26 Aug 2010

Warning that PNG's HIV orphans at risk of abduction

6:08 pm on 26 August 2010

A Papua New Guinea programme set up to address problems of family and sexual violence is warning that children in rural orphanages could become targets for child-traffickers.

Ume Wainetti of the Family and Sexual Violence Action Committee says many children are going missing from PNG every year, possibly to be sold to childless couples or into prostitution.

She says because of the difficulty in collecting data in PNG there're no exact figures.

Ms Wainetti says her organisation's been told that child-traffickers pressured out of Asia will take advantage of PNG's ignorance of the issue.

"We have this problem with HIV and a lot of parents who have died have left children and these children are being taken care of by people who have now come up in rural areas with our own version of orphanages and a lot of these children would be exposed to things like this should we really have this problem coming into the country."

PNG's Family and Sexual Violence Action Committee's co-ordinator, Ume Wainetti.