Ending the Sexual Exploitation of Children
The growing global problem of child trafficking and sex
tourism
“It’s the worst kind of human exploitation imaginable,” says
Secretary of State Colin Powell. “It’s a sin against humanity and
it is a horrendous crime.” The crime of which Colin Powell is
speaking is child sex trafficking, a horrific and growing problem
all across the world. “Each year, by some estimates,” says NBC’s
Dateline, “hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are bought, sold
or kidnapped and then forced to have sex with grown men.”
In the recent interview with Secretary Powell, Chris Hansen of
Dateline focused particularly on the issue of the exploitation of
children in Cambodia. During an investigative report in the village
of Svay Pak in Cambodia, Dateline and human rights investigators
uncovered “Children, some as young as 5 years old … being sold as
slaves for sex.” As the investigation uncovered, many of the men
who “bought” these girls were in fact American sex tourists who
went to Svay Pak specifically with the heinous and disgusting goal
of engaging in sexual activity with very young children.
This deplorable situation of exploitation and abuse, as
uncovered by Dateline, is apparently not unique to Cambodia. Bob
Woodruff of ABC News discusses this terrible crime of children
being exploited for sex in Albania as well: “In the tiny and very
poor villages of Fushara in northern Albania, the girls are
disappearing… It happens almost every day.” In Albania, as is
happening in many of the economically disadvantaged countries in
Eastern Europe, young girls are being either kidnapped or tricked
into going with people who promise them jobs in other countries.
Stolen from their families, trafficked illegally across borders and
forced to have sex with men under threat of physical violence or
blackmail, Woodruff says that there are about 300,000 Albanian
prostitutes and most of these are children.
Accounts of prostitution of children and sex tourism can even be
found closer to home. In a report in National Geographic, Andrew
Cockburn found “young girls … enslaved in areas like San Jose’s
Gringo Gulch, where a lot of American sex tourists go for a ‘good
time.'” Even here in America, the International Relief Organization
and the nonprofit children’s rights group Children of the Night
estimate that there are 300,000 child prostitutes working in the
United States.
“We have exploitation in our own country,” agrees Powell.
“Thousands of children are victimized by this horrible con game
every year,” states Children of the Night, and it appears that this
number (disturbingly) will continue to grow unless fierce and
effectual prosecution of both those selling, trafficking and paying
for sex with children is stepped up both nationally and
internationally.
Currently, the government is indeed taking steps to fight this
horrific and disgusting crime globally, with activities such as the
International Conference “Pathbreaking Strategies in the Global
Fight Against Sex Trafficking,” in which 120 nations participated,
the passage of things such as the Trafficking Protection Act of
2000, international sanctions and many U.N. initiatives in the last
few years.
However, more must be done to stop the pimps and traffickers who
exploit children, as well as the sex tourist predators who seek out
children. “We … need to take a look at ourselves and whether or
not we’re cracking down hard enough on those Americans who do such
things, or people from other countries … who go to such places
… with a certain knowledge that they’ll have a chance to abuse a
child,” says Powell, and he is right.
We must focus our attention on and encourage the government to
amp up its efforts to curtail this global tragedy. No longer must
this be a problem that “nobody wants to recognize, nobody wants to
talk about and everyone wants to cover up,” as Children of the
Night states, but rather one seen as a most horrendous crime
against the children of the world that everyone is committed to
ending.
Meg is a graduate student at CSU. Her column runs every
Wednesday.
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