RIGHTS-LATAM: Turning a Blind Eye to Child Sexual Exploitation

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Néfer Muñoz

SAN JOSE, Jan 24 2003 (IPS) - The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have shown scant interest in living up to their commitments to work to eradicate child sexual exploitation, warned a global network that fights the phenomenon.

Only two governments in the region have even drawn up the promised action plans aimed at fighting commercial sexual exploitation of minors, said End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking in Children for sexual purposes (ECPAT International), which links 71 non-governmental organisations in 62 countries.

(The Bangkok-based network changed its name in 1996 from End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism).

Although Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico have designed strategies to combat the problem, only two of those nations – Colombia and El Salvador – have actually assigned resources to implementing the plans.

”It is worrisome to us that Latin America and the Caribbean conceive of spending money on children as an ‘expense’ rather than an ‘investment’. We calculate that every dollar invested in a minor is multiplied tenfold throughout the course of his or her life,” British activist Bruce Harris told IPS.

In Costa Rica, ECPAT released a report on the situation in Latin America, pointing out that over 30 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean committed themselves in 1996 to drafting action plans and investing more money to combat the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

That commitment was assumed by the world’s governments at the first World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm, Sweden, and reaffirmed at the second edition of the global conference, held in Yokohama, Japan in December 2001.

”In economic terms there has been a ‘decapitalisation’ of childhood. We are mortgaging the future of our children. We have to overhaul our priorities,” said Harris, the director of Casa Alianza, one of ECPAT’s member organisations and the Latin America branch of the New York-based child advocacy organisation Covenant House.

In recent months, officials in several Central American countries have denied that there is a lack of political will to crack down on the problem.

Although there are no reliable statistics, human rights groups say millions of children in Latin America and the Caribbean have fallen victim to the various forms of commercial sexual exploitation, such as cross-border people smuggling, child pornography or child prostitution.

”This is a problem that is related to the most invisible human rights: economic, social and cultural rights,” human rights activist Celia Medrano told IPS.

Between 45 and 52 percent of the people of Latin America are under 18, while the total population of Latin America amounts to 497 million people, according to the regional United Nations agency, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

”We need to eliminate two elements that perpetuate sexual exploitation by local and foreign clients: impunity, which is strengthened when existing laws are not enforced, and the anonymity behind which many of the exploiters hide,” said Milena Grillo, the president of the organisation Paniamor.

The activist underlined that the international community has recognised that far from being reduced, the phenomenon of commercial sexual exploitation of children has grown.

ECPAT said it had found a direct link between domestic labour and child sexual exploitation in Latin America. According to the report, the lure of domestic labour is often used as a cover for drawing girls (and sometimes boys) into child prostitution rings.

In Costa Rica, 76 percent of female domestics are minors, and in Paraguay, between 80 and 90 percent of young girls who are sexually exploited had worked as maids, according to ECPAT.

The report mentioned ”coyotes” in El Salvador who travel to rural areas to recruit teenage girls and young women for the prostitution trade under the pretext of hiring them as domestic workers.

And in the southwestern Mexican resort town of Acapulco, many girls and young women who ended up being sexually exploited said they had been persuaded by family members and friends to move to the city with the promise of a job in domestic service or the tourism industry.

The Costa Rica-based Foundation for Peace and Democracy reported that 7.5 million children and adolescents in Central America work, many of them in high-risk jobs that put their development at risk.

Analysts say one of the main causes of child sexual exploitation is poverty, which affects around 43 percent of the people of Latin America.