C S E C The Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/childprostitution/Honduras.htm
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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 *** If You Turn Up
Dead, No One Will Wonder Why Diego Cevallos, Inter Press Service News Agency IPS, ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=27817 [accessed 23 May
2011] [accessed 6 November
2016] These girls, boys
and teenagers are offered up as "merchandise" in brothels,
photographed nude for Internet websites, or forced to perform in live sex
shows. Most are poor, and all are utterly denied their right to a safe and
happy childhood. In ***
ARCHIVES *** ECPAT Country
Monitoring Report [PDF] Marta Gil Gonzalez,
ECPAT International, 2015 www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/CMR_HONDURAS.pdf [accessed 30 August
2020] [SPANISH] Desk review of existing
information on the sexual exploitation of children (SEC) in Honduras. 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/honduras/ [accessed 30 August
2020] SEXUAL
EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN - The commercial sexual exploitation of children,
especially in sex trafficking, continued to be a problem. The country was a
destination for child sex tourism. The legal age of consent is 18. There is
no statutory rape law, but the penalty for rape of a minor younger than 12 is
15 to 20 years in prison, or nine to 13 years in prison if the victim is 13
or older. Penalties for facilitating child sex trafficking are 10 to 15 years
in prison, with fines ranging from one million to 2.5 million lempiras
($40,000 to $100,000). The law prohibits the use of children younger than 18
for exhibitions or performances of a sexual nature or in the production of
pornography. 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 30 August
2020] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor [page 607] Honduras’ National
Statistics Institute reported that 404,642 children between the ages of 5 and
17 worked in 2018. (1) Reports indicate that 20 percent of the Honduran
population is of indigenous or African descent and that children from these
groups are particularly vulnerable to child labor, including its worst forms.
(1,32,35,37,38) Children who lack economic and
educational opportunities are the most vulnerable and are also among the most
likely to migrate to other countries. Once en
route, they are also vulnerable to human trafficking and commercial sexual
exploitation. (32,33,39,40) Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 4
June 1999 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/honduras1999.html [accessed 28
February 2011] [34]. While the
Committee takes note of the reforms to the Penal Code and of the training
given to the municipal children's defenders to prevent and combat sexual
abuse and exploitation of children, it expresses concern at the absence of
data and of a comprehensive study on the issue of sexual commercial
exploitation of children as well as the lack of a national plan of action to
tackle this issue. Concluding Observations
of the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights International
Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 21/05/2001 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/esc/honduras2001.html [accessed 19
September 2011] [20] The Committee
is alarmed about the high number of children who are forced to work to
support themselves, and in particular about the serious situation of street
children and the existence of street gangs (maras).
In this regard, the Committee is also gravely concerned about the high
incidence of sexual abuse, exploitation and prostitution of children in the
State party, and about the lack of a national plan to address these issues. [40] The Committee
urges the State party to undertake urgent measures to introduce
rehabilitation programs for street children. The Committee also urges the
State party to address the issue of sexual abuse, exploitation and
prostitution of children by adopting a national plan to combat the problem,
including collecting relevant data and conducting a thorough study of the
issue. Catch a falling
star W. E. www.marrder.com/htw/jul97/editorial.htm [accessed 23 May
2011] [scroll
down to Monday, July 14, 1997 Online Edition 62] CHEMISTRY OF PROMISCUITY - Representatives
of Casa del Niño, where I first learned about Chusito,
mince no words. "La Ceiba is the hub for child
prostitution. Tourists, possibly members of a loose organized crime confereration, regularly come to Honduras to exploit
minors. While there is no open child prostitution per se, networks exist that
supply children to pedophiles. The center is near the Parthenon Beach Hotel.
Many of the girls are well under 16. There is a street for boys, too...
Carnivals and other events attract large numbers of visitors who exercise
great stealth, pay cash and command the silence of their accomplices." According to Casa
del Niño, there are about 50 homeless children in La Ceiba,
an overly conservative estimate by their own accounting. "We've really
no way of knowing. Most are between 10 and 16. Most are boys. Illiteracy,
irresponsible paternity are all at work. Some families have not a gram of
conscience when it comes to procreation. Use of Resistol
among them is universal. It's sold freely in the Centro Commercial. Pimps and
sex tourists often pay the children with cans of the deadly shoe glue. It's a
case of turpitude further debased by criminal indifference...." - sccp Alberto Mendoza,
Inter Press Service News Agency www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35100 [accessed 23 May
2011] www.ipsnews.net/2006/10/guatemala-where-sexual-exploitation-of-minors-is-not-a-crime/ [accessed 6 November
2016] But hers is not an
isolated case. Although no precise figures are available, in 2002 it was
estimated that 2,000 minors were sexually exploited in Guatemala City alone,
according to a report by Casa Alianza (the Latin
American branch of the New York-based Covenant House, a child advocacy organisation) and ECPAT (an international NGO working to
end child prostitution, child pornography and the trafficking of children). Of those 2,000
minors, 1,200 were from El Salvador,
500 from Honduras and 300 from Guatemala itself. María
Eugenia Villarreal, ECPAT director for Latin America, says Central America is
a hub for trafficking in minors, child pornography and sex tourism. 10 Indicted in
International Human Smuggling Ring - Young Honduran Women Forced to Work in
Hudson County Bars Michael Drewniak, Public Affairs archives.uruguay.usembassy.gov/usaweb/paginas/471-00EN.shtml [accessed 30 August
2011] The women, mostly
from rural, poor villages in Five Years After 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 – Honduras Gets Tough
On Child Prostitution The Economist At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 23 May
2011] The abuse has grown
so blatant that such willful disregard is no longer possible. Exactly how big
the problem is, no one is quite sure, only that over the past couple of
decades it has been getting worse and that western visitors are much to
blame. In Tela, for instance, as many as 40% of the
120,000 annual visitors to the town could be sex tourists. Child Prostitution:
A Growing Scourge W. E. Gutman, The www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_10/issue_07/travel_01.html [accessed 23 May
2011] lab.org.uk/sex-tourism-threatens-central-americas-youth [accessed 5 November
2016] lab.org.uk/sex-tourism-threatens-central-america%E2%80%99s-youth/ [accessed 22 October
2017] A REGION OUT OF
CONTROL
- Promised jobs and scholarships, Honduran girls, some as young as 13, are
routinely being trafficked by crime syndicates and sold to brothels in
Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico.
Most of the street girls rescued by Casa Alianza
are victims of prostitution. HUGE PROBLEM, SCARCE
ASSETS
- Honduras Security Minister Oscar Alvarez, who oversees his country's law
enforcement apparatus, acknowledges that child prostitution is out of
control. He attributes his agency's unexceptional successes to
"acute" understaffing. Report of the
Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the sale of children,
child prostitution and child pornography Ofelia Calcetas-Santos, Special Rapporteur, UN General Assembly,
Fifty-fifth session, 10 August 2000 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 23 May
2011] [45] In January
2000, a court in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, sentenced three American men to
jail terms of between four and nine years for promoting the prostitution of
minors and profiting from the prostitution of others. [46] In April 1999
the Honduran Criminal Investigative Unit and staff from the non-governmental
organization Casa Alianza had investigated a night
club operating in Underage
teens are abused in Honduran honky-tonks David Adams, www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/239.html [accessed 23 May
2011] The arrests
highlight what child advocates say is a growing problem in the dirt-poor
countries of ECPAT International
Newsletters, Issue No. 36, 1 September
2001 At one time this article
had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 23 May
2011] According to a
recent report from UNICEF and the Project for Communication and Life
(COMVIDA), over 500 minors are prostituted in the city of Child
Sex Trade Rises in Serge F. Kovaleski, The www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/097.html [accessed 23 May
2011] While some minors
are pushed into prostitution by families that are unable to support
themselves, most underage sex workers in Central America are street children,
many of whom, studies show, had fled sexual abuse at home. In Sex
Tourism Plagues Paul Jeffrey, UMW-Response
Magazine for United Methodist Women gbgm-umc.org/response/articles/sextourism.html [accessed 23 May
2011] Street children who
used to sniff relatively inexpensive glue are now turning to crack, readily
available in the region as Central American military officials, no longer
living high on the hog from Child rights
advocate speaks at U.N. meeting on contemporary slavery www.marrder.com/htw/jun99/central.htm [accessed 23 May
2011] [article on the
right] "If you are an
enterprising foreigner in In his
presentation, Harris described the worrisome boom of child sex tourism in
Costa Rica and Honduras, where more and more visitors are coming each year
exclusively to have sex with minors. Attacked by a complex network that
involves Internet sites, local hotels and bars, taxi drivers, and
"professional" pimps, numerous poor girls and boys -- as young as
10 years old -- are falling victims to those sex predators, as they find in
prostitution their only means of survival. Regional
Governmental Congress on Sexual Exploitation of Children [PDF] Teodolinda Pineda, Government
of the Honduran Republic www.iin.oas.org/Congreso%20Explotation%20Sexual/T.%20Pineda_Honduras_ingles.PDF [accessed 19
November 2016] ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/honduras.htm [accessed 8 February
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 - There is evidence of child prostitution in Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61732.htm [accessed 9 February
2020] TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS
– Women and children were trafficked into All
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