A/HRC/40/51 64. For example, an academy in Qatar recruited minors under the guise of being “only a training academy” and not a club. Nonetheless, the academy had purchased a professional club in Belgium in order to provide an experience at an elite level to its young players. 28 65. Children recruited in these academies are considered to be commodities, with investment in their career understood to be “venture capital”. Even if these children are transferred to big clubs once they turn 18, they will generally be immediately loaned out to other smaller clubs, with little say about their destination. 29 66. Children attending these academies may also become victims of exploitation. For example, in 2015, in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, dozens of West African players were recruited by an academy belonging to a Lao Premier League club. The players, most of whom were minors, were promised comprehensive training and education as well as compensation and were told that their experience could eventually help them reach clubs in Europe. Once in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, they were faced with dreadful conditions and were told they could only return home if they reimbursed all the costs the academy had incurred.30 4. Trafficking 67. As noted with respect to the sale of children in the context of sports discussed above, it is important to note that the cases described in this section may not always fall under the international definition of the Palermo Protocol. Indeed, the exploitative aim in some of these cases is not always apparent.31 68. Several instances of trafficking of children in the context of sports have been reported, though a comprehensive picture of the extent of the practice is still lacking. In the world of football, as stated above, a common pattern is the trafficking of players from West Africa and Latin America to European and Asian clubs, for those who do end up playing professionally. Most trafficking victims in football are children. 32 69. It has been reported that criminals masquerading as football agents will often require the children and their families to provide funds for their trip abroad. The money will then disappear into the pockets of the agents. On the occasions when travel is organized, there have been cases of children being stranded upon arrival and faced with the reality that there was no academy or club recruiting them. 33 In such cases, there might not be an exploitative purpose that would justify using the term trafficking. 34 70. In basketball, there have been reported cases of trafficking of children to the United States of America. A common pattern is to recruit players abroad under the guise of awarding basketball scholarships and, once they have arrived in the United States, to exploit them. The recruiters make a profit if the players transfer to the professional level, or even if they only provide a steady flow of talent to colleges.35 71. Trafficking has also plagued the world of baseball, with repeated smuggling of Latin American players into the United States, often by criminal gangs. This is in part due to the Major League Baseball rules which apply different procedures for the recruitment of international players, thus encouraging the trafficking of players through third countries into the United States.36 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 10 M. Hall, “The scramble for Africa’s athletes”, Foreign Policy, 20 April 2018. Spiegel Online, “How clubs profit”. FIFPro, “Nightmare academy in Laos cheats African kids”, 21 July 2015. J. Esson and E. Drywood, “Challenging popular representations of child trafficking in football”, Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, vol. 4, No. 1 (2018), pp. 60–72; see also A/71/261. Ruggie, For the Game. Hall, “The scramble for Africa’s athletes”. Esson and Drywood, “Challenging popular representations”. NPR, “A lesser-known human trafficking problem: teenage basketball players”, 6 April 2015. J. Pagliery and A. Garcia, “The Cuban baseball smuggling machine behind MLB”, CNN Money, 15 December 2016.