UK: Young Somali Girl Trafficked into UK to Have Her Organs Harvested
London, Oct 20, 2013 (SDN) -It has been revealed a young girl was brought into the UK from Somalia in order to have her organs harvested. The unnamed child was brought into the country with the express purpose of having her organs removed in order to be sold on. It is the first case of its kind but child protection services are now warning that it may by no means be the last.
The case was revealed in a government report, which also showed that human trafficking within the UK has risen by more than 50 per cent in the last year, the Daily Telegraph reports.
More than 370 children in 2012 were exploited as slaves or sexually abused – their nationalities ranging from Vietnamese, Nigerian, Bangladeshi and Chinese.
The report also said that 20 British girls had been the victims of human trafficking.
‘Traffickers are exploiting the demand for organs and the vulnerability of children. It’s unlikely that a trafficker is going to take this risk and bring just one child into the UK. It is likely there was a group,’ Bharti Patel, the chief executive of Ecpat UK, the child protection charity, told the newspaper.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, there are as many as 2.5million trafficking victims around the world at any one time.
The victims are often forced either into a life of domestic servitude, intense physical labour, placed in the sex industry, within warfare, made to beg, or have their organs removed.
Source: Independent.co.uk