Chapter 3 establishes orphanage tourism as a demand driver for orphanage trafficking. Orphanage tourism has increased in popularity in the last decade which, in combination with an enabling environment, has led to a proliferation of orphanages being established in developing states and the emergence of orphanage trafficking. The chapter examines the interrelationship between supply and demand in orphanage trafficking and argues that in order to understand how orphanage trafficking functions, a reconceptualisation of demand is required. Demand in trafficking is generally regarded as the embodiment of consumer desire, which may be illegal or at other times morally challenging. However, demand for orphanage tourism functions differently as it is not initially predicated on consumer desire, but instead on a perceived supply of orphans who require assistance. It is this perceived supply which orphanage tourism responds to. To address the demand of orphanage tourism, the perception of the supply of vulnerable orphans must be countered. Orphanage tourism needs to be addressed bilaterally as both a threat to child protection and as a demand driver for child trafficking into orphanages.

Chapter 1 articulates the process of orphanage trafficking in developing states. It explains how the recruitment of a child into an orphanage occurs and describes how the process of orphanage trafficking manipulates the procedural aspects of gatekeeping into alternative care by claiming children are abandoned or orphaned rather than relinquished. This manipulation is critical in the orphanage-trafficking process as it indicates an intent by the involved orphanage operators to utilise the alternative care framework to justify the admission of children into care. The final part of the orphanage-trafficking process is the maintenance of the child in institutionalisation for the purpose of exploitation and profit through donor funding and orphanage tourism. The chapter then turns to establishing the prevalence of orphanage trafficking in developing states across the world. To do this, it focuses on four regions where there is evidence that the rising number of children in institutional care is in part due to the presence of donor funding and orphanage tourism: Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.