OUR
WORK

The overall scope and ambition of our international work is to end child trafficking and sexual exploitation through enhanced cross-national coordination and collaboration in the fight against trafficking and sexual exploitation of children.

Our work is focused around three areas:

1. Building networks and empowering grassroots organizations working in this field
ChildX researches, selects and supports grassroots organizations dedicated to protecting children from trafficking and exploitation to scale their impact and sustainability. We build networks of organizations who complement each other to foster stronger national and international coordination and collaboration in this field, identifying synergies across nations and borders and facilitating joint advocacy to create durable solutions.

2. Awareness raising
ChildX seeks to increase knowledge about child trafficking in all public sectors in society, including on how to prevent and protect children, how to take action against those who abuse children as well as how to identify and support victims. ChildX does advocacy with key actors in the field both internationally and in Sweden through communication campaigns, events, issuing reports and by meeting and providing advice to policy makers.

3. Advocacy
ChildX lobbies decision-makers to improve legislation, policy and practice to prevent and protect children from trafficking and exploitation and to implement tougher actions against those who abuse children. We seek to ensure a child rights based approach in policy development and legislation, working with grassroots organizations and supporting them to have their voices heard in decision making processes related to child trafficking and child protection.

Given the moveable nature of child trafficking, more coordination and collaboration is necessary to identify best practices and find durable solutions to end child trafficking.

The importance of consulting with civil society organizations when setting policy and practice is well documented. It is however rare that grassroots organizations working on the ground have the opportunity to take part in such consultations. Their policy positions are also increasingly questioned: researchers challenge their evidence base and policymakers question the feasibility of their recommendations.

ChildX seeks to shrink the gap between policy makers and grassroots organizations by enabling grassroots organizations to have their voices heard in key decision-making processes at national and international level. This is done by supporting grassroots organizations to improve their skills to develop and sustain communication channels with decision-makers, deliver clear messages and propose constructive and sustainable solutions instead of problem statements.

ChildX is a firm believer in the power of collaboration including in terms of advocacy, we believe that our joint voices are stronger than our individual ones. We therefore work together with our network to identify best practices, preven­tative measures and protective mechanisms against child trafficking from a child rights perspective. This work provides the basis for our advocacy initiatives that can either be done together at regional and international level or in a coordinated manner targeting national governments and intergovernmental organizations through national governments.