LATEST
NEWS FROM YOKOHAMA
Communities
Can Protect Children from Sex Trade
By
Marwaan Macan-Markar
YOKOHAMA, Japan, Dec 17 (IPS) - Close to 30 slums in India's
southern city of Madras have been enjoying a rare distinction
in the past three years: Not a single child from this 40,000-strong
community works in the sex trade .
This is no small achievement in a country where, experts say,
15 percent of some two million sex workers are children, some
as young as six years old.
The secret behind this success, which has occurred despite the
poverty in the informal communities, lies in the struggle by
women to protect their children from having to work in the commercial
sex industry.
''Most of the women are domestic workers. But over the past
three years they have organised themselves to demand regular
wages to ensure the children in their families don't end up
in brothels,'' said Jeanne Devos, coordinator of India's national
domestic workers movement.
''Without them, the children would still be exploited,'' she
pointed out.
In Cambodia, children in select villages have been protected
by child-watch volunteer groups, under a programme where vulnerable
children in a community are identified before adult abusers
get a chance to prey on them.
India and Cambodia are but two of the success stories cited
during discussions here on the pivotal role communities play
to protect children from prostitution. Other countries where
community action has come in for praise range from Brazil, Canada,
Romania, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
''Communities have to be empowered to protect all their children,''
said Shirley Fozzard, a consultant at the Geneva-based International
Catholic Child Bureau (BICE), during an assessment of community-led
prevention programmes at the Second World Congress against Commercial
Exploitation of Children being held here all week.
''Only when communities take responsibility for their children
can such abuse be stopped,'' she asserted. ''The communities
must be given power to develop their own programmes.''
Community initiatives need to offer vulnerable children ways
of feeling secure, agrees Cherry Kingsley. ''Self-esteem is
very important for the child. You need to feel loved, to belong,
and the community can help,'' explained Kingsley, 31, who travels
across Canada regularly to champion the concerns of sexually
exploited children.
Her insights come out of experience, because she had been trapped
in the sex trade in Vancouver for eight years, starting when
she was 14. ''I felt vulnerable at that time. There was no community
elder, no adult I could turn to for help,'' she said haltingly.
''The lack of community care makes you feel nothing,'' continued
Kingsley. ''The only people who were nice to us were those who
want to exploit us, the clients and the pimp.''
Communities also need to raise awareness about adults who exploit
children through commercial sex, said Kingsley. ''Adults are
buying children this way. Let's get the adults to stop this
practice.''
Large doses of honesty are equally important when community
initiatives are discussed, she felt. ''We don't talk about it
as honestly. Making pledges will not help the child victim,''
Kingsley added.
Although there is much more awareness about the nature of commercials
sexual exploitation now compared to the first congress on the
issue in Stockholm in 1996, the jury is still out on the shape
and form of initiatives that work.
''Since the Stockholm meeting, there has been growing awareness
about the significance of community initiatives, but there are
a lot of misconceptions about works and what doesn't,'' said
Ola Florin, a programme officer at the international children's
lobby Save the Children.
While some child rights activists underscore the importance
of education and child-sensitive programmes in public places,
others emphasise the need for greater parental involvement.
Some campaigners encourage child-centred activities, be it drama
and song or regular discussions with community elders. Others
have encouraged communities to provide children with life-skills
training, as what has been done in developed countries in Europe
and the United States.
However, two factors have remained consistent when addressing
the issue of child sexual exploitation -- most of the exploiters
are local abusers and vulnerable children come from disintegrating
domestic environments.
''Traffickers are normally those who know the communities,''
added Florin. ''There are so many different ways they can enter
a community.''
Community-led programmes cannot discount the economic and social
realities of a place, observed Florin. ''We need to go back
and look at the deeper causes, the unbelievable poverty that
at times forces children to be exploited by traffickers.''
Along Sri Lanka's north-western coast, for instance, poverty
has been singled out as the primary reason behind the entry
of hundreds of young boys into prostitution. In some villages,
according to research by International Catholic Child Bureau,
the boy sex worker is the only breadwinner in the family.
''In an era of increasing childhood and family poverty, unemployment,
limited educational opportunities and consumer pressures, children
are often expected to help support the family financially,''
according to a background note released for the congress.
Asia's children have been among the affected. The region has
close to one million children, mainly girls, entering the multi-billion
dollar sex trade every year, according to the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF).
''In East Asia, the sex industry is such a huge money spinner
that the International Labour Organisation estimates it to be
worth between 14 and 16 percent of Thailand's gross domestic
product,'' it reported.
For UNICEF, families and communities are ''the first line of
protection'' for vulnerable children.
Thus, it said in its report, prevention programmes are needed
to ''lift the veil of ignorance, to educate, retrain, improve
living conditions and eliminate the causes of poverty that make
children particularly vulnerable to exploitation.'' (END)
