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High-level event on placing child protection at the core of sustainable travel and tourism.

Important steps have been taken at the global, regional and national levels to tackle violence, exploitation and abuse in the context of travel and tourism. But progress has not been made at the scale or speed that is needed. We need to rethink travel and tourism to ensure that child protection is at the core of making the sector truly sustainable.

The travel and tourism sector plays a key role in supporting the livelihood and development of communities and States worldwide. The promotion of sustainable travel and tourism is an important dimension of achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly as the sector continues to recover from the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic. 

But many child protection challenges emerge in the context of travel and tourism. Children are victims of child labour, sexual exploitation and trafficking, among other forms of violence and harm. As the ongoing increase in the number of travelers worldwide coincides with an increase in children's vulnerability to violence for diverse reasons, urgent action is needed.

High-level event hosted by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, the World Childhood Foundation and the Permanent Mission of Sweden to the United Nations. 

Keynote addresses by H.M. Queen Silvia of Sweden, H.E. Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Dr. Najat Maalla M'jid, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children.

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"The Light in Their Eyes" Melissa Fleming (UN) interviews the United Nations Special Representative on Violence against Children.

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Empowering children and enhancing their meaningful participation.

An unrelenting obstacle for Special Rapporteurs has been the meaningful engagement of children at the international level. Though successive mandate holders have consistently met with children during their country visits, it has been a major challenge to ensure the participation of children in the rest of their activities. Child participation is generally deficient at the national level and it is harder for children to be able to reach international institutions. The Committee on the Rights of the Child underlined in its Working Methods on child participation that, in order to be effective and meaningful at the international level, it must be understood as a process and not as a single event. Moreover, intermediaries and those who are facilitating children’s participation should ensure that the interests and priorities that are represented are those of the children themselves and not of the adults or organisations they work with. The fourth Special Rapporteur, Ms Najat Maalla M’jid, dedicated one of her reports to child participation, and emphasised how it had to be considered as a core component of comprehensive and rights-based child protection systems. Authorities thus have the responsibility to institutionalise child participation; for example, through the creation of children’s parliaments.

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Combatting impunity of perpetrators.

The ongoing deficiencies in national child protection systems have fostered the impunity of perpetrators. Large gaps remain in national legal frameworks. To date, 173 States have ratified the Optional Protocol on the sale of children child prostitution and child pornography, and 24 States still need to ratify it. Many States that have ratified the Protocol have not properly implemented it or still apply the double criminality requirement regarding offences committed by nationals or against nationals abroad. In addition, the sale of children and certain aspects of sexual exploitation are not systematically outlawed in national legislation. For example, child marriage is still legal in numerous States even though it can be regarded in many cases to amount to the sale of children. Moreover, weak law enforcement and the absence of child-sensitive interlocutors and reporting mechanisms often lead to the under-reporting of violations and the impunity of the perpetrators. Comprehensive overhauls of law enforcement systems are required in many countries in order to restore due diligence, good governance and transparency. Lastly, international cooperation still necessitates strengthening, in particular between law enforcement agencies. Despite the efforts of INTERPOL, several registered sexual offenders are still able to perpetrate further crimes abroad.

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Tackling social tolerance.

The impunity of perpetrators is intrinsically linked to a social tolerance for these crimes as victims and witnesses both lose the will to report abuse. In addition, certain beliefs and cultural practices foster the sale and sexual exploitation of children such as child marriage and racial as well as caste based discrimination. Gender-based discrimination is a further major source of social tolerance for these phenomena. The sexual exploitation of girls is often rooted in patriarchal structures that promote male sexual domination and do not condemn the commercialisation of girls and women. They are often depicted, through gender stereotypes, in a subservient position in relation to men and boys, thus negating the ability of women and girls to make decisions regarding their own sexual and reproductive life. Men and boys consequently need to be at the centre of efforts to change mind-sets.

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Engagement of the business sector.

Since the inception of the mandate, successive mandate holders have called for the private sector to act responsibly and get involved in the fight against the sale and sexual exploitation of children. There has been progress, as has been shown in the sections on sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism and on the use of new technologies to commit these crimes. Nonetheless, many other sectors still have to engage actively in the development and implementation of prevention measures. For instance, developers of virtual currencies and systems operating on peer-topeer networks should prevent and fight the use of their products and services in the context of the sale and sexual exploitation of children. The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights from 2011 are an essential benchmark that should be at the heart of any corporate social responsibility scheme

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Focus on the emerging risk factors.

Families have been increasingly affected in their ability to care for children because of socio-economic factors or humanitarian crises. The world financial crisis increased inequalities within and among societies, and the ongoing conflicts, which have led to the highest number of displaced persons since the Second World War, have contributed to the weakening of the family.

The displacement crisis linked to these conflicts has also severely impacted children. Over half of the 19.5 million refugees worldwide are children. These vulnerable refugee children are particularly at risk of being sold e.g. for adoption and/or sexually exploited. Migration has also significantly amplified with numerous unaccompanied minors constituting easy targets for exploiters. In addition, the globalisation of Internet access as well as financial transactions have increased the number of potential child victims of sale and sexual exploitation.

The rise of the Internet has specifically impacted children’s social norms. The easy availability of pornography can indeed affect the sexual behaviour of children and their tolerance for certain practices.

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Encourage child victims to report their suffering with the assurance that their complaints will be filed

The illicit nature of the sale and sexual exploitation of children has made the collection of precise data particularly difficult. It is thus still impossible to have a detailed picture of the extent of these phenomena. However, certain stumbling blocks for the development of comprehensive statistics are due to the social factors outlined above. The social tolerance, shame felt by the victims and denial by the authorities all contribute to the incomplete recording of these crimes. Consequently, it is crucial to change mind-sets and encourage child victims to report their suffering with the assurance that their complaints will be filed

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Preventing the sale and sexual exploitation of children.

The prevention of the sale and sexual exploitation of children has been a key priority for the mandate. It was first dealt with comprehensively in 2004 by the third Special Rapporteur, Mr Juan Miguel Petit (Uruguay), with the aim of creating a report that could be used as a reference for the design of prevention programmes and policies.

It was concluded that for prevention to be effective it is fundamental to have “political will; a sound knowledge base; an institutional presence; a multidisciplinary approach and coordination between different institutions; the participation of children and their families; outreach to the grass-roots level, especially to marginalised groups; attention to gender issues and the concerns of groups exposed to higher risks of sexual exploitation, as well as adequate human and financial resources.” In 2013, the development of efficient prevention strategies was further tackled by the fourth Special Rapporteur, Ms Najat Maalla M’jid (Morocco). She reemphasised that prevention is cost-effective. Indeed the costs of response interventions are much higher than those of preventive measures. A high price in socioeconomic terms is paid for the long-term effects of harm, in particular owing to the irreversible consequences to a child’s health and development. Prevention was defined in her report with three layers identified: primary prevention, which focuses on the entire population and consists in the provision of universal quality social services that reduce the likelihood of future violations; secondary prevention, which concentrates on specific groups or children which are known to be more at risk by providing additional, targeted, support services; and tertiary prevention, which consists of services targeting perpetrators and/or victims in order to limit the effects of the violation and prevent reoffending.

The combined work of mandate holders has led to a clear conceptualisation of an integrated and holistic prevention strategy which must be incorporated in any comprehensive child protection system. For this strategy to be efficient it is essential to improve the knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon, to have an all-encompassing legal framework, to ensure a child-sensitive reporting mechanism, to identify vulnerable children, to strengthen families and communities,to empower children, to promote corporate social responsibility, to enhance international cooperation, and to regularly assess and monitor all these prevention measures.

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Addressing the demand for the sale and sexual exploitation of children.

An essential aspect of any inclusive prevention strategy is the understanding of the demand behind the sale and sexual exploitation of children. In 2006, the Special Rapporteur, Mr Juan Miguel Petit, and the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Ms Sigma Huda, joined their efforts to study in depth, from their different perspectives, the demand for commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking. It was concluded that the sexual exploitation of children is mainly driven by men and the victims are overwhelmingly girls. A key recommendation that came out of the study was that it was necessary to prosecute not only the offenders, but also the whole supply chain from the pimps to the intermediaries. In addition, it was crucial to target potential perpetrators through awareness-raising campaigns and prevent patriarchal structures. Beliefs surrounding sexual dominance and machismo, male power and control as well as the viewing of children, especially girls, as objects of possession all contribute to foster the demand. The importance of sexoffender treatment programmes was also underlined as well as the need to engage with military personnel before their deployment. The fifth Special Rapporteur, Ms Maud de BoerBuquicchio (the Netherlands), has updated and furthered research on the demand factor. The report focused on successful strategies to address the demand for sexual exploitation of children and established a more detailed profile of all those who are involved in such heinous crimes with a particular focus on all the intermediaries.

In the recommendations, the Special Rapporteur called for a comprehensive mapping of the demand in order to adopt appropriate strategies. She insisted on the need to prevent the demand in the first place, to ensure the accountability of perpetrators and rehabilitate them. On this latter aspect, it is underlined that further research is necessary to clearly determine the efficiency and impact of offender rehabilitation.

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Ensuring the provision of comprehensive care, recovery and rehabilitation for child victims of sale and sexual exploitation.

Due to the abhorrent nature of the crimes suffered by children victims of sale and sexual exploitation, the care they receive when they escape or are rescued is of the utmost importance. The successive Special Rapporteurs have throughout their work emphasised the obligation of States to provide care, recovery and rehabilitation services to child victims of sale and sexual exploitation. The initial programmes that were advocated included counselling programmes, organised support for families in order to prevent the victim’s placement in an institution, and awareness-raising on the subject to prevent the stigmatisation of the survivor. It was observed that in the majority of national scenarios there was no programme specifically addressing child victims of sale and sexual exploitation. Furthermore, the risk of system-induced trauma and re-victimisation were very high due to these inappropriate services.

Successive mandate holders thus sought to provide practical guidelines to States and other actors. An urgent priority was to provide separate care for child victims of sale and sexual exploitation and differentiate this care from existing programmes dealing with child victims of domestic abuse and violence or dealing with adults. The third Special Rapporteur, Mr Juan Miguel Petit, detailed the services that needed to be provided by shelters and the importance of long term therapies. The report of the current Special Rapporteur, Ms Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, built on collected good practices to present concise and concrete guidelines. From this study, it was concluded that comprehensive care, recovery and reintegration programmes needed to include:

Rapid victim identification and coordinated referral mechanisms;

Specialised training for personnel involved in the detection process;

Awareness-raising and outreach to victims and children in vulnerable situations; Centralised databases for case management to ensure that child victims are identified, linked to services and followed-up on a long-term basis;

Access of child victims to safe and secure housing, medical and psychological care, legal assistance, education, vocational training, life skills and socio-economic support, sports and leisure activities, religion and cultural practices;

Accessible avenues for participation, supporting a sense of agency in the care, recovery and reintegration programme of children, keeping them informed and consulting them on decisions affecting them;

The involvement of the family in the care, recovery and reintegration process;

Providing assistance, including psychosocial support and livelihoods, to the family;

Inter-disciplinary agencies for the coordination of integrated care, recovery and reintegration programmes, with clear roles and responsibilities in the delivery of support services;

Independent monitoring and assessment mechanisms to inform, evaluate and guide care, recovery and reintegration programmes;

Consistent funding and adequate resources to provide continuous comprehensive quality assistance and ensure the sustainability of support services to child victims in the short, medium and long term.

These guidelines constitute a perfect example of the technical assistance and advice the Special Rapporteur can give to States, and fulfils a basic responsibility of the United Nations to support concrete reforms at the national level.

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Information and communication technologies facilitating the sale and sexual exploitation of children.

A recurrent pattern during the last 25 years has been the inexorable rise of the Internet and new technologies as tools to commit the offences of sale and sexual exploitation of children. Several Special Rapporteurs studied the impact of information and communication technologies in their thematic studies and the fast evolving nature of the Internet has necessitated constant updates. In the second half of the nineties, the second Special Rapporteur, Ms Calcetas-Santos, began to address the emerging risks presented by the Internet. Firstly, she identified that the definition of child pornography risked being outdated and did not explicitly cover the prohibition of pseudo-child pornography, which included the “morphing” of child and adult bodies to create virtual child pornographic images. She further emphasised the need to involve users and encourage self-regulation through the possibility of reporting child abuse material. The private sector and computer industries were strongly encouraged to strengthen selfregulatory tools. In 2005, the third Special Rapporteur, Mr Juan Miguel Petit, dedicated a comprehensive report to the subject, and it had a particularly strong echo among State agencies and non-governmental organisations. He was invited to present his report officially in Chile to the Servicio Nacional de Menores. He identified new types of abuse committed through the Internet, such as grooming or the production of child erotica, and technological advances facilitating illicit activities, such as purchases through virtual currencies. The advent of Internet-enabled mobile phones was also flagged as being a risk factor. The Special Rapporteur welcomed positive measures such as the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, which comprehensively dealt with the issue of child pornography, and called for the adoption of legislation covering the crimes of grooming a child for sexual exploitation, and the production of child erotica.

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Actions to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online.

The Special Rapporteur approached the complex issue of consent for sexual activity and deemed that legislation on child pornography should protect all children under the age of 18 regardless of a lower age of consent for sexual activity, stressing that a child cannot be considered as able to consent to engage in pornography. The Special Rapporteur observed that attention was concentrated on prevention with little to no consideration for child victims of online exploitation. He further concluded that though self-regulation by Internet service providers was fundamental, it was insufficient to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online. Despite the fact that precise data remains difficult to obtain due to the illicit nature of child pornography and the anonymity offered by the Internet, clearer patterns were identified by the mandate. One of the most abhorrent elements was the majority of images of prepubescent children in the mass of child abuse material. Another new element was the use of online streaming of child abuse which further complicates the work of law enforcement bodies. A shift in terminology was also operationalised, with a preference for referring to “child abuse material” instead of “child pornography”, though the latter remained in the discourse because of the title of the mandate, as determined by the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council. The involvement and cooperation of all relevant actors has greatly improved and the thematic study of 2014 on by the current Special Rapporteur, Ms Maud de Boer Buquicchio, highlighted several positive patterns. Initiatives such as the Virtual Global Taskforce, the Global Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Online and the #WePROTECT Children Online Initiative have aimed to involve all the relevant actors in the fight against child sexual exploitation and meet the challenge represented by the borderless nature of Internet related crime. The current Special Rapporteur has insisted on the need to ensure effective cooperation between these above mentioned initiatives in order to have a truly functioning global permanent body which would be responsible for the harmonisation of practices and procedures, the sharing of expertise and good practices, and finally the provision of assistance to States for the development of national legislation, policies and strategies to effectively combat online child sexual exploitation.

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Sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism.

Since the very inception of the mandate, it was clear for the Special Rapporteurs that the sale and sexual exploitation of children were rife in the context of travel and tourism. The position of the Special Rapporteur at the international level was particularly well adapted to tackle the global nature of exploitation in travel. The different layers of demand for the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism has mainly originated in industrialised countries and targeted popular tourist destinations. It is not limited to developing countries and will depend mainly on the ease to commit such crimes with utter impunity

The involvement of all the relevant different actors has led to significant advances. For example, a Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism (“The Code”) was created by ECPAT Sweden, in 1996, as a follow-up to the first World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. It is an industry-driven and multi-stakeholder initiative. Member companies have pledged to establish an ethical policy regarding the commercial sexual exploitation of children; to train the personnel in the country of origin and travel destinations; to introduce clauses in contracts with suppliers, stating a common rejection of sexual exploitation of children; to provide information to travellers by means of awareness materials (catalogues, brochures, in-flight films, ticketslips, home pages, etc.); to provide information to local “key persons” in tourism destinations; and to report annually. In addition, the World Tourism Organization

Sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism

Instances of sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism are reported in 62 countries out of the 188 covered by The Protection Project's Trafficking in Persons Report of 2014, with offenders originating from 21 countries and travelling to 30 countries. In certain popular tourist destinations, children in particularly vulnerable situations (e.g. poverty, economic hardship), have been pushed by their parents to prostitute themselves in order to bring additional income to the household. The Global Study on the Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism will be launched this year, providing the largest databank on this phenomena. developed a Global Code of Ethics for Tourism in 1999, which covers the issue of the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism. Such initiatives have pushed forward corporate social responsibility and have led to effective awareness-raising and training of staff. The fourth Special Rapporteur, Ms Najat Maalla M’jid, specifically focused on promoting the argument that preventing and combating the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism is not detrimental to the tourism industry. She also pushed, with the Committee on the Rights of the Child, for the adoption by States of extraterritorial legislation and the abolition of the double criminality requirement. Another fundamental point for the Special Rapporteur was the advocacy for effective international cooperation, in particular between law enforcement agencies, in order to prevent registered sex offenders from taking advantage of information loopholes. Intrinsically linked to the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism is their exploitation in the context of major sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games. With the growth of global tourism and constant increase of visitors coming to witness major sporting events, the Special Rapporteur identified the greater risk for children. The involvement of the private sector and sport bodies are of the essence. Ms Maalla M'jid organised a side event on this subject in March 2014, with the collaboration of key partners such as the Government of Brazil, ECPAT and Terre des Hommes International, before the Football World Cup held in Brazil.

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Protection of children from sale and sexual exploitation following humanitarian crises due to natural disasters.

With the increase in natural disasters due to climate change and the severe humanitarian crises caused by armed conflicts, the fourth Special Rapporteur, Ms Najat Maalla M’jid, focused her attention on the vulnerability of children to sale and sexual exploitation in such scenarios. An initial pinpointed problem wasthe absence of a comprehensive framework for the coordination and allocation of roles and responsibilities of multiple international and local responders, which frequently leads to confusion, unnecessary duplication of efforts and substantial protection gaps.

The lack of experience of first and second responders is also of particular worry, and the Special Rapporteur called for the creation of child protection officers within humanitarian response teams. All the relevant staff should receive comprehensive training on child protection in a natural disaster. From these general concerns, the Special Rapporteur additionally detailed all the aspects of the response to a humanitarian crisis which needed to be addressed. Firstly, she underlined that the lack of registration of children, prior to and following a disaster, increases the risk of them being sold, exploited or illegally removed from their families and communities. The Special Rapporteur further emphasised the importance of creating safe spaces for children in temporary shelters or camps with the availability of child-friendly reporting/ complaint mechanisms. Thirdly, she noted the need for appropriate care and treatment, which should be family- or community-based when feasible. A final point made by the Special Rapporteur was that national or international adoption should not be permitted until comprehensive analyses were made of the suitability of the children for adoption. International adoptions should only be a last resort and be in compliance with the 1993 Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption.

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Every child has the right to go to school and learn, free from fear.

About Violence in Schools.

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Every child must be protected from violence, exploitation and abuse on the internet.

About Violence online.