Governments need to display greater financial and political resolve to protect millions of children from being exploited by predators in the sex industry.
Failure to do so would undermine the pledge made in 1996 by 122 governments at the First World Congress against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm, according to a 185-page report by the End Child Prostitution and Trafficking of Children (ECPAT) released in November.
"In most cases, the policies spelled out by governments to protect children from the grasp of the sex trade have not moved beyond the desks of bureaucrats," charges the report of Bangkok-based ECPAT, entitled 'Five Years After Stockholm'.
"It is difficult to name a government that has committed financial resources to a plan of action, or a plan that has been properly implemented," the report asserts. Pledges made in Stockholm have only been "partially fulfilled".
Still, it says, there is more awareness about forms of child abuse since Stockholm. "The silence barrier has been broken," the ECPAT report explains. "Awareness of the agenda is highest in Europe, the Americas and South and East Asia," it says, adding that awareness is also rising in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.
In Stockholm, governments agreed to set plans of action with concrete measures against the sexual exploitation of youngsters, ranging from prevention and awareness programmes to better laws and their enforcement.
But five years later, less than a third of the 122 countries that adopted it in Stockholm have complied with its provisions, the ECPAT report says.
Asia-Pacific and Europe have the most action plans, with 11 and 12 countries respectively. In the Asia-Pacific, these include Australia, Cambodia, India, Japan, Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The European countries with action plans are Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Sweden.
In Africa, only four countries have pursued this step, including Angola and South Africa. Five nations in the Americas have gone ahead with this child protection measure, including Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.
But this should not have been the case, says ECPAT. All the governments that attended the 1996 Stockholm congress had pledged to have national plans of action in place by 2000.
