Jenny Salesa
Wellington, May 8, 2024
The government is putting more vulnerable children at further risk of trafficking, forced labour and exploitation by considering cutting the front-line services that support refugee and migrant children in New Zealand.
As a part of the government’s reckless cuts to public services, the International Child Protection team within Oranga Tamariki is now being put at risk.
Consultation documents obtained by Newshub show that 17 roles would be slashed to just six under the proposed job cuts.
The International Child Protection Unit provides expert advice and operational support in cases involving children, including those where they are the subject of unlawful migration, fraudulent or unsafe intercountry adoptions, child trafficking and smuggling, child marriage, commercial sexual exploitation of children, modern slavery, unaccompanied and separated children, radicalisation and extremism and the movement of children across borders.
Complex investigations
The unit has been involved in some complex and incredibly important investigations in recent years. In 2022, it investigated allegations of labour exploitation of Chinese children in the travelling Zirka Circus. Six children were uplifted from the circus show and returned to China to their parents.
In 2021, the unit was involved in working with 15 unaccompanied Afghani children who came here with hundreds of others on a New Zealand Defence Force plane after the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital.
It is heartbreaking to me that any child would ever find themselves in a position of needing such protection. When one does, we need to make sure that looking after them is a priority. Every child entering this country deserves our full commitment.
Cutting down this Unit with specialist knowledge could see more of our children from migrant and refugee communities entering exploitative or abusive environments without hope of reprieve.
The proposed cuts are especially jarring when put alongside what any savings might go towards. The government has a duty to protect our children and help to prevent the type of situations that the International Child Protection Unit was created for. Instead, they are choosing to put this at risk to fund their tax cuts.
UN Human Rights Council
The advance report of the UN Human Rights Council’s Periodic Review of New Zealand noted plans to tackle issues including trafficking, modern slavery and migrant exploitation were works in progress.
This unit provides a frontline service, not a back-office job.
Yet the Minister for Children Karen Chhour indicated that she either does not know or care enough about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki. The well-being of our children is far too important to have yet another Minister impose potentially harmful cuts.
Minister Chhour has a responsibility to advocate for and protect our children – but instead, we risk seeing more and more children at risk of falling through the cracks. The Minister must step in and stop these cuts.
No matter where a child comes from all children in Aotearoa New Zealand are taonga.
We can never compromise the health, safety and well-being of any of our children.
This unit must continue to exist – it is time to commit more to these services, not cut them back.
Jenny Salesa is the elected Member of Parliament from Panmure-Otahuhu Constituency in Auckland and a former Minister of the Crown. She was the Minister of Ethnic Communities from 2017 to 2020.
