C S E C The Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/childprostitution/SierraLeone.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. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Street Children of
Sierra Leone Lead Brutal, Dangerous Life Gabi Menezes, Voice
of At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 18 July
2011] A decade of
conflict has made poverty in At a truck park in
the eastern part of the capital, many children come to sleep in the empty
shells of cars. Prostitutes and drug addicts also come there. Eight-year-old
Hannah Masany was found in the parking lot. She had
been out on the streets since she was six. Hannah's father was killed during
the war, and her mother could not afford to look after her. Hannah said that she was not afraid on the
streets, as older street children helped take care of her. But many girls as
young as Hannah will have sex with men in order to earn enough money to eat. "People come along -- it is a kind of
enterprise which has just developed recently, it's a very quick way of
getting money," says ACC Senior Councilor John B. Koroma. ***
ARCHIVES *** ECPAT Regional Overview:
The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Africa [PDF] ECPAT International,
November 2014 www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Regional%20CSEC%20Overview_Africa.pdf [accessed 7
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 gender inequality, armed conflicts,
natural disasters, migration, and HIV/AIDS. 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/sierra-leone/ [accessed 7
September 2020] SEXUAL
EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN - The minimum age of consensual sex is 18. Although the
law criminalizes the sexual exploitation of children, sale of children, child
trafficking, and child pornography, enforcement remained a challenge and
conviction numbers remained low. In many cases of sexual assault of children,
parents accepted payment instead of taking the perpetrator to court due to
difficulties dealing with the justice system, fear of public shame, and
economic hardship. Responding to the
high incidence of sexual and gender-based violence and other problems
affecting women, in December 2018, First Lady Fatima Bio launched a broad
initiative entitled, Hands Off Our Girls, focused on child marriage, teenage
pregnancy, sexual-based violence, and child trafficking and prostitution.
President Bio called on the country to stop all forms of discrimination
against women and to restore the pride and dignity of women and girls. In
February President Bio proclaimed in an emergency decree that the rape of a
minor would result in a life sentence. The president’s decree expired in June
when a bill to amend the Sexual Offences Act, 2012, was introduced in
parliament as a direct result of the proclamation. On September 19,
parliament passed the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act, 2019, that increased
the maximum penalty for rape and sexual penetration of a minor from 15-years’
to life imprisonment. The law also increased the minimum sentence for rape of
a minor to 15 years in prison and made provisions for the introduction of a
new “aggravated sexual assault” offense. According to a
UNICEF case study in 2017, the FSU estimated more than 1,000 children
experience sexual violence each year. The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on the
Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/sierra-leone.htm [accessed 22
December 2010] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Child prostitution is an increasing problem.
Children have been trafficked to Concluding
Observations Of The Committee On The Rights Of The Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 28 January 2000 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/sierraleone2000.html [accessed 22
December 2010] [85] The Committee
is concerned that provisions in national domestic legislation providing
protection to children from sexual exploitation and abuse only offer such
protection to children up to the age of 14. [87] The Committee
expresses its deep concern with regard to the many incidents of sexual
exploitation and abuse of children, particularly in the context of the
conscription or abduction of children by armed persons and in the context of
attacks on civilian populations by armed persons, and particularly with
regard to girls. The Committee is also concerned at reports of commercial
sexual exploitation and of widespread sexual abuse of girls within the
family, within internally displaced person camps and within communities. ECPAT:
Country Report - Sierra Leone ECPAT International At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 18 July
2011] As a result of the
civil war and the massive displacement of the population in the urban areas,
particularly ECPAT: CSEC
in ECPAT International
Newsletters, Issue No : 34
1/March/2001 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 18 July
2011] PERPETRATORS - The majority of
perpetrators are rich local nationals like civil servants, politicians and
businessmen. Other perpetrators are foreign tourists and, in countries affected
by armed conflict, military personnel. As a result of the war in UN Special Envoy
for Children and Armed Conflict applauds progress United Nations Press
Release, www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/40658142EEC597B4C1256CDE002C8734?opendocument [accessed 18 July
2011] At the conclusion
of a week-long visit to Sierra Leone (22-28 February),
Under-Secretary-General Olara A. Otunnu, the Special Representative of the
Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, has called upon the
international community to continue to support the country in the
peace-building period so that the impressive gains made so far in the
rehabilitation and protection of war-affected children can be strengthened
and sustained. Efforts must also
be undertaken, the Special Representative said, to expand programs benefiting
children and improve social services in the rural areas to counter the abject
poverty afflicting families which in turn causes children to work in the
streets, to beg or to prostitute themselves. And with children all over the country
expressing their desire to attend school, Mr. Otunnu
said, a major effort is needed by Government and international partners to
improve on low enrolment rates and conditions in schools. News Archives
(sierra-leone.org) News Archives, June
2003 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 18 July
2011] [Scroll down to 11
June] The Internationally
Recognized Core Labor Standards In International
Confederation Of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), Report For The Wto General Council Review Of The Trade Policies Of www.icftu.org/www/pdf/clssierraleone2005.pdf [accessed 18 July
2011] This report
assesses the observance of internationally recognized core labor standards in
UN High
Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR, Refugee
Children: Guidelines on Protection and Care Human Rights Watch
Report, Forgotten Children of War
- Sierra Leonean Refugee
Children in www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1999/guinea/guine997.htm#P77_1744 [accessed 18 July
2011] Human Rights Watch
also identified a serious problem of child prostitution in the camps, where
girls as young as twelve said that they feel compelled to "play sex for
money" in order to support themselves and, in some cases, their
families. As with the problem of sexual violence, very little has been done
by UNHCR to understand the problem of child prostitution in the camps in MANO RIVER UNION:
Reports that child refugees sexually exploited shock Annan UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, [accessed 13 March
2015] Refugee children in
Sexual Exploitation
of Refugees in Save The Children
Fund & United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2002 sheltercentre.org/library/sexual+exploitation+refugees+west+africa [accessed 18 July
2011] [accessed 15 November
2016] This
assessment was initiated by UNHCR and Save the Children-UK (SC-UK) due to
growing concerns, based on their field experience, about the nature and
extent of sexual violence and exploitation of refugee children and other
children of concern to UNHCR 1 in the countries of the Mano
River Sub Region 2 in West Africa. SIERRA LEONE:
Agencies act on issues of sexual abuse UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN In-Depth, www.irinnews.org/report/32315/sierra-leone-agencies-act-on-issues-of-sexual-abuse [accessed 13 March
2015] In February, UNHCR
and Save the Children-UK reported that refugee children in The UNHCR/SCF
report said the exchange of sex for money or gifts appeared widespread. The
victims were mostly girls aged 13 to 18, while the most vulnerable group
comprised orphans and children separated from one or both parents. The
perpetrators "are often men in positions of relative power and influence
who either control access to goods and services or who have wealth and/or
income," the report said. ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61591.htm [accessed 11
February 2020] CHILDREN - Child prostitution was a
problem. To address the issue of child
prostitution in the capital, the Freetown City Council discussed the
introduction of a regulation that would bar minors from nightclubs, a common
venue for commercial sex transactions, but by year's end the city council had
taken no action to pass such a regulation. SECTION
6 WORKER RIGHTS
– [d] Many girls, particularly those displaced from their homes and with few
resources, resorted to prostitution as a means to support themselves.
The international
NGO World Vision continued to help child prostitutes (girls between the ages
of 14 and 20) by paying their school fees, providing them with educational
materials, and caring for girl mothers. Out of 304 girls assisted, 86 were
full-time sex workers. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
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