Forced begging is when victims, mostly children, are forced to beg in public for money from people passing by. The children are set up either by their family or by criminal gangs who traffic them, or a combination of both. Each child is given a monetary quota to bring back to their trafficker at the end of the day, and if they fail to do so they are physically beaten and abused. The harm is deliberate: victims are often physically and psychologically hurt in order to create empathy in passersby, whose donations only spur on their enslavement. It is estimated that a trafficker can make 40,000 dollars a year off of their victims, with some child beggars being valued by criminal gangs as being worth 100,000 euros.
Exploiting Sympathy: The Reality of Child Begging
In February of 2026, the first ever study on the forced begging of disabled children was conducted in Ethiopia by groups including the U.S. State Department’s Program to End Modern Slavery (PEMS). Reflecting the global trend, the study found that the vast majority of forced beggars are children who have been sold by their parents to traffickers with the promise of giving them a better life. The parents were in deep economic need and willing to sell a child to receive some money from the trafficker. Some of the children were purposely made blind as a sympathy ploy to compel people to give money to the child. In other situations, there are reports that children have been made addicted to drugs in order to create the image of need for the public while creating a dependency upon their trafficker who supplies the drugs. Children may be given props like crutches, or forced to perform an act for the public. Chloe Setter of ECPAT UK stated that forced begging is “now the second largest form of exploitation of children in the UK following sexual exploitation, yet it remains a hidden and unrecognised problem.”
Accompanying forced begging is often a combination of forced crime, forced labor, and sexual exploitation. A personal theory regarding why children are largely used to forced begging is that it is the immediate alternative to having the child work in forced labor. Since the child does not have the capacity to do many of the jobs one in forced labor might have to do, the child is forced to beg. Adults in exploitative work can drive a profit for the trafficker through their work, while the child’s existence in a begging capacity attracts much money from people who feel bad and want to help the child.
Forced Begging Hotspots:
In Senegal, human rights groups have urged the government to protect the estimated “50,000 children forced to beg each day.” These boys, known as talibés, were sent to Quranic boarding schools to study, yet investigators found that many instead live in “conditions akin to slavery,” with researcher Matthew Wells describing a system where “economic exploitation is masquerading as religious education.” Some of these children are forced to beg for up to 10 hours a day for their teachers’ profit. If a student fails to bring back a profit, they are subjected to physical torture.
In the Republic of North Macedonia, a small country to the north of Greece, the exploitation of children through begging raises serious concerns about trafficking, child protection, and law enforcement. Parents can be fined or jailed if their child is found begging, but researchers in 2024 found that prosecutors often reclassify reports of child begging as parental neglect, rather than trafficking, which carries harsher penalties. Many of the children seen begging are from the Roma community, an ethnic minority in Eastern Europe which experiences low education and high poverty rates. Some parents are willing to turn their children over to gangs for immediate monetary profit and the promise that their child will get to live a better life. Sold for a lie, the children now beg for money as slaves.
In 2011, Bangladesh’s law enforcement unit revealed that a gang had purposely maimed children and then put them on the streets to beg. The head of the media wing of the law enforcement unit shared, “Sometimes they kidnap the children and hold them captive for many days. After that they cut different body parts to prepare them for begging.” According to one of the men who confessed, some children were kept confined in barrels when not begging. In 2022, an undercover investigation from BBC discovered the smuggling of disabled children from Tanzania to Kenya for forced begging. Gangs deceived their families with the promise of a better life, but only intended on using the children’s disabilities to bring in money.
In India, police and trafficking experts estimate that at least 300,000 children are forced to beg every day in an industry they say is controlled by human trafficking cartels. Those who fail to meet quotas are drugged, tortured, and subjected to long periods of isolation. The children are found at busy places where many people will see them, including traffic stops, railway stations, marketplaces, religious spaces, and tourist destinations.
Romania is a leading source of trafficking victims across Europe. Children have been brought as far as the United Kingdom and forced to beg, and then the money they earn is funneled back to Romania. A survivor named Luiza who was trafficked and forced to beg in her home country of Romania advised girls not to “walk alone on the streets at night and never put your trust in strangers.”
Confronting the Global Problem of Forced Begging
Between the recently emerging scholarship and lack of understanding of the issue, the reality of forced begging is something that needs to be shared far and wide. The problem is multi-faceted, between the international aspect of the criminal networks and the impoverished economies where the selling of children is happening. This entails a social sickness, too, where the value of human life is disregarded by both the parents selling the child in addition to the traffickers using that child for monetary gain. Fathers and mothers need to be protecting their children, no matter the cost. Additionally, these criminal gangs need to face the full weight of the law upon their actions. While countries like Switzerland have attempted to ban begging on the streets, enforcement of such laws have proved unable to be solidified. For many who live outside the hotspots, the problem of forced begging hurts the imagination. Yet, it is an active issue in some parts of the world lacking real solutions.
Lornie Johnston is enrolled in a Masters program at Liberty University online, continuing his education in the field of History. With a passion for justice, he first learned about human trafficking while leading a Bible club in high school and now is building on that through writing, which he has found he is good at. In his free time, Lornie is an avid reader, baseball aficionado, enjoys country music and classic rock, and spending time with his family and friends. His Christian faith informs his worldview.