A/HRC/19/64 that come in the way of the children‘s enjoyment of rights and fundamental freedoms. A common feature of child trafficking is that young girls and boys are often trafficked from rural communities to urban areas. Traffickers are motivated by financial gain, and sometimes lure young girls into sex work on false pretenses. Children are vulnerable to being trafficked if they are poor or because of a high rate of unsafe migration, weak law enforcement, insufficient household income, ill-treatment and physical abuse at home and in the community, parental alcoholism, lack of food, and forced marriages. When children without birth registration and identity proof are trafficked tracing them becomes extremely difficult. In most of the countries in the region, birth registration is still difficult to obtain as seen by the fact that 36% of South Asia's children are unregistered at birth. The governments of South Asia have committed themselves through ratification of the SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution( 2002) to tackle the issue. As part of a coordinated regional response, the governments have also committed to implement a SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) for effectively implementing the SAARC Convention. Corporal Punishment Violent punishment of children is now recognised as a human rights violation. The Committee on the Rights of the Child and other human rights Treaty Bodies systematically recommend prohibition of corporal punishment and other humiliating forms of punishment in all settings including the home/family. Explicit prohibition was also recommended by the UNSG‘s Study on Violence against Children. South Asian States committed to prohibiting all corporal punishment following the Study‘s 2005 regional consultation and the follow-up meeting in 2006. Corporal punishment is widely practised at home and in schools, other institutions and penal systems for young people, as well as in situations of child labour. It remains socially accepted throughout the region, as it does in all regions of the world, except in the few countries where it has been prohibited and systematically challenged through sustained public, teacher and parent education. Corporal punishment in the form of hitting, slapping, kicking, beating, pulling hair, etc., and other forms of humiliating punishment are not as yet generally perceived as abusive. There is inadequate teacher training and parent education, promoting positive, non-violent forms of discipline. The persisting legality and social approval of violent punishment is the most symbolic reflection of children‘s low status in societies, as possessions rather than individual people and rightsholders. Ending this legalised violence against children is not only a human rights imperative, it is also an essential strategy for reducing and eliminating all other forms of violence against children. No state can claim it has an effective child protection system while its laws still authorise and defend corporal punishment. Child Labour In South Asia, around 44 million or 13% of all children are involved in child labour. Economic exploitation is seen as one of the most common forms of violence in the region. Children often work long hours with little or no pay. There is a great deal of commonality across the South Asian countries in the forms of child labour, most notably in the areas of children in hazardous child labour, child domestic labour, children in export oriented industries, child bonded labour particularly in agriculture, and child labour in the informal economy, particularly in urban areas. Children not only face occupational hazards like handling heavy machineries or chemicals in their workplaces, but are also vulnerable and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Additionally, these children are usually denied educational opportunities, which leads to a cycle of poverty and vulnerability. 58