GRACE: A Global Research Study on Child Exploitation

One of our biggest studies in 2025 is being conducted in 14 countries across Africa, Asia and in Europe, among children aged 13-17.

We believe that the ethically complex nature of child exploitation, its poor conceptual clarity, and incomparable prevalence estimates across countries and regions, contributes to a scattered understanding of the issue. This means that child exploitation does not sit high on global agendas (even in child rights’ spaces) and does not attract funding for organisations to generate evidence that can catalyse systemic change. We sought to create a baseline for our work in the coming 2023-2030 strategic period, by identifying hot spots of child exploitation.

Therefore, we want to know:

How can we use context-specific predictors of child exploitation to inform predictors of child exploitation in order to develop programme and policy interventions?

GRACE is a survey being conducted in 14 countries with children age 13-17, to understand experiences of exploitation. We also collected information about the socio-economic determinants, such as poverty, low maternal education and family size; and individual risk factors, such as gender, age and disability. We included vignettes (short stories) to address the perceived severity of situations of exploitation and the social norms surrounding them. Ethical approval was obtained from Radboud University in NL.

Included countries: 

Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, Nigeria, Tanzania, Thailand, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Uganda, Ukraine.

The survey is focused on three key areas, that align with our programmatic and advocacy work:

Data collection is ongoing and first results are expected in December 2025. So stay tuned!