Chapter III
The children with no name in law
A child born to someone in trafficking or sexual exploitation has no legal category anywhere outside armed conflict. This is not an impression. It was established by searching the instruments themselves.
Within armed conflict there is a term, children born of war, and a research field behind it. Outside conflict there is nothing. We went looking in the primary texts rather than in the commentary, and the absence is structural.
- The Palermo Protocol contains no occurrence of the word born, and none of pregnant.
- UNODC's Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024 contains no occurrence of born. Pregnant appears once, inside a quotation from a survivor. The UN's principal data product on trafficking does not count these children at all.
- The Lanzarote Convention contains no occurrence of born, pregnant or offspring. Its subject is the child as a direct victim, and this child arrived afterwards.
- Directive 2011/36/EU mentions pregnancy only as a factor in assessing a victim's vulnerability.
The 2024 amendment
EU lawThe only place in international law that mentions the children of victims at all.
Article 1(13) replaces Article 14(1) of the 2011 directive and requires member states to provide access to education for child victims and the children of victims who receive assistance. It is a derived right, conditional on the mother being supported and qualified by national law. It does not make the child a victim in their own right. The phrase children of victims occurs once in the whole instrument and is never explained. Transposition deadline: 15 July 2026.
Source: Europaparlamentets och rådets direktiv (EU) 2024/1712 av 13 juni 2024 om ändring av direktiv 2011/36/EU, i kraft 14 juli 2024.
The nearest thing to a name is children born of trafficking, used by Rebecca Surtees at the NEXUS Institute in 2016 and deliberately modelled on the war term. It is one researcher's construction. UNODC, IOM, the EU and the Council of Europe have none of them taken it up. If a term is needed, this is the only defensible one to borrow, and it should be attributed to her rather than presented as established usage.
rather than being treated as attached or appendices of their trafficked mothers
Surtees separates three groups that get routinely merged: children left behind when a parent was trafficked, children trafficked alongside a parent, and children born out of the situation. It is the third that has neither a name nor a legal category.
The contrast with armed conflict is worth stating plainly. On the conflict side, the International Criminal Court, Colombia and two of three Bosnian jurisdictions have recognised these children as victims in their own right. Outside conflict, no instrument anywhere has. We found one organisation in the world whose explicit mandate covers this group: Prerana, founded in 1986 in the Kamathipura district of Mumbai.