Child trafficking activity often draws on formal administrative and legal resources. Formalisation implies considerable cooperation between public functionaries, lawyers and external actors. I argue that child rights advocates are forceful policy formulators who tend to ignore the public-external link because they focus on the external profit-seeking actors. The danger of this focus is a continuing production of inadequate policies, regulations and laws which are weak instruments in the control of a serious social and moral problem. I exemplify this by cases of irregularities in international adoption from Ecuador from the 1990s onwards.