RIGHTS: Mekong Children Speak Out Against Human Trafficking

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 15 2004 (IPS) - Children from five countries that share the Mekong River have singled out karaoke bars mushrooming across the region as a source of evil due to the sex on offer during a night of song.

These bars trap children into the sex trade or are the reason human traffickers have lured children into a vicious industry, say the children.

And the solution they have in mind to protect children from the claws of the traffickers is stark: they want their governments to ”close the karaoke bars linked to the sex trade.”

That appeal was one in a list of urgent requests made by 25 children at the end of a week-long conference to fight human trafficking in the Mekong Region.

”Karaoke bars have led to more children being trafficked,” a 15-year-old Cambodian girl told the media here on Friday.

For her friend, a 16-year-old Cambodian boy, these bars known to offer sex to clients ”must be closed because they lead to families breaking up.”

In some towns across Thailand and Cambodia, karaoke bars known for offering sex follow a common ritual: the male customers are encouraged to have a hostess from the bar sit by their side and entertain them as a build up to sex, later on.

The children also singled out other areas that were aiding the gangs profiting from human trafficking, described by some as ‘modern day slavery.’

They included a need for governments to stamp out bribery and corruption, provide ”free quality education for children in high-risk trafficking areas,” and the inclusion of anti-trafficking information and activities in the primary and secondary school curriculum.

In an appeal for compassion, the children from Cambodia, southern China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam urged their communities to be sympathetic towards the victims of trafficking.

Parents should ”do more to protect their children from traffickers” and the society must be ”prepared to accept victims of trafficking and provide them with greater opportunity,” stated the agenda for action that came out of the Mekong Children’s Forum (MCF).

The forum was a milestone in the efforts underway to stop trafficking – it was the first time that children from the region sat at a conference attended by government officials to make their case.

”This is a first and the government officials must take note of the recommendations made by the children at the forum,” Phil Robertson, programme manager of the U.N. agency on human trafficking in the Mekong region, told IPS.

”We have given children a level of empowerment at this gathering,” Allan Dow, spokesman of the MCF told the media.

The week-long event, organised by the International Labour Organsiation (ILO) and Save the Children, a British humanitarian agency, is aimed at influencing government officials before they sign an agreement later this month to jointly combat trafficking.

”At the moment the draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) to be signed by ministers has no provision for children’s participation to fight trafficking in the region,” Dow told IPS.

”We want governments to recognise that children’s participation is crucial and it should be included in the MoU,” he added.

This move by countries in the Mekong region marks another beginning too: a commitment by all the governments to cooperate to fight trafficking, as opposed to the bilateral arrangement that had been the case hitherto.

”The governments recognised there were many people moving through the region and human trafficking had to be addressed as a collaborative effort,” said Robertson.

These measures come at a time when the U.S. government is raising the alarm about the expanding grip of human trafficking gangs on vulnerable sections of the world’s poorest communities.

U.S. government reports state that close to two million children, some as young as five years old, are trapped in the global child-sex trade.

And studies done by the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reveal that the number of women and children trafficked in South-east Asia could be about 225,000 out of a global figure of more than 700,000.

According to available records, women from Thailand have been lured into the trafficking chain that feeds Japan’s sex industry, the largest for Asian women.

Meanwhile, experts tracking trafficking trends in the Mekong region have identified the flow of women and children from southern Vietnam to Cambodia, from northern Vietnam to southern China, and from Burma to Thailand.

”Trafficking in China is very complicated,” a 17-year-old Chinese boy attending the MCF told the media. ”Women (in the south) are trafficking because men need wives in the costal areas.”

In Vietnam, the women and children from the north are trafficked to China for marriage, for prostitution and for forced labour, said a Vietnamese teenager.

To end this, ”children must get together first and raise our voices in school,” she said. ”Then we can take this message to the officials in government.”