By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 21 2005 (IPS)

In a landmark step hailed by activists, Japanese travel agents agreed to abide to a code of conduct in an international campaign to stop the sexual exploitation of children in foreign countries.

”Persuading Japanese travel agents to join a campaign they have largely ignored up to now, has set a precedent in Japan where awareness of the issue is still quite low,” said Junko Miyamoto, director of ECPAT, a non-governmental organisation that has long been a front runner in moves to prevent sexual crimes against children.

The ECPAT acronym stands for ‘ End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes’.

The Code of Conduct for Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism, simply called ‘the code’, came into force last April largely due to the efforts of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Tourism Organisation and ECPAT-USA. It has been well received by Western tour companies.

Late last week, Japanese tour companies joined their Western counterparts in signing the code. The code is designed to create a more responsible tourism industry, one vigilant against child exploitation.

The code requires travel agencies to train staff in countries where children are exploited; provide information about the issue to travellers; explicitly repudiate the sexual exploitation of children in any contracts with local suppliers; develop ethical corporate policies; and report annually on the issue.

UNICEF estimates that two million children – mostly girls – are victims of the worldwide commercial sex trade, with as many as a third of Cambodian prostitutes under the age of majority.

According to UNICEF Japan, 60 major Japanese travel agencies as well as the Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA), that is an umbrella for about 80 percent of companies in the Japanese travel industry, agreed to abide by the code.

”The agreement is a message from the travel industry to increase pressure to stop the sexual exploitation of children. We have to work out how to implement the required measures,” Hiromi Yonetani of JATA told IPS.

Yonetani said it was important for JATA to work closely with local travel operators to make the code more effective.

The push for the travel industry to do its part to curb the demand aspect of the global sex trade came a year after U.S. President George W. Bush passed the Protect Act, legislation making it illegal for U.S. citizens to travel abroad and engage in sex with a minor.

In his September 2003 U.N. address, Bush asked that all countries pass laws against their citizens traveling abroad to engage in the ”underground of brutality” of sex trafficking and warn tourists of this ”humanitarian crisis”. In the U.S., conviction under the Protect Act could lead to a 30-year prison sentence.

”The code is an active step that is crucial to prevent the sexual abuse of children by Japanese travelers and will strengthen domestic laws that have already been enacted towards this purpose,” said Hiromisa Nakatani, head of UNICEF Japan.

Eleven Japanese nationals have so far been prosecuted after they returned home from overseas since Tokyo passed a law in 1996 that permits the arrest of Japanese pedophiles who have been charged abroad. But activists say this is only the tip of the iceberg.

The men were arrested by police for paying for sex with children in Thailand, Philippines and Cambodia. In January a 53-year-old Japanese man was arrested overseas for paying about 4,200 yen (40 U.S. dollars) to a 16-year-old girl to have sex with him.

”It is very difficult to arrest Japanese people guilty of sexual abuse of children in foreign countries. That is why engaging local travel agencies to keep an eye on Japanese when they travel abroad is so very important,” said ECPAT’s Miyamoto.

Lawyer Setsuko Tsuboi, a well known campaigner against Japanese sex tours, said the uphill struggle faced by activists involves making people understand that sexual exploitation of children and women is a human rights violation.

”In a predominantly male dominated Japanese society, women and young girls are sexual objects to satisfy the desire of men. We have to change this deep-rooted discrimination,” she told IPS.

While the spotlight is on overseas sexual exploitation, experts also worry about the growing domestic problem of child pornography, teenage prostitution and more recently an increase in the number of murders by pedophiles.

Early this month, a 36-year-old man was arrested for abducting and killing a first-grade elementary school girl. His room was filled with child pornography.

The National Police Agency reported there were 1,844 crimes involving child pornography in 2004.

Arrests of politicians, lawyers and teachers for seducing juveniles have also been reported. While no official figure is available, experts say Japan’s child pornography industry tops the world, which makes it even harder to crack down on perpetrators.

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