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Sexual exploitation of children
From city streets to cyberspace, it's getting worse
The commercial sexual exploitation of children is no longer a taboo subject and is now being discussed openly in a growing number of countries. Still, it remains a global problem - and is becoming even more so through use of the Internet. Fighting such child abuse effectively requires an attack on its underlying causes. This report examines what can be done.
YOKOHAMA, Japan - When the World Congress against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held here in December, concluded its sessions, the sheer size of the gathering illustrated the scope of the problem being addressed.
Moving beyond the perception that sexual abuse of children for profit is a problem of poor countries, the 3,000 delegates, representing more than 130 countries and hundreds of NGOs, intergovernmental organizations and the private sector, heard harrowing stories of Albanian minors trafficked to Western Europe, Japanese adolescents offering sex in exchange for pocket money, Russian street children forced into prostitution and young Vietnamese or Nepalese girls sent to brothels in Cambodia and India.
Almost no country would dare claim that it is totally free of the problem. Nor would any country provide precise data on the number of children commercially exploited for sexual purposes. Much of the exploitation is clandestine - and a general methodology for determining how widespread it is has yet to be created.
From earth to cyberspace
However, even without an exact number of children who fall victim to commercial sexual exploitation - which some put as high as two to three million - most of the Yokohama participants were certain that it is on the rise, especially child pornography. And what was equally clear is that sexual exploitation of children has been extended from city streets to the information highway.
Previously limited to clandestine distribution networks for books and videos, or the grimy streets of impoverished ghettos, child pornography has been rocketed into cyberspace by the Internet, through its ease of distribution and global reach. Delegates said Internet sites, charging access fees and offering photographs and videos of sexually abused children, are operating from countries where anti-child porn legislation does not exist or law enforcement is either unable or unwilling to attack it effectively.
One problem encountered by Web porn sites is that payment by credit card can expose porn surfers to the authorities. But this obstacle can be partially avoided through a new Internet development called "exchange groups" involving a limited number of pedophiles who, via a site they create, or e-mail, exchange photos and videos of abused minors, as well as pirated passwords giving them access to child porn sites requiring payment. As a pre-condition for membership, new candidates must generally feed the network by providing pedophile photographs they have taken themselves, thus creating new victims.
Cooperation of Internet
service providers needed
The number of surfers interested in such material is enormous.
"During a special operation carried out recently, we monitored 30 Internet newsgroups," says Sharon Girling of the British National Crime Squad. "That allowed us to zero in on at least 9,800 individuals, in Great Britain and elsewhere, who either distributed or downloaded photographs showing child abuse."
In 1996, the Manchester police confiscated only 12 photos and videos of child pornography, while in 1999, they discovered 41,000, almost all on the Internet.
International cooperation among police departments enables contact with the Internet service providers used by the offenders, but they need to have kept logs of all connections established by their subscribers in the past. Several countries have adopted a law which requires them to do so.*
Many NGOs and governments have set up "hotlines" where any Internet surfer may report addresses of pedophile sites which he might have run into.
Concrete action plans, not hit-or-miss measures
Research over the last few years on the commercial sexual exploitation of children has shown it to be a complex phenomenon which sporadic measures cannot overcome. As a result, the delegates in Yokohama emphasized the need to fight against all underlying causes of the exploitation: poverty, the breakdown of families, armed conflict, drugs, and the increase in demand by abusers.
AIDS is another factor explaining why more and younger children are falling victim to child prostitution. Pedophiles believe the younger the child, the lower the risk of becoming infected with HIV, a mistaken impression that international organizations have sought to counter.
In response, the Yokohama meeting adopted a "worldwide pledge" reaffirming and extending the promises made during the first Congress held in 1996, in Stockholm. In particular, it calls for the urgent ratification of international instruments relating to the sexual exploitation of children, such as the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182).
"Since the Stockholm Congress, the commitment of the ILO has significantly deepened with the unanimous adoption in June 1999 of Convention No. 182," said Kari Tapiola, ILO Executive Director, in an address in Yokohama. "This Convention is an extremely important instrument against exploitative child labour, including children in prostitution, child pornography and trafficking-related abuse of children."
Since its adoption, Convention No. 182 has been ratified by more than 110 of the ILO's 175 member States, the fastest pace of ratification of any Convention in the Organization's 83-year history. It requires:
This and other ways of tackling the problem were discussed in a session organized by the ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) at the Congress. The IPEC workshop also outlined "time-bound" measures to combat child trafficking and children in prostitution.
Still, the most difficult task remains: to convince governments to respect the promises made in Yokohama. This presents a big challenge, since only some 50 countries adopted a plan of action against the commercial sexual exploitation of children, whereas all of them had pledged to do so at the Stockholm Congress. The next United Nations Special General Assembly on children in May, could provide the forum for a first evaluation on this subject.
- Samuel Grumiau
* Since November 2001, the Council of Europe has invited its 43 member States, including the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Africa, to sign the first international convention on cybercrime, When it goes into effect - after ratification by five countries, of which three members of the Council of Europe - cyber police will have the right to carry out remote searches, to intercept communications, to disrupt computer programmes, or to retain connection data.