C S E C The Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/childprostitution/Lebanon.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in Lebanon. Some of these
links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated,
misleading or even false. No attempt
has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. 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. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Report
by Special Rapporteur [DOC] UN Economic and
Social Council Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-ninth session, 6 January
2003 www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/217511d4440fc9d6c1256cda003c3a00/$FILE/G0310090.doc [accessed 13 June
2011] [52]
Children involved in prostitution are taken into custody by the internal
security forces and referred through the Department of Public Prosecutions
directly to a juvenile misdemeanors court. Children are normally
given custodial sentences of between three and six months. Females
serve their sentences in Ba’abda women’s prison but
have little access to rehabilitation facilities apart from a few activities
carried out in association with external organizations. Male
children are imprisoned in a juvenile facility at Rumiyyah
prison where they are separated from the men. Rehabilitation
programs including vocational training are run in the juvenile facility. ***
ARCHIVES *** ECPAT Country
Monitoring Report [PDF] Marie Darmayan, ECPAT International, 2016 www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/A4A2011_MENA_LEBANON.pdf [accessed 2
September 2020] [FRENCH] Desk review of existing
information on the sexual exploitation of children (SEC) in Lebanon. 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/lebanon/ [accessed 2
September 2020] SEXUAL
EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN - The penal code prohibits and punishes commercial sexual
exploitation, child pornography, and forced prostitution. The minimum age for
consensual sex is 18 for both men and women, and statutory rape penalties
include hard labor for a minimum of five years and a minimum of seven years’
imprisonment if the victim is younger than 15 years old. The government
generally enforced the law. The ISF, DGS, and
judicial officials improved enforcement of the country’s antitrafficking
law, which prohibits the sexual exploitation of children. NGOs provided
training throughout the year to increase police and judicial officials’
sensitivity to the issue and reported increased numbers of potential victims
that authorities referred to NGO-run shelters and victim protection programs.
This included a training for DGS officers focused on behavioral psychology
and effective communication skills with victims with trainees selected from
departments that specialize in direct communication with citizens, migrants,
refugees, travelers, and those at the airport and at the administrative
retention center. Separately, four trainings were conducted for DGS officers
on countertrafficking and identification of victims
of human trafficking. 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 2
September 2020] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor [page 710] Syrian girls are
trafficked into Lebanon for commercial sexual exploitation under the guise of
marriage. (4,20) Some boys are also subjected to
commercial sexual exploitation, particularly boys who work and Kurdish boys
from Syria. (20,42) Working on the streets is especially common among refugee
children from Syria, including Palestinians from Syria Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 1 February 2002 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/lebanon2002.html [accessed 1 March
2011] [58]
The Committee is concerned at the insufficient data on and awareness of the phenomenon
of sexual exploitation of children in Lebanon. Child prostitution
still taboo, despite laws UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, BEIRUT, 6 March 2006 www.irinnews.org/report/26170/lebanon-child-prostitution-still-taboo-despite-laws [accessed 13 March
2015] "My parents
needed money so they sent me to work as a housemaid at the age of 12. Do you know
how much I had to put up with in my situation?" Nadine asked
rhetorically. “All men want is one thing – your body! So I decided to ask for
money in exchange for what I was offering.” 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 – LEBANON – Various NGOs have contributed not only
by raising awareness, but also by implementing policies and projects aiming
at assisting abused children, including victims of sexual abuse. The NGO Dar
el Amal has discussed the issue of sexual exploitation of children with Save
the Children Sweden and Save the Children U.K. They have jointly taken the
decision to set up a committee to develop policies to assist abused children.
The committee will be composed of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs,
the ILO, UNICEF and Dar el Amal. Additionally Dar el Amal is coordinating
various activities with the private and public sectors with the aim of
protecting children. 5.1 Middle East -
State of CSEC/ Attitudes toward CSEC [PDF] ECPAT International,
Looking Back, Thinking Forward,
1999-2000 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 13 June
2011] While
Israel, Jordan and Lebanon indicate a tacit willingness to address the issue,
the majority of the countries in the region have not
conducted research and deny the possibility that children are being sexually
exploited for commercial purposes.
Open discussions of sex related issues are regarded as a social taboo
thus further explaining the lack of research and acknowledgement of
CSEC. While the extent of child
prostitution in the Middle East region is unknown, anecdotal evidence
indicates that there is a large problem in selected areas of the region. Commercial
sexual exploitation of children - Middle East/North Africa region based on the
situation analysis written by Dr Najat M’jid for the
Arab-African Forum against Commercial Sexual Exploitation, Rabat, Morocco,
24-26 October 2001 -- Source document (in French): Rapport sur la situation
de l’exploitation sexuelle
des enfants dans la région MENA, 10 septembre 2001 www.unicef.org/events/yokohama/backgound8.html [accessed 13 June
2011] These countries
also have in common, however, a number of constraints that have hindered
preparation of national plans of action. In all the countries of the region,
there is cultural resistance to addressing the problem because the subject is
largely taboo. Often the issue is
dealt with more generally under headings such as ‘violence’ and
‘trauma’. This means that there has
been no regional consensus on defining CSEC in law; in some countries, for
example, it is looked upon as an indecent act, in others as rape, although in
all 20 countries there is some section of the penal code that can be invoked
against sexual abuse and exploitation. ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor U.S. Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 2005 www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/lebanon.htm [accessed 17
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 - It is common for children to earn
family income by working in the fields or begging in the streets. Non-Lebanese children constitute 10 to 20
percent of children working in the formal sector, but make up a larger share
of children working on the street. There
have been reported cases of child prostitution and other situations that
amount to forced labor. Although
Lebanon is a destination country for women trafficked from Africa, Asia,
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for the purposes of involuntary
domestic servitude and prostitution, there are no official government reports
of child trafficking in the country. Human Rights
Reports » 2004 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, February 28, 2005 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61693.htm [accessed 9 February
2020] CHILDREN
- NGO's
throughout the country reported that child prostitution was a problem. The
authorities discovered and broke up three child prostitution rings. In two of
the cases, the perpetrators were charged with facilitation, in the third,
with child prostitution. At year's end, the cases were pending prosecution. 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 - Lebanon",
http://gvnet.com/childprostitution/Lebanon.htm, [accessed <date>] |
