C S E C The Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/childprostitution/Colombia.htm
|
|||||||||||
|
CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking for
material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspects of child prostitution are of particular
interest to you. You might be
interested in exploring how children got started, how they survive, and how
some succeed in leaving. Perhaps your
paper could focus on runaways and the abuse that led to their leaving. Other factors of interest might be poverty,
rejection, drug dependence, coercion, violence, addiction, hunger, neglect,
etc. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the manipulative and dangerous adults who control this
activity. There is a lot to the
subject of Child Prostitution. Scan
other countries as well as this one.
Draw comparisons between activity in adjacent countries and/or
regions. Meanwhile, check out some of
the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. HELP for Victims International Organization for
Migration ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Sexual exploitation
of minors taints Vanessa Arrington, Associated
Press AP Worldstream, www.childtrafficking.org/pdf/user/colombia_11_11.doc [accessed 2 May
2011] The city has become a magnet for men, many of them Europeans, seeking sex with young girls and sometimes boys, many of them from families displaced from their rural homes by fighting among leftist rebels, government forces and right-wing paramilitary groups. An estimated 1,500 girls and boys work in Cartagena's sex industry. Over the last three years, Renacer has learned of girls as young as 7 and boys as young as 9 being sexually exploited, Cardenas says. "The kids are on the street because of desperation," says Bruce Harris, the former Latin America director of Casa Alianza, a children's rights group. "The last thing they have to sell is themselves. This is mixed with the fact that the laws for the most part are still very weak, and there's corruption in the application of the law." Bolivar Province's police chief, Col. Jesus Gomez, who oversees Cartagena, says detectives are investigating criminal sex rings in the city, but have yet to make any arrests. ***
ARCHIVES *** ECPAT Country
Monitoring Report [PDF] ECPAT International,
2014 www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/CMR_COLOMBIA_FINAL.pdf [accessed 26 August
2020] [SPANISH] Desk review of
existing information on the sexual exploitation of children (SEC) in
Colombia. The report looks at protection mechanisms, responses, preventive
measures, child and youth participation in fighting SEC, and makes
recommendations for action against SEC. Human
Rights Reports » 2019 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 10, 2020 www.state.gov/reports/2019-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/colombia/ [accessed 23 August
2020] SEXUAL
EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN - Sexual exploitation of children remained a problem.
The law prohibits sexual exploitation of a minor or facilitating the sexual
exploitation of a minor and stipulates a penalty of 14 to 25 years in prison,
with aggravated penalties for perpetrators who are family members of the
victim and for cases of sexual tourism, forced marriage, or sexual
exploitation by illegal armed groups. The law prohibits pornography using
children younger than 18 and stipulates a penalty of 10 to 20 years in prison
and a fine for violations. The minimum age for consensual sex is 14. The
penalty for sexual activity with a child younger than 14 ranges from nine to
13 years in prison. The government generally enforced the law. The Attorney
General’s Office reported opening 796 investigations related to cases of
child pornography and sentenced 24 perpetrators. In September, Liliana Campo Puello, whom authorities charged with running an
extensive child trafficking ring for the purposes of sexual exploitation,
pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Her father, Carlos
Enrique Campo Caballero, was also convicted and sentenced to 56 months’ imprisonment.
The judge in the case accused Puello of continuing
to operate the trafficking ring while imprisoned. In 2018 authorities in
Cartagena arrested Puello as part of a three-day
operation, during which they arrested 18 persons and charged them with the
sexual exploitation of more than 250 women and girls. Prosecutors alleged
that some of the women and girls were tattooed and trafficked for purposes of
commercial sexual exploitation. Media reported authorities conducted several
raids to dismantle networks of sexual exploitation of minors in Cartagena and
other cities in 2018. In total, 42 persons were captured, and goods valued at
154 billion Colombian pesos ($49 million) were seized. Commercial sexual
exploitation of children in mining areas remained widespread. 2018 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor Office of Child
Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking, Bureau of International Labor
Affairs, US Dept of Labor, 2019 www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/child_labor_reports/tda2018/ChildLaborReportBook.pdf [accessed 22 August
2020] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor [page 355] Commercial sexual
exploitation of children occurs more often in private homes rented online
than in commercial establishments. (4,9) In
Bucaramanga, child victims of commercial sexual exploitation are allegedly
recruited in schools by other students. (35) In mining areas, trafficking of
children for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation is widespread.
(4,25,36) Reports also indicate that criminal gangs
and dissident groups recruit Colombian and Venezuelan children to produce and
traffic drugs and commit homicides and extortion. (37,38) Some civil society
groups report that the forced recruitment and use of minors in Colombia by
illegal armed groups, including Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) dissidents, the
National Liberation Army, the Popular Liberation Army, and non-ideological
criminal organizations such as the Gulf Clan, continued and increased from
2017 to 2018. (2,25,39,40) Children are recruited to perform
intelligence and logistical activities, store and transport weapons, and
engage in commercial sexual exploitation. (4,7,25,32)
However, the Colombian government has reported that this recruitment and use
of children remained significantly lower than levels prior to the signing of
the 2016 peace accord with FARC. (41) Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 6 October 2000 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/colombia2000.html [accessed 30 January
2011] [67] While noting
with appreciation the revisions to the State party's Penal Code and the
establishment of a national plan of action to combat and prevent the sexual
exploitation of children, the Committee remains concerned at the insufficient
awareness among the population of these issues. Global Study on
Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism: Colombia - 2015 Anika Quiñones and Nelson E. Rivera, ECPAT International, June
2016 www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/3.-SECTT-COLOMBIA.pdf [accessed 25 August
2020] The Global Study
provides an overview of the sexual exploitation of children in travel and
tourism. Five Years After
Stockholm [PDF] ECPAT: Fifth Report
on implementation of the Agenda for Action ECPAT International,
November 2001 www.no-trafficking.org/content/web/05reading_rooms/five_years_after_stockholm.pdf [accessed 13
September 2011] [B]
COUNTRY UPDATES – COLOMBIA – The National Plan of Action against the Commercial
Sexual Exploitation of Children in Colombia (Plan de Acción
en favor de los Derechos de la Infancia
Explotada Sexualmente y
contra la Explotación Sexual Infantil)
is not being implemented. According to the ICBF, which had main
responsibility for the plan, it has been developed in an isolated manner and
according to the competencies of each institution involved. As a consequence, the ICBF says it has not
been possible to measure its impact. The Inter-institutional Committee to
fight the trafficking of women, girls and boys is putting into practice a
plan for the prevention and protection of victims and to stop the trafficking
of persons. Combating Child
Prostitution in Garry Leech, Colombia
Journal, April 29, 2002 -- Origininal Source:
Colombia Report, an online journal published by the Information Network of
the Americas INOTA colombiajournal.org/combating-child-prostitution-in-colombia.htm [accessed 2 May
2011] Many parents send
their children out into the streets to help support the family by stealing,
selling chewing gum and cigarettes, or worse, selling themselves. It is estimated that there are 35,000
children working as prostitutes in Soaring
Child Prostitution In BBC News World
Service, 27 January, 2001 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1138712.stm [accessed 2 May
2011] Clients were often
middle-aged foreigners who paid the child-prostitutes around six US dollars.
Victims were often addicted to drugs and were as young as nine years old. BBC News, 13
December, 2001 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1708260.stm [accessed 2 May
2011] The mayor of Bogata has imposed a nighttime curfew on minors to clamp
down on child prostitution and reduce crime rates in the Colombian
capital. Children under the age of 16
on the streets after 11pm will be arrested. Government
Is Combatting the Culture of Violence in Committee on the
Rights of the Child (CRC), 25th session, Press Release, 27 September 2000 www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/0/6469234DEE795835C12569680026170F?opendocument [accessed 2 May
2011] The culture of
violence which prevailed in Ashoka Fellow Profile -
Stella Cárdenas Ovalle This profile was
prepared when Stella Cárdenas Ovalle was elected to
the Ashoka Fellowship in 2001 www.ashoka.org/node/3488 [accessed 2 May
2011] www.ashoka.org/en-gb/fellow/stella-c%C3%A1rdenas-ovalle [accessed 4 November
2016] THE PROBLEM- A series of
factors put children at risk for sexual exploitation in Colombia and leave
them unprotected. The war and drug trade have altered family structures that
in ordinary times would have provided safety and nurture. The war has also
caused the displacement of countless families, some of whose children have
been soldiers in the war. Displaced children are particularly vulnerable to
being prostituted, even more so in the declining economy. Reuters, 26
September 1998 www.latinamericanstudies.org/colombia/prostitution.htm [accessed 2 May
2011] Twenty-nine adults
were arrested in the swoop and The Protection
Project - Colombia [DOC] The www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/colombia.doc [accessed 2009] GOVERNMENT RESPONSES - The Ombudsman’s
Office and the Attorney General’s Office conducted a study on the
prostitution of women and children. The National Police of Colombia runs a
prevention program called Colombia without Prostitution. This program
is designed to prevent child prostitution through educational activities for families
and the community. In collaboration with nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), the government also created a Plan of Action on Child Sexual Abuse. Regional
Governmental Congress on Sexual Exploitation of Children [PDF] María de Pilar Granados, Ministry
of Health, Colombian National Institute of Family Welfare www.iin.oas.org/Congreso%20Explotation%20Sexual/CHILE_ing.PDF [accessed 19
November 2016] ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61721.htm [accessed 7 February
2020] SECTION 6 WORKER
RIGHTS
– [d] Although there were no reports of forced child labor in the formal
economy, several thousand children were forced to serve as paramilitary or
guerrilla combatants, prostitutes,
or coca pickers. The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/colombia.htm [accessed 30 January
2011] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Children are involved in commercial sexual
exploitation in 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: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Child Prostitution - |
