I would like to propose this presentation entitled "Missing Children, Runaways and the Human Trafficking Connection" as an awareness and educational forum mainly to the law enforcement community and child welfare professionals. I feel that this is important because in this day and age its to easy to dismiss a runaway as just a "runaway." Believe it or not, I personally see it happen too frequently. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, "Of the nearly 25,000 runaways reported to the NCMEC in 2017, one in seven were likely a victim of child sex trafficking. Of those, 88% were in the care of social services when they went missing. (1) In this presentation, I plan on discussing the statistics, the contributing factors as well as discuss real life missing child cases, resources and tools.

After the closure of Romania the adoption agencies opened up Ethiopia for intercountry adoptions. Thousands of children have been send abroad.

The adoption program was riddled with trafficking from day one. Scandal after scandal came out and in 2018 Ethiopia finally stopped intercountry adoptions.

What did exactly happen ? Why and how do we deal today with the victims of this trade ?