Accepted Paper
Paper short abstract
Children born from trafficking remain largely invisible in GBV research. This study examines their vulnerabilities, identities, and futures within climate-driven mobility in Kenya, using trauma-informed, feminist, and decolonial approaches.
Paper long abstract
Children born as a result of trafficking remain among the least understood and least protected groups within gender-based violence (GBV) scholarship. While research often highlights the experiences of trafficked women and girls, far less attention is paid to children conceived through coercion, sexual exploitation, or forced relationships during trafficking journeys. This paper investigates the vulnerabilities and identities of these children in Kenya, situating their experiences within the broader dynamics of climate-induced mobility and the precarity it generates.
Drawing on trauma-informed interviews with trafficking survivors and frontline practitioners, the study examines how climate shocks intensify unsafe migration, heighten exposure to exploitation, and shape the conditions under which these children are conceived and raised. It conceptualises children born of trafficking as subjects of intergenerational and structural GBV, facing layered risks including social stigma, disrupted kinship ties, documentation barriers, and enduring psychosocial harm.
Employing a feminist and decolonial analytic lens, the paper challenges dominant survivor-centred trafficking frameworks by foregrounding the often-unseen afterlives of reproductive violence. It argues that children born of trafficking represent an urgent yet overlooked area of policy and protection, requiring integrated responses across child welfare, anti-trafficking systems, and climate adaptation strategies.
By centring African-led knowledge and lived realities, the paper reframes GBV as a phenomenon that spans generations, exposing how climate pressures, mobility disruptions, and gendered inequalities converge to produce new and enduring forms of vulnerability.
New and emerging directions for gender based violence: Methods, findings and applications