Experts defended this Thursday that “giving a coin” to a child who is begging is “complicity” in forced begging, and are calling for condemnation of situations that appear suspicious.
On the sidelines of a workshop on “Trafficking: A Time for Justice and a Time for Victims”, National Rapporteur on Human Trafficking Manuel Albano told reporters that making a child beg means curtailing rights.
“When we talk about what a child asks for, we cut the rights of this child, the right to education, the right to be a child, to play. And we, as a society, are also complicit in this situation, because by giving money to the Child, we do not condemn the situation, we cooperate,” he warned.
On the other hand, “by failing to hand over the coin, the child may be punished by the one who sells it.”
On the sidelines of the same conference, Associação Planeamento da Família spokesperson Marta Pereira defended that the only way to fight forced begging is to denounce it.
“The battle [à mendicidade forçada] this includes revealing the phenomenon, knowing the signs, being able to look at these situations and understand if there is some type of exploitation, human trafficking, violence,” he said.
Marta Pereira mentioned that “begging in itself is not a crime, coercion is a crime, and human trafficking for begging even more”, so “disclosing information about the phenomenon, about the community as a whole is really important.”
For this specialist, in the case of children, begging is always coercive: “If we have children begging, we are faced with coercion to beg, not a single child has free will to decide to be in a situation of begging,” he noted.
“Children should be in school, they should be treated well, if we are dealing with begging, this should be noted immediately,” he said.
Therefore, he warned, “it is necessary to see if these people are really free in the sense of choice, it is necessary to look at situations, stop, talk to people when possible, and condemn whenever there are signs and the competent authorities will investigate.”
When asked what forced begging is, Marta Pereira clarified that it means “someone who exploits another person to collect money for him.”
Two officials are calling for the reporting of suspicious cases.
“Ordinary citizens should report either to the police or to specialized groups. Signaling is fundamental, ordinary citizens fulfill this fundamental role of seeing and reporting,” said Marta Pereira.
This individual responsibility [de denunciar] is collective and subject to investigation,” Manuel Albano defended.