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22 March 2012
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Germany Monitoring Report: Status of Action against the
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
Although Germany is a prosperous country with high levels of human
development, poor data collection and insufficient coordination at the
national level continue to hamper efforts to eradicate CSEC, and rates of
trafficking and child pornography appear to have increased in recent
years. Ethnic minorities, especially Roma, are particularly
vulnerable. While the German legal framework is strong, and there is
a significant amount of regional cooperation with European partners,
there are few tailored services available to meet the specific needs of
CSEC victims, and knowledge among some legal personnel is low. Priority
actions for Germany include full implementation of the new Plan of Action
2011 and increased capacity building among officials, including the
establishment of specialised police units to deal with CSEC offences. Click here to download the full report.
Burkina Faso Monitoring Report: Status of Action against the
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
Burkina Faso is one of the 10 poorest countries in the
world, and the poverty and lack of economic opportunities for almost 60%
of the population put many children at a high risk of being exploited for
sexual purposes. Even though there is a lack of official data on the
magnitude, the causes and manifestations of commercial sexual
exploitation of children in Burkina Faso, many cases of child trafficking
and prostitution have been reported. Burkina Faso has not yet developed a
national strategy to address trafficking and other forms of CSEC but in
2008 it put in place robust legislation addressing trafficking in human
beings, including child trafficking. However, laws addressing other
manifestations of CSEC are not in compliance with relevant international standards.
Even though efforts have been made by the government to develop measures
to protect child victims’ best interests during legal proceedings, the
implementation of such measures is still weak. Priority actions for
Burkina Faso include establishment of care centres providing adequate
services (medical and psychosocial support and legal assistance)
delivered by well-trained staff. Click here to download the full report (in French
only).
The Code Annual General Meeting in Berlin
The Code Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2012 was successfully held on March
10 2012 in Berlin, Germany. UNICEF was invited to present the recently
completed assessment report of The Code. The meeting was used as an
opportunity for the 35 participants, including ECPAT International’s
Executive Director, in her capacity of Vice-Chair of The Code, several
EPCAT groups from Europe, the Code General Manager, and other
stakeholders, to discuss the challenges and opportunities for The Code
and the new strategy of The Code, which is expected to be approved at
next year's AGM.
ECPAT Italy campaign ‘Surfing without risks’
On 1 March 2012, ECPAT Italy launched the campaign ‘Surfing without
risks’. Implemented in cooperation with Fastweb, one of the leading
Italian telephone companies, the campaign aims to provide a series of
tips for making the use of new ICTs safer for children. Practical
suggestions will be given to both children and adults to help them
approach the virtual environments in a critical and responsible way.
The campaign has reached millions of Fastweb users and has received
excellent media coverage.
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ECPAT Board
Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand
ECPAT International’s Board of Trustees will meet in Bangkok,
Thailand on 26-30 March 2012.
2nd meeting of the Committee of the Parties to the Council
of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual
Exploitation and Sexual Abuse in France.
Between the 29 and 30 of March,
ECPAT will participate as an observer to the 2nd meeting
of the Committee of the Parties (‘Lanzarote Committee’) to the Council of
Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual
Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (CETS No. 201) in Strasbourg, France. The
Committee of the Parties is the monitoring body of the above-mentioned
convention. During the meeting, the ECPAT representative will participate
in an exchange of views on the priority themes for the first evaluation
round of State Parties.
Compiled and edited by
Miroslav Kalniev, ECPAT International.
For further information or to include details of news or events, please
contact: Miroslav
Kalniev
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All Children Matter - Protecting Sacred Lives Forum in
Canada
On March 8 2012, Beyond Borders/ECPAT Canada figured prominently at the
All Children Matter - Protecting Sacred Lives Forum in Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada. The annual forum on the sexual exploitation of children
featured Jordan Macsciangelo discussing the various coping mechanisms he
employed to survive child sexual abuse by a relative and later on the
streets as a sexually exploited teen. Jordan also talked about his
support of the Beyond Borders’ Man-to-Man
campaign and how important it is for men to end the silence
about their abuse.
Beyond Borders co-founder, Mark E. Hecht also presented at the forum on
The Code of Conduct. Mark focussed his discussion on the various levels
of responsibility that corporate sectors such as tourism, Internet
services and the financial sector have with respect to the issue of
financial gain from child sexual exploitation.
 
Canadian Human Trafficking Legislation: One Step Closer To
Becoming an Extraterritorial Offence
On March 15 2012, Beyond Borders/ECPAT Canada co-founders,
Rosalind Prober and Mark Erik Hecht appeared before the Standing
Committee on Justice and Human Rights in support of activist Member of
Parliament Joy Smith’s Bill C-310. The bill extends the reach of the
Canadian law to Canadians and residents who commit human trafficking
crimes abroad. Beyond Borders has been invited to appear before the
Senate on this bill as well.
Bill C-310 is similar to Canada’s child sex tourism legislation. In
1996, Beyond Borders worked successfully to have comprehensive extraterritorial
child sex tourism legislation in Canada, which has resulted in four
successful prosecutions.
Bill C-310 is the second human trafficking bill that MP Smith has brought
forward. In 2009, she brought forward Bill C-268. This legislation successfully
passed into law in 2010 creating Canada’s first child trafficking offence
with mandatory minimum sentences.
Salvation Army visits ECPAT International Secretariat in
Bangkok, Thailand
On 14 March 2012, Mr Frank Massolini, of the Salvation Army in
Chicago, Illinois, USA, came to speak with ECPAT International
Secretariat staff in Bangkok about the Salvation Army’s new program
PROMISE, Partnership to Rescue Our Minors from Sexual Exploitation. Mr
Massolini, the director of PROMISE, spoke with ECPAT about the mission
and mandate of PROMISE, a pilot project in Chicago that trains community
leaders to record data and report patterns of human trafficking,
especially those involving child sexual exploitation. Mr Massolini
discussed the multi-disciplinary approach of engaging stakeholders such
as hospitals, social workers, and corporate sponsors in the Chicago area
to better detect the signs of child sex trafficking. Additionally, Mr
Massolini reported about the newest undertaking of the PROMISE program
and the Salvation Army, Anne’s House, a long-term residential program for
young women and girls who have been affected by sexual
trafficking/commercial sexual exploitation. Anne’s House currently
houses ten girls who have been previously trafficked for sexual purposes
and provides them with individual and group therapy, life skills
training, access to medical services, and individualised educational and
vocational plans.
Seminar on trafficking survivors in Thailand
On 6 March, at the Windsor Suite Hotel Bangkok, the ECPAT Regional
Officer for East Asia and Pacific attended a seminar of ‘Live Our Lives
Group’, a trafficking survivors group, which advocated a victim-friendly
advocacy approach. The seminar was entitled ‘Survivors as Strategic
Partners in the Fight against Human Trafficking’. The Seminar was
organised by the Foundation for Women Thailand to share lessons learned
from their recently concluded project, which was implemented with the
support of JICA and the Bureau of Anti-Trafficking in Women and Children
of Thailand. The seminar showed how survivors can be key change agents in
the prevention and protection of Thai returnees who have been traumatised
through trafficking experiences by using their experiences to communicate
with law enforcers, service providers, the public and the media.
 
The Code training in Dominican Republic
At the end of February 2012, MAIS, the ECPAT affiliate group in the
Dominican Republic, organised five workshops in Santo Domingo, as part of
the first phase of implementation of The Code, which was signed by the
Hotel conglomerate Hotelera Palladium in December 2011. Over one hundred
hotel staff members participated in these workshops, 16 of whom were part
of the management and administration team, with whom the decision making
structure of the hotel was discussed in order to increase their
efficiency in case of an emergency. This is a very important step for The
Code in the Dominican Republic, as it is the first time that a five star
hotel in the capital city of Santo Domingo has held a training session on
how best to detect and report cases of child sex tourism. It is hoped
that many other hotels will soon join the movement in this city, where
child sex tourism is a very common phenomenon.
  
The Second International Conference in Africa on Child
Sexual Abuse in Ghana
Between 12 and 14 March, the Second International Conference in Africa on
Child Sexual Abuse took place at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, Accra,
Ghana. The Conference was organised by ANPPCAN Ghana in collaboration
with ANPPCAN Regional Office, Nairobi, Kenya under the theme ‘Taking Stock of the Status of
Child Sexual Abuse in Africa since the First International Conference in
Africa on Child Sexual Abuse in 2007’. The objectives
were to ascertain improvement in research and practice on child sexual
abuse in Africa; to identify pertinent issues that hinder or enhance
responses to child sexual abuse in Africa; and to provide a forum for
learning responses on Child Sexual Abuse globally. Two hundred
participants took part from 40 countries all over the world.
A youth affiliate from WAO-Afrique, the ECPAT affiliate group in Togo,
took part in a number of workshops. The main points derived from the
conference were that there is a need to break the silence on CSEC-related
issues and educate families throughout Africa on how to protect children
from CSEC. There were also renewed calls for intensified action from and
collaboration among governments as well as more advocacy work for the
implementation and enactment of child protection laws.
This event served also as an opportunity for the regional officer of
ANPPCAN to meet with WAO-Afrique to discuss strategies for the
re-establishment of the ANPPCAN Togo Chapter.
  
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Cameroon Team:
On 26 February 2012, over one hundred youth groups from Nkoayos Cop
Monde, Cathedral, Nkolndongo, Ekounou and Mvog Ada (Yaoundé) joined
orphans from the FACT Foundation as part of a trading day at Christian
Family Foundation (FACT), where a fair was held and a film was shown to
encourage attendees to talk about CSEC-related issues. ASSEJA, the ECPAT
Affiliate group in Cameroon, facilitated this exchange day as part of the
Youth Partnership Project (YPP). The purpose was to discuss strategies
against trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. The FACT
Foundation has been fighting child exploitation since it first became
involved with the YPP in 2009 and the group ‘Cop Monde’ of Nkoayos has
supported the project since 2011. Through awareness-raising initiatives,
both youth groups combined (Cop Monde and Foundation and FACT) have
reached reached more than 2000 people since 2009 with messages about and
strategies to prevent CSEC.
  
Guatemala Team
On 14 March 2012, ECPAT Guatemala, a number of YPP Groups and several
other NGOs in Guatemala joined a march to protest against violence toward
children, including the commercial sexual exploitation of children. They
marched in front of the Government Palace in Guatemala City with banners
asking the government to act to protect children and their rights. In
2011, more than 500 children died in a violent way (in the first three
months of 2012, 80 children have already died in a violent way). These
numbers are unacceptable, and the march was used as a way for people to
lobby the government to make the problem visible and render the justice
system more efficient.
 
Youth Led ICT Research in Latin America
Teams of child and youth researchers in Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru
and Uruguay have been working extremely hard over the last month to conduct
more than one thousand surveys with their fellow students, teachers and
managers of cybercafés, in order to understand how teenagers use new ICT
technologies and the risks to which they may be exposed.
The children and youth have undertaken this project
enthusiastically, and their motivation has meant that most of the teams
have finished the survey much earlier than expected. The data-gathering
phase of this project will be finalised by the end of this month, and the
regional report will be available by the end of May.
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