[ecpat & the body shop 'stop sex trafficking of children ... - Ecpat France

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The ECPAT Global Youth Partnership Project The ECPAT Global Youth Partnership Programme (Global YPP) is currently active in 16 countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe & the CIS region and in Latin America. The Global YPP aims to empower young survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and at‐risk youths by working with them to build their self‐esteem and capacity through activities led by the young participants. In addition, the Global YPP aims to ensure children’s right to actively and meaningfully participate, particularly in social change and work against child exploitation. In each country, the Global YPP team includes a national coordinator, two youth motivators, peer supporters and youth advocates; the team implements the following activities: • trainings and workshops: on child rights (including the right to protection), leadership and life skills, running peer support programmes, working safely with children, and on working with the media; • peer to peer support programmes: led by youth at schools and shelters in areas with high risk of commercial sexual exploitation of children, including child trafficking. With the support of their friends, children and youth can discuss their issues and concerns in a safe environment; • micro‐projects: designed and implemented by young people to lobby governments and to raise public awareness against sexual exploitation of children; • Forum meetings: to form sustainable partnerships with key stakeholders from government departments, NGOs and local schools and shelters serving vulnerable children. As mentioned, micro‐projects are designed to enable disadvantage children and young people to develop and implement initiatives that they themselves have identified as priorities in combating child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children. The goals of micro projects are to encourage creative thinking among youth groups, inspiring them to learn valuable leadership skills and self‐confidence while at the same time empowering them to combat child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children. One example of a micro‐project is in Moldova, where Youth Motivators and the Peer Supporters implemented five micro‐projects within the local schools. The projects focused on encouraging wider participation of the students, in activities to learn more about children’s right to protection from sexual exploitation and trafficking. The activities included seminars, training sessions and roundtable discussions on the YPP, children’s rights and CSEC, which were all led and facilitated by youths involved in the project. They also held debates, art, literature and poetry competitions and even a radio program and operated a school blog which informed a wider audience about the YPP and the important role young people can play to protect themselves against CSEC. About 205 children directly benefitted from the micro‐projects through their participation and other 2,940 benefitted indirectly through the awareness raising and media activities. Another YPP micro‐project was held recently in the Gambia, where the YPP Youths organized an extensive training for the Peer Supporters in the Charles Jow Memorial Academy since there were having difficulties in mobilising the wider children to conduct Peer Support sessions. During the training, the YPP youth had in‐depth discussions on the thematic issues such as child rights, sexual exploitation and abuse, on peer support skills, and on supporting young people to carryout awareness raising activities and campaigns against sexual exploitation and abuse of children. As a result the children have formed a “YPP Club” though which the members can share opinions and experiences, design and implement future micro‐projects and collective work towards a safer environment for children. They were able to involve 40 children directly and further 600 indirectly through this activity. Lastly, in Chile, after the YPP Youth participated in a “Communications Workshop,” they created a micro‐project that will allow the young people to report on the YPP activities, particularly on the activities from the peer support programmes, through audio visual technology such as cameras and audio recorders. This micro‐project allowed the youths to apply the knowledge that they have gained from the workshop towards a new project benefitting the YPP youths. Once completed the youth plan to distribute their short ‘documentaries’ on DVDs and CDs. 8
A Child Protection Referral Mechanism: protect@ecpat.net People at the local level often see or become aware of child protection concerns but feel powerless to respond in any way. Due to the criminality and dangers involved in child trafficking, many witnesses to child exploitation are too scared to report to the police but are willing to do so anonymously to an NGO helpline. The presence and promotion of the ECPAT child protection reporting mechanism through the global campaign and website is facilitating concerned citizens to contact ECPAT International to report concern for a child. ECPAT International responds to these reports within at least a 12 hour period, 7 days a week by ensuring they are referred on to the most appropriate child protection and law enforcement agency. The ECPAT Child Protection Referral Mechanism management database tracks EI responses and is regularly updated to maintain the best contact lists of appropriate child protection agencies, law enforcement authorities and international and national help and hotlines. In the first two months of 2010, ECPAT International received 16 separate actionable child protection reports (many others lacked adequate information to allow follow up with law enforcement or other authorities) which resulted in 42 follow up communications to ensure a swift and adequate response. Research on Information Communication Technology and Child Sex Tourism ECPAT International has conducted a study on convergence in the use of information communication technologies (ICT) and tourism infrastructure to facilitate access to children, many of whom have been trafficked, for sexual exploitation by travellers 5 . Preliminary findings shows that the combined ease to exchange of information and communication together with the increasing shift toward self arranged travel to destinations where often the disparities between incoming guests and the local populations may be significantly pronounced, have added risk for children to sexual exploitation in tourism. Many communication tools are being used not only to exchange information for accessing prospective victims, but also as attractions to bait and reward children for acts of exploitation. On the demand side, a clear trend was seen of exploiters’ ready use of new communication tools and platforms in order to gain access to victims, to share information with likeminded individuals, and to keep victims involved with them at a distance and over longer periods of time. Country Specific Initiatives This section contains information gathered from some of the ECPAT groups that have begun to implement their anti‐child trafficking initiatives, utilising funds generated from the sales of the ‘Soft Hand Kind Heart Hand Cream’ donated by The Body Shop: • Australia: Child Wise, the ECPAT group in the country, has received approximately A$100,000 from the campaign thus far. While some of the funds will go towards future activities of the ‘Stop Sex Trafficking of Children & Young People Campaign’ in Australia, a larger part will go towards combating child trafficking in Cambodia. Specifically funds are going towards the following programmes: a school scholarship programme for vulnerable youths, training of teachers about child abuse and exploitation (including child trafficking), The Solidarity Can Stop Human Trafficking Project (pictorial engagement tool aimed at awareness raising with the local community), The First Step Project (raising awareness and improve care for boy victims of abuse and exploitation/trafficking), and towards rehabilitation (including therapy, counselling and education) for girl victims through the Transitional Living Centre. • Austria: ECPAT Austria are utilising 30,000 Euros from the campaign towards lobbying the Austrian government for improvement in data collection on child trafficking; participation in a Task Force and relevant child trafficking network; conducting 3 or 4 multi‐stakeholder trainings for law enforcement officials, prosecutors and youth welfare on child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children; and towards future awareness raising activities related to phase two of the campaign; 5 The research, “The Use of Information and Communication Technologies for the Sexual Exploitation of Children in Tourism in East and Southeast Asia” is available for download at the following link: http://www.ecpat.net/EI/Publications/Journals/ECPAT%20Journal_Mar2010_FINAL.pdf 9
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