Thursday of last week, the 18th of October, saw the first European Union Anti-Trafficking Day. There seems to have been very little prep for this 'event' ... the press release coming out only three days before ... and it looks like much of the to do was centered around a Kevin Kline movie called "Trade" and "an experts meeting will be held in Brussels".

Whatever ...

One thing that at least appears to have coincided with the day was the presentation in Bern of a study titled "Switzerland and Child Trafficking" from the Swiss section of UNICEF that deserves a good, long look.

Any time I see UNICEF and trafficking in the same neighborhood I'm guessing international adoption can't be too far off the agenda since in much of the organization's public yammer adoption equals trafficking and trafficking equals adoption. It apparently matters little, if at all, to UNICEF that thousands upon thousands of the world's children have found love, safety and security in adoptive families, and ignoring positives of adoption continues to be policy.

With this in mind, I opened the article and was immediately struck by a line that says, "Most of the cases of trafficked children in Switzerland come from Brazil, Peru, Albania and Cameroon."

Hmmmm, says I ... those aren't countries known for large numbers of adoptions. Could they be talking about addressing actual trafficking for a change?

UNICEF Switzerland's director cites government research that suggests about 3,000 people are trafficked into the country every year ... children included, but not specified as to ratio ... and many end up in the sex or drug trade. The lack of data needs to be amended, and a national action plan on children's rights should be drawn up.

Müller says prevention and raising awareness are key elements for stopping the trade. "And this means we all have to fight it, because every single child who is trafficked is one case too many," she said.

Well, yeah.

And then there's the international adoption hook:

International adoption is another aspect of child trafficking which affects Switzerland. "It can be linked with trafficking as soon as children are sold in a way that a substantial amount of money is involved," explained Müller.

It is claimed in the article that "up to 600 children" are internationally adopted into Switzerland each year and "UNICEF believes there are some cases of illegal adoption."

Excuse me for noticing, but there is nothing of substance here. Nothing. There's not even a clear accusation, simply a drop of the words "International adoption" between paragraphs on trafficking in humans.

If we weren't so jaded and habituated to UNICEF's intentional slurring of trafficking-into-adoption this would stand out as a jarring inconsistency in the report, but because we've been trained to expect it many won't even bat an eyelash as they get closer and closer to accepting the slur as a true and real circumstance.

A sidebar to the story explains the UN "Palermo Protocol":

The UN Palermo Protocol describes the trafficking in persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by fraudulent means, for the purpose of exploitation.

This is defined as prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

The Protocol defines trafficking in children as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation, even if this does not involve any fraudulent means such as violence, deception or coercion. A child is defined as any person under 18 years of age.

Funny how they didn't manage to fit anything that smacks of adoption into that, isn't it?