Piccoli Schiavi Invisibili 2023

Save the Children’s 13th edition of an annual report on child trafficking and exploitation focuses on a dimension of exploitation often overlooked – the lives of children of labourers. It focuses on two provinces with a strong agriculture sector – Latina and Ragusa – and finds many children were living in isolation, often in makeshift lodgings deep within farmland.

Many of these children live separated from urban areas and from each other, without common spaces in which to play, without sport activities or social centres, often in unhealthy and crowded housing conditions, sharing with two or three other families.

The report, released in the lead up to World Day Against Trafficking in Persons on 30 July, 2023, also highlights  how social exclusion is rooted from birth: the absence of nearby kindergartens, combined with the lack of means to reach those in the nearest town, force many small children to stay alone indoors or following their parents to work.

English translation will be available in September.