HUMAN RIGHTS: UN Condemns Child Porn, Prostitution, Trafficking

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 4 2000 (IPS) - A United Nations working group finished drafting Friday a document aimed at cracking down on the sale of children and on child pornography and prostitution worldwide.

Once approved, the final text is to become an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

But the adoption of the protocol depends on the resolution of a long-running dispute over a clause that France wants included, and which the United States refuses to sign.

The French delegation insists that only countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child should be allowed to sign the protocol. The United States and Somalia are the only UN member nations that have not formally adhered to that international treaty.

The representatives of France set forth the same demand last month when another UN working group was discussing a different optional protocol to the same convention. The protocol prohibiting the use of child soldiers was finally approved after France withdrew – at the 11th hour – its exigency, which also pitted it against the United States.

But the French did not back down in the debate on the protocol on child pornography and prostitution and the sale of children.

Just hours before the end of the sessions, the working group’s chairman, Cuban diplomat Iván Mora Godoy, considered approval of the document a sure thing. But at the end of the meeting, Mora said the protocol had been adopted ‘ad referendum’ of the next meeting to be held by the working group, in late March.

UN procedures stipulate that the draft document must be approved by the world body’s Human Rights Commission and General Assembly.

The outstanding feature of the protocol is that it mandates the establishment of punishment for offences involving the sale of children or child prostitution or pornography, said Mora.

Mora cited a report by the non-governmental organisation End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT), which estimates the number of victims of offences related to the sale and sexual exploitation of children at around 800 million.

These crimes are perpetrated by transnational organised gangs in an illegal business which according to moderate estimates produces some four billion dollars a year – outstripped only by drug and arms dealing, he added.

The Cuban diplomat used the occasion to refer to the case of the Cuban shipwrecked boy Elián González, who was rescued at sea clinging to a boat that overturned in an accident in which his mother died in her attempt to make it to the United States.

The 6-year-old, who remains with his relatives in Miami, has become a political symbol for hard-line anti-Castro forces in the United States and for the communist government of Fidel Castro, heightening the tension between the United States and Cuba.

Mora said that in Miami, “Elián’s father was offered four million dollars and a house and a car, in order to get the boy to stay in the United States.”

The protocol states that the sale of a child is the act of transferring a minor to a person or a group in exchange for money or “any other benefit.”

The alleged offer to Elián’s father is clearly an attempt to “buy” the boy, because “there is a lot of money involved,” Mora maintained.

The case differs, however, from those in which much smaller amounts are shelled out – typically 500 dollars – “for adoptions in any country in the developing world due to the socioeconomic needs that pressure families to sell their children,” he added.

In the case of Elián, “there are political aims underlying the intention to buy the boy.” The new protocol would determine that such acts merit punishment, Mora concluded.