Title:
Strengthening Safety: Require Relationship Verification Before Air Travel with Minors
Recommendation:
To protect children and curb child trafficking, we should implement a requirement for adults traveling alone with minors to provide documentation verifying their relationship or legal guardianship. This verification process is a proactive measure to ensure that only those with legitimate authority and care over a child can travel with them, helping to prevent trafficking and abduction.
Encouraging Reasons for Implementation:
Requiring relationship verification is a small but crucial step in safeguarding children. In everyday life, we already take measures to verify adult authority in a child’s life to prevent harm. For example, banks require proof of relationship to cash a child’s check, and professional piercing or tattoo establishments mandate parental consent before performing services on minors. These requirements acknowledge the importance of a responsible adult’s oversight, which is even more critical in the context of air travel, where risks can be much greater. By extending relationship verification to airports, we can add an important layer of protection that acts as a deterrent to child traffickers and ensures safe, responsible travel for all children.