Children: Gifts from God or a commodity for smuggling and trading?

A shocking report reports the increase in the bitter phenomenon of selling and trafficking babies from the streets of Mashhad to cyberspace.

"Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."

Luke 18:16

In Iran today, children who should be symbols of hope and the future have become a smuggled commodity on the black market, a market that has expanded from the streets of Mashhad to Instagram pages.

A shocking report of a case in Mashhad has been published on social media that will make every human heart ache. Cases that may never be revealed or investigated and remain secret for many years. In Esfand 1403 (February 2025), Mashhad police identified a baby smuggling gang. This smuggling network included two sisters and several other accomplices who, taking advantage of the mothers’ poverty and addiction, bought their babies and sold them to infertile couples.

One of these painful cases is a 23-year-old mother who, due to extreme poverty, sold her one-year-old daughter for 60 million Tomans, but some time later, she regretted selling her child and requested the return of her child. The applicant, who had attempted to buy the child of this 23-year-old mother, requested an amount of more than 60 million Tomans to return the child, which increased the emotional and financial pressure on the mother.

Another recently published case reveals the discovery of a professional gang selling and smuggling babies. Police in the suburbs of Tehran in the final months of 2024 uncovered a professional gang selling babies. This group, in cooperation with some doctors and intermediaries, bought babies from affected mothers and sold them to domestic and foreign buyers. In one of these recently revealed reports, a baby boy was traded for one billion and eight hundred million tomans, and the applicants for this baby lived abroad. The aforementioned case shows that the sale and trading of babies has even extended beyond the borders of Iran.

In the latest report, which was published a few weeks ago but has just been published on social media, it shows that the FATA police in Tehran have arrested a gang active on Instagram who were selling 20-day-old to two-month-old babies for 40 to 50 million tomans. Promising fake birth certificates was one of the tricks of this gang, but the police announced that no birth certificates have been issued so far. In this case, two live babies were discovered at the time of the arrest and handed over to the welfare department, but the third baby is still missing.

These infant and child trafficking and trafficking gangs are just one example of the many networks that have become active in cyberspace in recent years. Since the winter of 2020, FATA police have repeatedly identified and filtered various sites and Instagram pages that were openly or secretly advertising and selling infants and children.

In February 2017, a group was arrested in Tehran for selling a 15-day-old baby for 120 million Tomans. In May 2018, a group was arrested in Mazandaran for selling babies for over 2.1 billion Tomans.

In addition to selling babies, these networks trap affected families with false promises of obtaining birth certificates and legal documents. The deeper causes of these crises are deprived mothers or addicted women who are unable to care for their children.

In addition, weak laws, oversight of legal loopholes, and incomplete implementation of anti-human trafficking regulations have contributed to the growth of these gangs, to the extent that they have increased the abuse of social networks and various sites to spread this phenomenon.

The lack of attention from society and various institutions to this crisis and the cries of silent children have also deepened these crises. But children are God's pure assets, not worthless goods to be traded in the market or smuggled to all corners of the world. This bitter reality is a cry for the conscience of churches and international organizations not to remain indifferent to this cruelty.

When children are sold or trafficked, all humans fail. It is time to move from silence to action and to hear the voices of the voiceless.