A/HRC/29/38 considerable pressure on children to help provide financial stability to their families during humanitarian crises, those children may not only be vulnerable to trafficking, but they will also be more likely to work in the unregulated informal sector, as they do not receive an education.8 17. In post-conflict situations, the association between military, peacekeeping, humanitarian and other international personnel and private contractors, organized crime and the growth of trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation has raised global concerns.9 It has been reported that an international presence fuels the demand for work and services produced through trafficking and exploitation, in particular sexual services and forced labour. Various factors, such as a vulnerable population and fragile/non-existent institutions, including weak law enforcement, can combine to create a climate of impunity in which international personnel involved in criminal exploitation and trafficking are not investigated, apprehended or prosecuted.10 Moreover, unclear contractors’ engagement regulations are likely to fuel abusive practices the dynamics of which have not yet been fully understood, such as deceptive recruitment practices in countries of origin, followed by exploitative employment by military contractors in conflict areas. D. Protecting children on the move 18. Trafficking of children is on the increase globally, with girls being affected the most. The recently released Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2014 also notes significant regional differences concerning child trafficking, with children comprising a majority of detected victims of trafficking in Africa and the Middle East.11 19. The mandate’s work has confirmed that girls and boys are trafficked for a variety of reasons, including for purposes of sexual exploitation, such as in prostitution and in the production of child pornography. Furthermore, they are trafficked for forced and exploitative labour in farms and factories and on fishing boats, for forced criminal activities, for forced and organized begging, and for domestic servitude in private households. While much trafficking of children involves movement across international borders, many countries experience the phenomenon of internal child trafficking. 20. The mandate found that in certain regions, trafficked children, like adults, are often obliged or induced by their traffickers and exploiters to commit crimes,12 inter alia, pickpocketing, burglary, and drug cultivation and transportation. In spite of nonpunishment clauses in regional and international legal instruments,13 the children are often then prosecuted, imprisoned and/or deported for the illegal activities they have carried out as a direct consequence of their situation as trafficked persons, instead of being considered as victims of trafficking. 8 9 10 11 12 13 8 UNHCR, The Future of Syria: Refugee Children in Crisis (2013). UNODC, An Introduction to Human Trafficking: Vulnerability, Impact and Action (2008), p. 98. OHCHR, Human Rights and Human Trafficking, pp. 47–48. UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2014, p. 11. See, for example, A/HRC/23/48/Add.2, para. 28, A/HRC/26/37/Add.4, paras. 16 and 17, and A/HRC/20/18/Add.2, para. 16. See, for example, Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, art. 26; OHCHR, Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking, principles 7 and 8; Basic principles on the right to an effective remedy for trafficked persons, art. 7 (f) (A/69/33797, annex); United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons (General Assembly resolution 64/293, annex).