RIGHTS: Govts Fall Short of Pledges to Curb Child Sex Trade

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 20 2001 (IPS) - The world’s governments need to display greater financial and political resolve to protect millions of children from being exploited by predators in the global sex industry, warns a new report released here Tuesday.

Failure to do so will undermine the international pledge made in 1996 by 122 governments at a world conference in Stockholm, Sweden to fight the commercial sexual exploitation of children, according to a 185- page report by the non-government group End Child Prostitution and Trafficking of Children (ECPAT).

“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.

“Political commitment as well as resources are still lacking in too many countries, too many children are still sexually exploited, and not enough solutions for their protection and rehabilitation have been found,” says ECPAT in a statement accompanying the report.

The report, which says the pledges made in Stockholm have only been “partially fulfilled”, was issued ahead of the Second World Congress against the Sexual Exploitation of Children to be held in Yokohama, Japan, from Dec. 17-20.

However, the same report welcomes the heightened awareness about this form of child abuse since the First World Congress was held in the Swedish capital and resulted in an ‘agenda for action’ that set targets for tougher action by governments as early as 2000.

“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,” says the report. In the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, “awareness is rising,” it adds.

In Europe, for instance, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been warning nationals about the fate that awaits them if caught sexually exploiting children abroad. In South Asia, public attention has been drawn to measures aimed at cracking down of children being trafficked by the sex industry.

The Stockholm agenda for action is a set of concrete measures that participating countries agreed to implement as their national plans of action.

They include clearly spelled out efforts to prevent children from falling victim to the guile of the sex trade, including awareness programmes, and strengthened child protection polices through laws and law enforcement.

Governments are also expected to initiate rehabilitation programmes for the exploited children, to work in tandem with non-governmental child rights groups and with neighbouring governments, and to encourage children’s participation in conceiving child-friendly policies.

But five years after later, less than a third of the 122 countries that adopted it in Stockholm have complied with its provisions, the ECPAT report says. “In the last two years, only four new national plans of action against CSEC (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children) have been developed by the participant countries of the Stockholm Congress.”

Asia-Pacific and Europe have the most national plans of actions, with 11 and 12 countries respectively. In the Asia-Pacific, they 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 countries in the Americas have gone ahead with this child protection measure, including Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

This should not have been the case, says ECPAT. “Today, we have to face the fact that the commitment made in Stockholm has only been partially fulfilled,” it adds in its report.

All the governments who attended that gathering had “pledged to have national plans of action in place by 2000 as an important step towards eliminating this contemporary form of slavery”.

Asia provides a graphic picture to illustrate the challenge child rights advocates face. The continent has more than one million children who have been forced into the sex industry, according to ECPAT.

“Among them we see children being sold to brothels by their families to cover debts, as well as children who are sexually abused by the lord of the household in which they are employed for housework and who then escape only to end up involved in child prostitution,” the ECPAT report explains.

“Poverty is a key factor behind this problem,” says Chitraporn Vanaspong, ECPAT’s Asia-Pacific regional officer. “It demands attention in most South and East Asian countries.”

She points to Thailand as a typical example, where “it (commercial sexual exploitation) is still a problem” despite a concentrated effort to save children through new laws, greater awareness campaigns, and high-profile prevention programmes”.

In more affluent societies like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, girls have been lured into the sex industry to sustain their tastes in fashionable clothes, mobile phones and wrist watches, affirms Chitraporn.

“We have schoolgirls who sell themselves to gain an income to buy personal things. This is not a problem of poverty but an attitude toward money and values,” she points out.

Such examples amplify ECPAT’s belief that “we have only scratched the surface,” a fact that troubles the authors of the group’s new report. “This is no time to slow down action against the commercial sexual exploitation of children,” they argue.