Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey still progressing slowly on protecting children from sex trafficking -report
BANGKOK (AlertNet) – Countries worldwide are failing to properly protect children from sex trafficking, a global child protection network said in a report on Thursday, urging governments to ratify U.N. protocols on the issue and give victims more support.
Bangkok-based ECPAT International, which reviewed and ranked 42 countries globally on their efforts to protect children from trafficking, said more still needs to be done despite significant progress in recent years.
ECPAT pressed countries to urgently ratify the United Nations’ Trafficking Protocol and Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, reform laws and ensure all the victims get much-needed help.
“Most countries are failing to sufficiently criminalise the trafficking of children for sex,” ECPAT said in a statement accompanying the report.
“In many countries, the legal system fails to protect child victims, instead labelling them as delinquents or even criminals,” it said, adding that this led to victims being more criminalised than the traffickers.
Countries such as Ireland, the Philippines and Poland made “notable efforts” in the past two years while Malaysia, Singapore and Turkey – consistently ranked at the bottom since 2009 – are still progressing slowly, the ranking showed.
Industrialised nations such as the UK and Hong Kong have embarked on “limited measures,” while the United States, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden and South Korea have only made “some progress,” underlying that child trafficking is more than just a developing country problem, the report said.
China and Myanmar, where activists have raised concerns over human trafficking, were not included.
Maureen Crombie, chair of ECPAT International Board of Trustees, said the states were chosen based on where it has a presence and where they were able to carry out baseline research.
1-2 MLN CHILDREN TRAFFICKED EACH YEAR
Nearly 80 percent of all human trafficking worldwide is for sexual exploitation, according to a 2009 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Worldwide, more than one in five trafficking victims are children. But in some parts of Africa and the Mekong region children are the majority, the report said.
However, exact statistics on child sex trafficking are hard to come by, due to the hidden nature of the crime and those who commit it.
ECPAT is sticking to a 10-year-old figure from the International Labour Organization (ILO) that estimated at least 1.2 million children are trafficked each year. Some aid workers told AlertNet they expect the number to be around 2 million based on field experience.
Yet approximately 13 percent of the countries ECPAT reviewed have no victim support services, and where services are offered they are often “incomprehensive, limited and unspecialised,” the report said.
Specialised support services for boy victims “should be urgently designed and delivered,” it added.
The report also called on countries to remove “barriers that currently impede full access to support services” such as the provision of assistance only upon condition that the child collaborates in the legal proceedings or is identified formally as a victim of trafficking.
It also urged governments to draw up national strategies to tackle child sex trafficking, establish a special police unit to combat such crimes with specially trained staff and educate teachers and children.
ECPAT produced the report at the end of its three-year campaign with The Body Shop, titled “Stop Sex Trafficking of Children and Young People,” which generated one of the largest petitions in history with more than 7 million signatures.
Twenty countries have committed to either change laws or adopt international human rights standards as a result of the campaign, the report said.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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