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NEWS FROM YOKOHAMA
Fighting Sexual Exploitation Goes Beyond Paper
Pledges
By
Marwaan Macan-Markar
YOKOHAMA, Japan, Dec 16 (IPS) - The last five years have brought
greater awareness of child sexual exploitation as a global problem,
but it is time to go beyond making new paper pledges and use
stronger weapons to combat this scourge, U. N. Children's Fund
(UNICEF) chief Carol Bellamy said here Sunday .
On the eve of the Second World Congress against the Commercial
Sexual Exploitation of Children, Bellamy said it is quite clear
that the problem exists ''in virtually every country''.
''Asia was thought of as the region most affected and there
was awareness,'' she said, referring to the first world congress
in Stockholm, Sweden in 1996. ''But now there is global concern.
It's not just an Asian issue,'' added Bellamy.
But while ''public attention is part of the solution'', she
said it is time for governments, activists and young people
themselves to look back at the last five years and look at ''the
lessons learned - both good and bad''.
The fact that the number of governments attending the Yokohama
congress has increased by 13 - from 122 in Stockholm to at least
135 here - says a lot about how the issue has climbed up many
countries' agendas.
The conference, being held from Dec. 17-20, is also expected
to draw more than 3,000 participants including 55 ministerial-level
government officials, 2,150 activists and close to 100 youth
participants.
''We need to shed the spotlight on this issue again,'' Bellamy
urged during an interview with IPS Sunday. ''This is a denial
of rights.''
She added that the congress was convened not so much to produce
yet another thick document, but one that allows government officials,
non-government groups and young people themselves to exchange
lessons learned in fighting this global problem.
''I believe this meeting should be used to share experiences
and problems. This isn't just a government meeting, because
NGOs also play a key role and are key partners,'' Bellamy said,
adding that the Yokohama meeting would allow participants to
talk about what methods against child sexual exploitation work,
what do not and what new forms of the problem there are to tackle.
Added Samuel Koo, director of UNICEF Japan: ''This is not a
document conference. It's an experience-sharing one.''
For child rights activists like Helen Sackstein, the Yokohama
congress offers a platform to draw attention to areas where
action is most needed in societies that have ''trivialised sex
and sexualised children'' - and thus go to the root of the sexual
exploitation of young children.
Sackstein, coordinator of a coalition of non-government groups
working on children's rights, agrees that sexual exploitation
has gained sufficient awareness globally since the first congress,
but says it is time to go further into the subject and address
the issue of victimised children and the men who exploit them.
''We have to broaden the context in which we look at this abuse
of children's rights,'' asserted Sackstein of the NGO Group
for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is organising
the congress along with UNICEF, the Japanese government and
End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT) International.
''Not everything is applicable to everyone. We need to develop
strategies that are relevant to each region,'' she added.
Indeed, Bellamy said the success of the congress would be measured
by whether it gives people ''real information and tools to take
back to their countries'' after the last five years of experience
in fighting child sexual exploitation.
She also calls for a broader definition of children being sexually
exploited to emerge during the Yokohama congress, saying this
can only help efforts to curb it. Trafficking of children, for
instance, was ''narrowly defined'' during the Stockholm meeting,
she said. ''I think the broadest definition of trafficking should
be taken up.''
Despite new international efforts to fight commercial sexual
exploitation of children in recent years, including through
the emergence of extraterritorial laws to cover sexual offenses,
the number of children being trafficked by both national and
international crime syndicates, who earn millions of dollars
annually from this flesh trade, is rising.
For instance, ''the United Nations estimates that, in the last
30 years, trafficking in women and children in Asia for sexual
exploitation alone has victimised more than 30 million people,''
states a conference background paper.
However, such numbers may not reveal the complete picture, adds
the backgrounder, 'On the Move: Trafficking of Children for
Sexual Exploitation' .. It notes that ''the exploitation of
children who have been trafficked, and often their movement
into exploitation, is always illegal and so almost always hidden.
Statistics are therefore unreliable.''
A similar disparity between the numbers and reality is the case
in other forms of commercial sexual exploitation of children.
''Data collected is partial; samples and methodologies are not
comparable; even definitions differ,'' states another background
note on the scope of the abuse.
''If the lowest available figures of the many differing statistics
are quoted for each country are added together, they still add
up to more than a million,'' it reveals.
Sackstein's organisation also wants the basic commitments made
by 122 governments at Stockholm monitored at the Yokohama meeting.
''Effective monitoring is a key element in the concrete implementation
of any instrument or plan of action. This is particularly true
of the Stockholm Agenda for Action and the instruments on which
it is based,'' the NGO Group on the Convention of the Rights
of the Child points out in a statement.
For this NGO, three key issues that warrant attention are actions
to help victims, ways of targeting exploiters and methods to
challenge the causes.
''There is no supply without demand, yet those who exploit children
are often not caught, if caught often not punished, if punished
often not seriously; NGOs are putting pressure on states to
change laws and enforce them,'' the NGO Group's document declares.
Child rights activists also hope to use the four-day congress
to assess commitments made by governments to combat this form
of child abuse through national plans of action, a instrument
agreed upon at the Stockholm gathering.
''We want governments to recommit to the agendas they have pledged,''
said Chitraporn Vanaspong, the Asia-Pacific regional officer
for the Bangkok-based non-governmental ECPAT. ''Governments
who have not done so get an opportunity this time.''
But words alone are not enough, she insists, since some of the
countries that have crafted national plans of action have done
little by way of implementation. ''There is little to be happy
about that.''
Equally important, adds Chitraporn, is for governments to support
the call for regional initiatives to combat this form of child
abuse because it happens across national boundaries. ''Already,
South-east Asian countries have begun talking about setting
up a regional network to monitor commercial sexual exploitation
of children every year.'' (END)
