away,”146 by their families, are twice as vulnerable to exploitation once they become homeless.147 Runaway children quickly find themselves deprived of food, shelter and security148 and some resort to “survival sex” as a means of meeting those basic needs.149 Such forays into commercial sex can have the effect of grooming children for longer-term commercial sexual exploitation. In short, children who are already isolated, starving, sleep-deprived, and sometimes resigned to sexual exploitation, make easy targets for offenders. Children who suffer from prior abuse may struggle with damage to their self-esteem or a sense of stigma150 that offenders can exploit. Research undertaken in the Netherlands suggests that personal factors, such as low self-esteem or family dysfunction, heighten a child’s vulnerability to trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation.151 Such children may not easily be reached by law enforcement or social welfare or protection services. Street children may eschew potential sources of support because they fear being returned to abusive home situations. They may also fear law enforcement and criminal justice services as a result of involvement in offences such as stealing and squatting in order to meet survival needs. Poverty and migration Direct research on the relationship between poverty and migration patterns, and ICT-facilitated abuse and exploitation of children, is limited. To the extent, however, that The term “throwaways” or “throwaway children” refers to children whose guardians have formally or informally ejected them from their homes and from familial support (Estes,.R. J., Weiner, N. A., 2002. The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. University of Pennsylvania National Institute of Justice Research Publications. Pp. 110–111. Available at http:// www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Commercial%20Sexual%20 Exploitation%20of%20Children%20in%20the%20US,%20 Canada%20and%20Mexico.pdf). 147 ECPAT International, 2008. Combatting Child Sex Tourism, Questions and Answers. Avilable at http://www.ecpat.net/ei/ Publications/CST/CST_FAQ_ENG.pdf. 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 150 UNICEF, 2006. 151 Research in South Eastern Europe similarly found that poverty, alcoholism, family dysfunction, drug abuse, sexual abuse and domestic violence combine to escalate children’s risk of exploitation (UNDP. 2005. Trafficking in Human Beings in South Eastern Europe: 2004 - Focus on Prevention in: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, the United Nnations Administered Province of Kosovo; see also UNICEF, 2007. Child Trafficking in Europe: A Broad Vision to Put Children First. 146 poverty and migration represent risk factors for abuse and exploitation of children in general,152 broad associations may also exist in respect of such conduct that also involves ICTs. For example, a family or community member might use traditional offline means to recruit a child for work in another country under the pretence of offering employment such as domestic work. Once in the destination country, however, the child may be forced to engage in commercial sex or in the production of child sexual abuse material.153 One study of children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation in the United States, Canada, and Mexico identified poverty as the most consistent common trait of victims.154 Age Very young children are increasingly victimized in child sexual abuse material and child sex trafficking. Recent figures from the Internet Watch Foundation suggest that as many as 81 per cent of victims in known child abuse images are ten and under, and three per cent are two years of age or younger. This figure is up from 74 per cent in 2011.155 Another recent study found that 83 per cent of child sexual abuse materialconsumers possessed videos or images displaying prepubescent children. Of these, over 80 per cent owned material involving children between the ages of six and 12 years, and around 40 per cent had images of children between the ages of three and five. Alarmingly, 19 per cent of child sexual abuse material-possessors had images of babies and infants under the age of three.156 Sexual exploiters of children may also engage very young children in commercial sex. The average age of sex tourism victims is estimated to be 14 years, although victimization of children as young as five years old is becoming increasingly common.157 Commercial sexual exploiters of children have Bartlett, S. 2009. Environments of Poverty and What they Mean for Child Protection. Save the Children, Sweden. 153 Trinidad, A.C. 2005. P. 67. 154 Estes, R. J., Weiner, N. A., 2002. Pp. 41-42. 155 IWF, 2014. P. 11. 156 NCMEC, 2005. Child Pornography Possessors Arrested in Internet-Related Crimes: Findings for the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study. Pp. vii, 4. 157 World Vision “Child Sex Tourism Prevention” 2014 http:// www.worldvision.org/worldvision/pr.nsf/stable/child_sex_tourism_background. (Noting that children are prostituted in virtually every country around the world. Currently, an estimated two million children worldwide - some as young as 5 years old - are enslaved in the commercial sex trade. Many of these children are forced, coerced or tricked into prostitution) 152 II. Evaluating the problem  25