caste and gender; domestic violence; migration; illiteracy; natural disasters 
such as floods; and enhanced vulnerability due to lack of awareness. The pull fac-
tors include the effects of the free market economy, and in particular economic re-
forms that generate a demand for cheap labor; urbanization; and a demand for young 
girls for sexual exploitation and marriage. Trafficking is a complex phenomenon, but 
many of the children end up in the leisure industry that could include pornography, 
with an international market via technology.
A UNICEF report in 2008 noted that there is a lack of synergy and coordination 
between and among the action plans and the many actors involved in anti-trafficking 
initiatives in the region, including governments, UN agencies and NGOs. According 
to the report the diversity of their mandates and approaches makes coordination at 
national and international levels a challenge.
Attempts to address cross-border child trafficking have proved to be particularly 
problematic because of a lack of common definitions and understandings, and the ex-
istence of different perspectives on the issue. For a start there is no commonly agreed 
definition of trafficking (UNODC, 2011). Furthermore, the definition of a “child” 
can vary as has been noted already. This has an impact on how the police, courts and 
other stakeholders address a child’s rights, needs, vulnerability and decision making.
Child trafficking is often seen in the context of labor or sexual exploitation, with 
the latter focusing primarily on women and girls, but increasingly can include boys. 
In some cases it is approached as a migration issue or as a sub-category of human 
trafficking. Furthermore, authorities often see it as a law enforcement issue, and 
their responses are thus primarily focused on criminal prosecution and tighter border 
controls.
Worldwide, the most widely accepted definition of trafficking is the one provided 
by the UN Protocol on Trafficking (Palermo Protocol). It defines “trafficking in per-
sons” as
the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by 
means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of 
fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of 
the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person 
having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

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