Australia must do more to stop child trafficking in developing nations says Kate van Doore, leading international child rights lawyer and Griffith Law School academic.
Ms van Doore, who will give evidence at the Parliamentary Inquiry into Establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia in Melbourne next week, has been working to abolish orphanage tourism and funding which she says encourages child exploitation.
“Many Australians visit orphanages in developing countries like Cambodia where many children are not orphans at all. In fact it enables form of modern slavery where children are kept in poor conditions in orphanages to profit from well-meaning donors and volunteers,’’ she said.
Ms van Doore coined the term ‘paper orphaning’ as the active recruitment of children into orphanages or residential care institutions in developing nations for the purpose of ongoing exploitation through orphanage tourism and funding.
Orphanage tourism includes volunteering at, or visiting, orphanages in developing countries. This is an increasingly
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