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Children's Bodies and Souls for Sale

by Sara Ann Friedman
IN 1987 a 13-year-old Phi bppine girl was killed by a European tourist when an electric vibrator broke Inside her body and *he bled to death The tourist wa* acquit ted on a technicality
In the raid of a Bangkok brothel. Thai police rescued 18 girl* between the ages of 14 and 19. Seventeen tested HfV-po*ttive According to a health worker who Interviewed the girls, fewer than half the customers wore condoms. and each girl was servicing 17 men a night and receiving the equivalent of US60 80 per customer
The parents of an 1 1 -year-old girl from the Taiwan mountain provinces were paid fay a policeman » wife to allow their daughter to go to the city Lured to the house of a eousln . she wa* forcibly In-with hormones to trig pr menstruation and the next day began receiving customers Her family wanted to buy her back but could not find her •ntll the young girl had been told many times to different brothels
These are but three of the thousands of documented case* of children as young as age five In many developing countries who are lured, ab ducted adopted or, sold by their families Into Wtfitbcls for prostitution and pornography, fa serve the Increasing de mand* of tourist* and organ toed sex tour* from Industri allaed countries
Since the growth of tourtom during the 1970*. child advocates have noted with alarm the explosion of child prostl tutton into a multi-millien-dollar international Industry As field workers have observed, whole villages are bereft of young girls, with children taken from their homes by force or under false promises and Illegally transported across many borders to prison-like brothels in dozen* of Asian cities and adopted home* in the Indu*triali*ed countries of Europe and North America. The worsening situation affecting younger and younger victim* has prompted a new in temattona) campaign, and several governments. Including Ger row ry and Thailand, plan to take stronger action against those who trade tn the bodies and souls of children.
A new campaign
Joint NOO activity, spear headed by an international
campaign and coalition. End Child Prostitution tn Aslan Tourism (ECPAT). Is calling for the end of tourism-related prostitution in four Aslan countries — Thailand, the Philippine*. Sri Lanka and Taiwan — by 1993. The time has come.' says Ron O'Grady, New Zealand clergyman and coordinator of ECPAT, for concerted action among NGOs. churches and the rest of the
world to create the necessary moral outrage that will change attitudes, pass new laws and enforce existing legislation. No society can go on destroying children In such large num ber*.' NGO* working tn the filed have pointed to deepening economic and social problems that make solutions to the problem both more elusive and more urgent. Increasing urban
Isation. accompanied by the breakdown of family support systems and rising family violence, wider economic divisions between north and south and links among poverty, debt service and tourism, are some of the complex forces conspiring to thrust these children Into a world they cannot cope with, a world eager to exploit and abuse them.
But the problem is not con fined to tourism, or to Asia. It is a problem of immense proportions. involving local men on many levels, touching every sector of the world — urban and rural. North and South.
In November 1991. an African regional conference, Culture. Sex and Money: Its Effects on Women and Children.’ was held in Abidjan. Cole dTvolrc. sponsored by the International Abolitionist Federation (1AF), the International Catholic Child Bureau (ICCB) and Environmental Development Action in the Third World (ENDA).
The Conference stressed the human rights aspect of child prostitution, with participants urging governments that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child to implement their commitments. and those that have not ratified It to be pressured to
A report published In 1989 by Redd Barna (Norwegian Save the Children). The Sexual Exploitation of Young Children in Developing Countries, describes child prostitutions as the worst form of exploitation
. an outright attack on the most fundamental rights of a human being, the right to decide over his/her own body, own health, own mind.'
The problem has been most recently exacerbated by AIDS, as men seek younger and younger girls, especially vir-
gins Paradoxically. It may also be the AIDS crisis — already devastating Africa — now on the doorstep of Asia that has prompted some governments to acknowledge the huge scope of the problem. The Thai Government has just passed legislation to stiffen penalties for perpetrators and actively participated In ECPAT* first international conference. held in April tn Bangkok.
Many observer* are seep 11 cal about law enforcement — present of future. Illegal under almost every national law. and outlawed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, sexual exploitation of children la denied by officials and winked at by local enforcement officers.
Researchers are threatened by organised crime elements, reluctant to relinquish their hold over such a profitable enterprise. Many governments, anxious to develop tourism, are unwilling to touch foreigners, including military personnel, who commit crimes In their country.
In 1988, the United States Investigative Services mounted an undercover investigation of reported child prostitution ring* in Olangapo City, the Philippines. The official report was never released, but a copy found its way to the PREDA Foundation, where Father Shay Allen reported that agents were offered children as young as four and five.
ECPAT has office* In 13 countries, including several 'sender' countrie* where the primary demand for children originates: Australia. Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, the USA.
Germany, a major source of European tourism to Southeast Asia, has taken the lead in cracking down on the worst excesses of sex tourism. The Government has recently passed legislation that will make punishable in Germany the abuse by any German citizen in any country of a child of any nationality. — Third World Network Features
Sara Ann Friedman 1* editor of NGO Action for Children, produced by the NOO Commit tee on UNICEF.