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Regional Overview – Western Hemisphere The Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children In the early years of the 21st Century |
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ARCHIVES *** ECPAT - Regional
Overview: The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Latin America [PDF] ECPAT International,
November 2014 www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Regional%20CSEC%20Overview_Latin%20America%20(English).pdf [accessed 21
September 2020] Maps sexual
exploitation of children in travel and tourism (SECTT), online child sexual
exploitation (OCSE), trafficking of children for sexual purposes, sexual
exploitation of children through prostitution, and child early and forced
marriage (CEFM). Other topics include social inequality, gender
discrimination, gangs and armed conflicts, and child poverty. ECPAT - Regional
briefings on the Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism
(SECTT) – North America [PDF] ECPAT International,
2016 www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/NorthAmerica.pdf [accessed 21
September 2020] A two-page overview
on the issue of sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism (SECTT)
in North America. Cry for me
Argentina! The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in South America Brian Seaman, LawNow Magazine, 1 September2012 www.lawnow.org/commercial-sexual-exploitation-of-children-in-south-america/ [accessed 28 August
2020] According to a
Brazilian children’s advocacy group called Sentinela,(a
Portuguese word meaning “sentry” or “guard”) which has an office in the
Brazilian border city of Foz do Iguacu, of the 489
children it assisted between the years 2002-07, 410 of them (representing 90%
of the girls between the ages of seven to 18) were victims of sexual
exploitation. Furthermore, according to Argentinean immigration officers, out
of the dozens of girls and young women it assisted between the years of
2004-07 in the border city of Puerto Iguazu, almost all of them were
Paraguayan girls or young women who were destined to be shipped to brothels
or night clubs in Argentinean cities further south, including Buenos Aires
and Cordoba. Argentina, as a
party to both the Convention on the Rights of the Child and a protocol called
the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child
Pornography, is obligated under international law to implement programmes and policies that would inhibit the trafficking
of children and under-aged youth. However Argentina continues to be the
source of a lot of the trafficking in the region, largely because of a lack
of resources to address the problem and because many law enforcement and
border control officials continue to be complicit in the trade. A reading of
media reports about the commercial sexual exploitation of children and the
various reports from United Nations’ agencies and non-governmental
organizations about the issue reveals that the problem is not lack of awareness.
Rather, it is the lack of investigatory and prosecutorial resources and
initiatives devoted to rescuing children and minors who are caught up in the
trade. This paucity of
resources to address the problem is not just an issue for emerging regional
economic powers like Brazil and Argentina, both of which still struggle with
widespread poverty. There is also the failure of wealthier countries within
the G20 (such as Canada) to allocate adequate resources to investigate
so-called “sex tourists” and then bring them to justice within their domestic
legal systems. Countries, rich or poor, are failing in their own fashion to
live up to their obligations under international law. A Canadian
sociologist named Richard Poulin who has studied
the international sex trade says that the trade has grown larger and more
complex over the last two decades. According to Poulin,
human traffickers, all of whom are connected to networks of organized
criminal gangs in some way, are responsible for transporting around anywhere
from one to four million women and children every year, with the majority of
these people destined for the sex trade. “They are being treated as
merchandise for the sex industry. They are new and raw resources,” Poulin says, in a degrading trade that he has called the
“feminization of migration.” All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Prof.
Martin Patt, "Regional Overview – Western Hemisphere",
http://gvnet.com/childprostitution/00-Regional WesternHemisphere.htm,
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