CHILDREN: Child Sex Trade, an International Crime

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Aug 26 1996 (IPS) - A million children per year enter the child sex trade. The activity generates many millions of dollars. Sex tourism catering to paedophiles is growing at a worrying rate. Children from the developing world are the main victims, though there are victims in the industrial North as well.

This is the grim backdrop against which delegates gather for a five-day conference opening Tuesday in Stockholm, Sweden on ending sexual exploration of children.

To be attended by representatives of governments and civil organisations, the World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children will finalise a worldwide plan of action to stop the practice.

Activists want the child sex trade classified as an international crime. Nations will be urged to commit themselves to creating national laws to punish all the criminals in the chain, national or international.

They would like such laws to leave the child victims of the sex trade free of all blame.

Though it is mainly girls who are involved in prostitution, a network of organisations dealing with the problem said there were also an increasing number of boys affected — between 20 and 25 percent in some countries.

The World Congress is scheduled to end on Saturday with a declaration and a plan of action.

At least 115 nations will attend the meeting organised by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) including End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT).

This means actually putting into action the commitment of these nations to the international children’s rights convention, and in particular article 34 which obliges states to protect children from “illegal sexual practices” and impedes “the exploitation of children in prostitution and pornography.”

This Convention was established in the world children’s summit in 1990. Up to June, it had been ratified by 187 nations, their endorsement covering a section which commits the governments to “impeding the abduction, sale or trafficking of children.”

But as the Stockholm draft declaration says, more than “collective human shame” will be needed: concerted action will be required on a local, national and international level to confront the problem.

The document — a copy of which has been obtained by IPS — defines sexual exploitation as a fundamental violation of the children’s rights, including sexual abuse by adults and the remuneration in cash or kind to the child or any third person.

The commercial sexual exploitation of children, turns them into sex objects and pieces of merchandise. This constitutes a form of coercion and violence, which includes forced labour and contemporary forms of slavery, the document states.

It rejects the argument that poverty can be used as an excuse for the sexual exploitation of children, but admits there are factors which feed the problem. Economic disparities, unfair socioeconomic structures, family disintegration, the lack of education, consumerism and rural-urban migration are listed.

Gender discrimination, irresponsible male sexual behaviour, harmful traditional practices and child trafficking, are other factors “which exacerbate the vulnerability of children” to those who trade with them sexually.

Criminal networks use all these elements to perpetuate exploitation and satisfy a market of fundamentally male clients, who seek “illegal sexual satisfaction,” said the draft declaration.

This is a crime, fed by corruption, and missing or lax legislation, and the insensitivity of the authorities. People from all social levels benefit, as well as intermediaries including family members, officials and even community leaders, it says.

Lack of political will helps to increase the problem which leaves scars on the children who manage to survive. The document stresses that governments and families, along with civil society, must form the pillars to destroy the trade.

Commitments suggested in the declaration give total priority and resources to the battle against this exploitation and promote real and active cooperation between the States and social sectors to prevent the child sex trade.

Apart from proposing new harsh laws to confront the whole criminal chain involved, the document suggests the revision of all existing programmes and laws on the issue.

The 10 concrete commitments also establish the obligation to create integral plans, including the gender differences, to prevent sexual exploitation and attend and protect the child victims.

Education, social mobilisation and action by the politicians, either spontaneous or forced by the national and international communities, through both governmental and non-governmental organisations, are other elements which can be used to eradicate the problem.

The project plan of action starts with the creation of national prevention programmes, which offer at-risk children access to education, health, information and the defence of their rights.

It also calls on the governments to “formulate or reinforce economic and social policies with gender content, to help those children vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation, their families and their communities.”

According to UNICEF data, Canada, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan, have all worked to reduce “sex tourism” either within their frontiers or abroad.

Meanwhile, Australia, Canada the United States, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, the Netherlands and Britain have reinforced their child pornography legislation.

Asia is the continent with the highest number of commercial child sex abuse victims through the translational tourism networks, and to a large extent it is the North, above all Europe, which organises this and provides the abusing adults.

But no continent fully escapes the problem. In Latin America it is the street children who are most used as sex merchandise in return for “protection,” though this is not exclusively the case, and paedophlile tourism is increasing in Brazil and other nations.

In Africa, many children contracted as servants are obliged to satisfy their employer’s sexual desires, while in the east and other continents children are forced to satisfy the older members of armed groups and refugee camps.

In the Middle East, early marriage legitimates adult abuse of girls, in a form of exploitation covered in ancient tradition and religion.

In Europe, apart from the “travel agencies” which live off sex tourism mainly in Asia and increasingly in Latin America, groups of children are taken as sex merchandise from the poorer east of the continent to the richer west.

Furthermore, the double standards of the governments, like Britain, which has up until now refused to sanction laws to punish what its citizens do with children from other countries, make the fight against the networks even more difficult.

Stockholm will try to block all this, so that governments and societies both North and South will discuss human rights more and more, forcing them to “stop turning a blind eye” to one of the most irritating violations, according to the organisers.