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Resources > Global Issues > Covering the UN > Children's Ri... > December 20, 2001

December 20, 2001

OTR Kids 3, Issue 5
On the Record: Your Electronic Link to the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children
December 20, 2001

In this Issue:

• Why The Special Session Still Matters
• UN Interim Misson In Afghanistan To Include Child Protection Advisers
• Say Yes To Children Is Relaunched On The Soccer Field
• NGOs Sue Honduran Government Over The Murder Of Street Children
• Working Group To Use Cedaw To Expose Discrimination Against Girls
• Special Report On The Sexual Exploitation Of Children In North America
• 'Historic' Meeting Exposes Regional Dimensions Of Child Trafficking
• Up to 325,000 Children Suffer Sexual Abuse In US, Says New Report
• Lax Border Controls Encourage Sex Trade in Children
• Internet Porn Threatens Children In Central America
• Rehabilitation, Not Detention, Is The Answer For Sex Victims

Editorial: Why the Special Session Still Matters
 
The year 2001 began on a note of optimism for NGOs working for children. The General Assembly had scheduled a special session on children for September 21, and it was expected to attract scores of heads of state. NGOs made plans to exploit the event. Networks were formed. Campaigns were launched. Governments were lobbied.
 
It is easy to forget how productive this all was, in spite of the setbacks. Between January and September, NGOs were forced to focus on the so-called 'Outcome document,' which was drafted during two preparatory meetings. As we have reported in On the Record for Children, many NGOs were bitterly disillusioned by the result. There are real fears that the document could reverse many of the gains of the last ten years on child rights.
 
But the process of working together and setting priorities was still profoundly beneficial to NGOs. Even the controversies have reminded everyone that the challenge has changed since the 1990 World Summit on Children. Back in 1990, the focus was on infant mortality and morbidity. Today it is on adolescents, particularly girls. They are most at risk from threats like AIDS, sexual exploitation, child labor and war. Not only do these young people need more protection, they must be part of any solution.
 
NGOs were looking forward to arguing this case at the Special Session – and beyond. Then came the terrorist attacks of September 11.
 
The attacks forced an immediate postponement of the Special Session, and this has produced a profound sense of anticlimax. Everyone involved had made a huge emotional and financial investment in the Special Session and they suddenly saw it all go up in smoke – almost literally. Shock mixed with resignation and produced a profound malaise.
 
The malaise still persists. The Special Session is now just over four months away – it has been tentatively set for May 6-10 – but there is still no sense of urgency about it.
 
This cannot go on. NGOs need to decide quickly whether they want to let this meeting turn into an irrelevant side-show, or whether they see real value in it. They will have to take the initiative because governments appear largely disengaged. UNICEF appears to be largely preoccupied by the crisis in Afghanistan.
 
If anything, Afghanistan has reaffirmed the need for a Special Session on children. The denial of education to Afghan girls under the Taliban was one of the world's great human rights scandals – but the world barely blinked. How many other scandals are there which need a coordinated international response?
 
Part of the answer can be found in this issue of On the Record for Children. Until now, the sexual exploitation of children in North America has not been dealt with at an international level, but a new study suggests this is long overdue. Thousands of children are being trafficked across the borders of Mexico, Canada and the United States each year. Between 200,000 and 325,000 children suffer from abuse and exploitation each year in the United States alone.
 
These shocking figures help to explain why activists are pressing the United States to take child rights more seriously and ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The pressure will hopefully increase as the Special Session approaches, and Americans understand that their government is not helping American children by its unrelenting hostility to the Convention.
 
But the sexual exploitation of children is not just a domestic problem for the United States. It is an international malaise that thrives on free trade, sex tourism and the unregulated Internet. This is why the protection of children must be placed firmly on the international agenda – and why the Special Session is still needed.
 
Of course NGOs must remain vigilant about the Outcome document. But with or without a strong mission statement, the Special Session still offers NGOs their best opportunity to lobby forcefully for the rights of girls and an end to sexual abuse and exploitation.
 
It is time to shrug off the malaise and get re-engaged.

• The NGO Steering Committee for the Special Session will reconvene in January 2002.

(The following articles were written by ANAGA DALAL on behalf of the NGO Committee on UNICEF and The Advocacy Project)
 
UN Interim Mission in Afghanistan To Include Child Protection Advisors

The UN's Integrated Mission Taskforce, which is coordinating UN efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, has agreed to include child protection advisers among the UN mission, according to Paolo Galli from the office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, Olaru Otunnu.
 
'Half of all Afghans today are under eighteen and their needs must be addressed if we want sustainable development,' said Galli. 'We are working with UN agencies like UNICEF to ensure that this happens at every stage of Afghanistan's long and short-term reconstruction.'
 
The immediate priority for many UN agencies and NGOs is keeping children alive through the country's harsh winter. 'We are focused on the basic survival needs of children in Afghanistan and in the refugee camps,' said Shayma Daneshjo of UNICEF. UNICEF has the longest operating history of any UN agency in Afghanistan. About sixty UNICEF staff officials are currently working in the country.
 
Water purification tablets, water containers, immunizations, high protein food for malnourished children along with blankets, sweaters and shoes – they are all part of UNICEF's current operations in Afghanistan. 'Based on our experiences last winter, we were prepared for this. We had a contingency plan in place before 9/11,' said Daneshjo.
 
Daneshjo points out that UNICEF will also be focusing on education and health care, with particular attention to the education of girls who were denied schooling during Taliban rule.
 
Although the UN intends to appoint a high-level gender post for its Afghan operations, there are apparently no plans for an equivalent child rights position. 'That would be redundant,' says Daneshjo. 'UNICEF's mandate is to look after all children. We're working in a very organized fashion with all levels of civil society, UN agencies, and government, to do just that. Meanwhile, the needs are so great in Afghanistan that whoever comes to help is welcome.'
 
Say Yes Campaign is Relaunched on the Soccer Field
 
In a move that promises to draw worldwide attention to the needs of children, next year's World Cup competition will be dedicated to the Global Movement for Children.
 
This follows an agreement that was announced at the United Nations on November 20, 2001 between UNICEF and the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA), football's governing body. The event also served to re-launch the 'Say Yes for Children' campaign, which kicked off the Global Movement for Children last April.
 
The 2002 World Cup tournament will be jointly sponsored by Korea and Japan and could attract a global audience of more than a billion soccer fans. Football is by far the most popular sport of young people worldwide.
 
The agreement was welcomed by several celebrities who attended the November 20 ceremony. 'Footballers are the biggest family in the world,' said Pele, from Brazil. 'Today, I renew the pledge I made to protect children's rights when I scored one thousand goals in 1964.'
 
Some child rights activists were more skeptical. Questioned by On the Record for Children, an official from the UK-based Anti-Slavery International noted that FIFA has done very little to uphold its own labor code, which prohibits the use of soccer balls and other soccer products that are made illegally by children. Activists also point out that FIFA was slow in banning the recruitment of players under the age of eighteen.
 
Others wondered whether it made sense to 'relaunch' the Say Yes Campaign, which has succeeded in raising 41 million votes. 'I don't have a problem with the FIFA collaboration itself and certainly applaud the publicity this alliance will generate,' said Ellen Brogren, Coordinator of the Young General Assembly Secretariat. 'But, PLEASE change the word re-launch so that the work of NGOs such as ours (in helping to raise votes) is not invalidated.'
 
The 'Say Yes' campaign sets out ten action points, and asks people to identify the three actions they consider the most crucial to child rights in their country. UNICEF has been collecting the ballots for presentation during the Special Session on Children.
 
The November 20 event at the UN was a star-studded occasion. Young footballers lobbed soccer balls around on the UN lawn as Brazilian football legend Pele and Brandi Chastain, from the U.S. Olympic women's soccer team, looked on. The young players wore bright yellow T-shirts with 'Say Yes for Children' written boldly across the front.
 
British celebrity and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Roger Moore, of James Bond fame, stood shoulder to shoulder with Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF; Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General; FIFA President, Joseph Blatter; the Japanese and Korean ambassadors to the UN; and the president of the Korean Football Association.
 
Organizers stressed the importance of sports as an instrument of peace. 'After the tragic and troubling events of the last few months, this dedication [of the World Cup] is filled with hope,' said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. 'Sport is a way of bringing people together. Football creates special bonds. It is the universal language for millions of young people and we must support their right to play and live a life of hope.'
 
Others made a point of insisting that sports should be made more accessible to girls, who are often neglected in the world of sports. 'Twenty-six years ago I made a promise to do everything I could to ensure that every girl had the same opportunity I had to be a world class athlete,' said Ms. Chastain.
 
'The FIFA-UNICEF collaboration is a wonderful idea,' says Jenipher Otieno of Mothers Rural Care for AIDS Orphans, a grassroots organization in KENYA.
 
Jennifer Wagner, International Relations Coordinator of the Girl Scouts of the USA, agreed. 'Sports can help children develop physical, mental, and social fitness, and we are pleased and supportive of UNICEF's alliance with FIFA,' she said. 'The alliance encourages a positive effort to develop the health and well-being of children around the world.'
 
UNICEF is now planning to capitalize on the publicity generated during the World Cup. 'We hope the global movement for children will help expand the days of full immunization, peace and stability for children,' said UNICEF Executive-Director Carol Bellamy. 'The World Cup began after the weapons of World War I were put down. Now it's time to put our weapons down once again. We must move from fields of war to fields of play.'

• For more information contact Shima Islam of UNICEF.

 
NGOs Sue Honduran Government Over the Murder of Street Children

The government of Honduras is being sued by a leading Honduran NGO for complicity in the murder of hundreds of impoverished and homeless Honduran children.
 
The case has been brought by Casa Alianza, which is the Latin American arm of Covenant House, a member of the NGO Committee on UNICEF. Casa Alianza has also successfully sued the government of Guatemala before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for complicity in the death of street children.
 
Casa Alianza maintains that the Honduran government has failed to guarantee the life of the murdered children, in violation of Article 4 of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. The case is currently being reviewed by the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, based in Washington, DC. Casa Alianza hopes that it will then pass to the Inter-American Court, based in Costa Rica.
 
Bruce Harris, the Executive-Director of Casa Alianza, told On the Record for Children that a thousand children have been murdered in Honduras since 1998, and that between fifty and sixty are killed every month. In some cases, he said, the perpetrators appear to have been uniformed police.
 
The thousandth victim, 16 year-old Isaac Moises Lara, was found dead in the Divino Paraiso suburb of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, on December 6, 2001, four days before the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Isaac was a student in a government job training program. He left his home early in the morning to play football with his friends, but never returned home. His parents found his corpse the following day riddled with bullets. The perpetrators have not been identified.
 
The Honduras office of Casa Alianza will shortly hold a memorial service for Lara and the hundreds of other children who have shared his fate. Children attending the service will release one thousand white balloons into the air to symbolize the soul of each of the children murdered and to demand an end to the killings.
 
In another recent case that is cited by Casa Alianza, three children were illegally detained last August and then summarily executed with bullets to the head after being released. The youngest was 12 years old.
 
These crimes are so appalling that Harris feels they could even warrant the establishment of a UN war crimes tribunal on the grounds that the murders might constitute crimes against humanity. 'There is no difference in the criminality or cruelty of acts of murder against civilians in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, or San Pedro Sula,' said Harris.
 
The immediate goal is to get the case against Honduras taken up by the Inter-American Court in Costa Rica, and there is an important precedent. In 1999, the Inter-American Court issued its first-ever ruling against a government – in this case Guatemala – and in favor of children. Casa Alianza was again the principal petitioner in the case, on behalf of five Guatemalan families whose children were tortured and murdered by police in 1990.
 
This was the first time that the Inter-American Court had heard a case in which children were the victims and in the process the judges drew heavily on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which Guatemala ratified in 1990. As a result of their ruling Latin America is the only region in the world where a government can be sued for not having implemented the CRC. 'This is certainly another legal stick in our favor,' said Harris. 'But it's not dynamite.'
 
The challenge now is to enforce the court's judgement. The Guatemalan government missed the payment date ordered by the Court for compensating the victims' families, whereupon the Court instructed the government to pay families of the murdered children $500,000 and name a school for the five victims as a permanent reminder of their tragic fate. The Court also ordered that a new, expanded 'Children's and Adolescent's Code' should be enacted to provide legal protection for homeless and at risk children.
 
'My country's lack of abidance with the Court's ruling both undermines the effectiveness of the Inter-American system and also, once again, makes Guatemala a pariah of human rights in the eyes of the world,' said Arturo Echeverria, the National Director of Casa Alianza, Guatemala.

• To contact Covenant House: Call Jose Manuel Capellin, National Director of Casa Alianza Honduras at 504-237-1750.

 
Working Group to Use CEDAW to Expose Discrimination Against Girls
 
A working group of the NGO Committee on UNICEF is planning to use the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to advocate on behalf of girls in the run-up to the Special Session.
 
The decision was taken by several members of the Committee's Working Group on Girls at a meeting in New York on December 13.
 
The group has decided to analyze the reports of some of the eight governments that will soon submit reports to the Committee, which monitors application of CEDAW. The governments are Estonia, Fiji, Iceland, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Trinidad & Tobago, and Fiji.
 
Members of the Working Group hope to review the reports for references to girls. They will compliment those countries that appear to be focusing on girls' rights, and criticize those that leave girls out of their CEDAW reports.
 
'There are no women's rights without girls' rights,' says Working Group member Roberta Ross of the International Council of Jewish Women. '(Girls rights) are crucial to any discussion of the gender record of least developed countries.'
 
Some members of the Working Group also feel that the time is ripe to lobby the US Senate to ratify CEDAW, which the US has so far snubbed. President George Bush and his wife Laura have made the rights of Afghan women a high priority for the Bush Administration, and the Senate has a majority of Democratic members who have traditionally been sympathetic towards the rights of women and girls.
 
Special Report on Child Exploitation in North America:
 
'Historic' Meeting Exposes Regional Dimensions of Child Trafficking
 
NGOs from Canada, Mexico and the United States have met for the first time ever to draw up an international plan to combat the trafficking of children for purposes of sexual exploitation between the three countries.
 
The meeting took place at the University of Philadelphia December 2-3, shortly after the publication of a new report which suggests that child trafficking in North America is far more extensive than was previously suspected.
 
The study, by two professors from the University of Philadelphia, estimates that roughly 17,000 children under the age of 17 arrive in the US illegally each year, and are drawn into sexual exploitation. They are among the 200,000 to 325,000 children who suffer from sexual abuse in the US annually.
 
The Philadelphia meeting brought together about a hundred governmental and non-governmental representatives from Mexico, Canada and the United States. They included law enforcement, human services and child advocacy groups, along with several young people who had themselves suffered from sexual exploitation.
 
The meeting ended by adopting four pages of recommendation that are carefully tailored to the special situation in the three countries. These have been submitted to the Second World Congress on Child Sexual Exploitation in Yokohama, Japan (December 17-21).
 
Many of the recommendations are couched in general terms, but for many participants the main achievement at Philadelphia was to air an issue that has been viewed as strictly domestic. This, they said, marked a historic breakthrough.
 
Miriam Lyons, who is the North American representative of the Focal Point on Sexual Exploitation, a network of activists, said that six other regional consultations were held before the Yokohama meeting and that all were hosted by a government.
 
The US expressed interest in hosting a consultation on North America, she said, but the discussion broke off after the terrorist attacks on September 11. In the end, the meeting was co-sponsored by UNICEF and several regional and international child rights organizations including Casa Alianza of Covenant House, ECPAT-USA (the U.S. branch of 'End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes'), Save the Children Canada, and the New York-based Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
 
Even after Philadelphia was chosen as a venue for the meeting, the US government only sent two observers, from the Department of Justice and the Department of State. In contrast, Canada sent a Senator (Landon Pearson) along with several senior public health and government officials. Mexico also sent top law-enforcement officials and ministers, along with NGO delegates.
 
The lack of official interest from the US government irritated US activists. 'We in the US lack the political will to address child sexual exploitation in the US even though we know it exists,' said Mary Ann Smith, President of the US branch of 'End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes' (ECPAT-USA). 'They say we don't have enough money to take this on. But we seem to have plenty of money to drop bombs. No one ever questions that.'
 
Activists are also finding it hard to engage US airlines in the campaign against trafficking. They would like the airlines to follow the example of Air France, which has created an informational video that is aimed at business travelers and tourists. The video discusses the problem of sex tourism and gives passengers information on how to report offenders or help victims.
 
'US airlines aren't willing to do this,' said Lyons. 'They wouldn't even let ECPAT put up posters in airports. We have public health and education campaigns for AIDS and anthrax, why don't we have one for the sexual exploitation of children?'
 
In spite of this, US delegates to the meeting made some specific recommendations. These included the creation of national networks of government officials, police officers, public health professionals and grassroots advocates. The delegation also demanded that Public Law 106-386, which protects victims of violence and prohibits the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation, be aggressively implemented.
 
New Report Finds That Up To 325,000 Children Suffer Sexual Abuse in US Annually

Between 200,000 and 325,000 children may be exposed to sexual abuse and exploitation in the United States each year according to a new report by Richard Estes, Ph.D., and Neil Weiner, Ph.D., from the University of Pennsylvania.
 
'Child sexual exploitation is the most hidden form of child abuse in the U.S. and North America today,' said Estes, who also chaired the Philadelphia meeting.
 
The findings galvanized many of the participants at the Philadelphia meeting. 'In the United States and in all developed countries, we've become experts at thinking the problem is 'elsewhere,'' said Mary Ann Smith, President of ECPAT-USA. 'Anywhere, that is, but our own backyard.'
 
According to the Estes/Weiner study, runaways and homeless children account for the largest group of sexually-exploited American youth. 'These children use 'survival sex' to acquire food, shelter, clothing and other things needed to survive on America's streets,' said Estes. Many service between four and ten customers a day.
 
The majority of the street children interviewed for the Estes report were Caucasian youths fleeing from middle-class homes. Some are rejected by their families for being gay, while others are on the run from abusive parents.
 
Most have histories of recurrent physical or sexual abuse at home, and many bury their sorrows in drugs and alcohol.
 
'These children are solicited for sex repeatedly by men, many of whom are married and have children of their own,' said Estes. 'Like other groups of sexually exploited persons, street children are exposed to violence, drug abuses, rape and, sometimes, even murder at the hands of the pimps, 'customers' and traffickers that make up their world.'
 
Estes added that many children are abused by members of their own junior and high school peer groups. Youth gangs also prey on their peers especially if they are girls.
 
About a fifth of the children involved in commercial sex have been coerced by organized criminal networks, and another ten percent are victims of international criminal rings. These rings force young Americans into prostitution in other developed countries, and also traffic children from developing countries into the US.
 
Lax Border Controls Encourage Cross Border Sex Trade
 
The Eastes/Weiner report casts light on some of the cross-border trade in children that takes place between Canada, Mexico and the United States.
 
Thousands of children are being trafficked into prostitution in Mexico from poorer countries in Central and South America, even though their intended destination was the United States. Eastes explained that owing to relaxed law enforcement in Mexico, many traffickers find they can make substantial profit by exploiting the children in Mexico City or in popular Mexican resort communities.
 
Coming from the other direction, American sex tourists regularly cross into Mexico in search of drugs, alcohol and sex with child prostitutes. They include college students or military personnel in training. Mexican authorities describe border towns as little more than 'cantinas for America's youth.'
 
The Estes/Weiner study also reveals that Canada serves as an easy gateway into the US for sexually exploited children from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia and Central and Eastern Europe. 'Due to relaxed border controls between the U.S. and Canada,' Estes says, 'trafficked children are able to be moved with comparative ease and meet with little or no official interference.'
 
Trafficking fees range from a few hundred dollars to the thousands of dollars charged for children from Central or Eastern Europe or from Asia.
 
Internet Porn Threatens Children in Central America
 
Latin American governments have to do more to curb child porn on the Internet, according to a new report on the sexual exploitation of children from Central America and Mexico.
 
The report was released during the Second World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Yokohama, Japan (December 18-20). It covers Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico and was produced by Casa Alianza, ECPAT and the Audrey Hepburn Childrens' Fund.
 
The report took more than nine months to compile. Researchers worked under dangerous conditions as they sought to infiltrate criminal networks of child abusers and exploiters.
 
One of the principal findings is that child pornography on the Internet poses a serious – and growing – threat. After a seven-month Internet investigation by Casa Alianza, in which the organization was able to infiltrate several pedophile networks, five Costa Rican professionals were arrested for producing and distributing child pornography. One of those detained worked in the audio-visual department of the state run University of Costa Rica, where he would take small boys and sexually abuse them in front of video cameras.
 
Thousands of pornographic images were confiscated and more than 60 boys are known to have fallen victim to the ring. But amazingly the possession of child pornography is not a crime in Costa Rica.
 
The Central America and Mexico investigation has also tracked pedophile groups in Chile. Yet the Chilean penal code is so out of date that even though the producers and distributors of child pornography have been clearly identified, the local police cannot arrest them. The situation is similar in Guatemala, where stealing a car can result in a longer jail term than stealing or trafficking a child.
 
Delegates at the Philadelphia meeting also struggled with the challenge of Internet pornography, and this led to one recommendation that children should be taught how to surf the Internet safely. Miriam Lyons, from the Focal Point on Sexual Exploitation, pointed out that some studies show that as many as one out of every six children participating in chat rooms is being solicited for sex. 'Kids,' says Lyons, 'have to be educated about the tell-tale signs of an abuser. What, for instance, are appropriate topics of conversation in a chat room?'
 
Some find it ironic that this debate over Internet porn should have carried over to the Yokohama conference. Until recently over half of all Internet servers hosting child porn were thought to be located in Japan.

• Visit the Covenant House site for a complete listing of the conclusions and recommendations of the Central American investigation. 

 
Rehabilitation, Not Detention, is the Answer for Sex Victims
 
Children who suffer from sexual exploitation should be treated and helped, not punished and locked up, according to Norma Hotaling a former prostitute who has founded an innovative and pioneering rehabilitation project in San Francisco.
 
The project is known as SAGE – Standing Against Global Exploitation – and Ms. Hotaling spoke by telephone about its work with On the Record for Children before she left for the Yokohama conference.
 
SAGE seeks to prevent future abuse as well as deal with the symptoms. With this in mind Ms Hotaling and her fellow-workers try to identify persons who have begun to adopt lifestyles that lead to exploitation and prostitution.
 
The majority of the SAGE staff members are themselves former prostitutes or sex workers who have experienced severe trauma in the form of child sexual and physical abuse, rape, incest, beatings, torture. Some have also spent time in jail, or juvenile detention centers. Many have had children and lost custody of them. Most have been homeless at some time.
 
According to the SAGE website, this background makes SAGE staff better able to understand the unique problems faced by survivors of violence, exploitation and prostitution. 'We at SAGE can thus provide a safe space through which those in prostitution and the sex trade can find education, support, resources, treatment for drugs and trauma, and healthcare for injuries and illness. Through SAGE, a client can come to understand her or his options more clearly.'
 
Many child activists find it unacceptable that victims of sexual exploitation – including children – are punished and ostracized by society. 'The thing to remember here,' says Mary Ann Smith, President of ECPAT-USA, 'is that the kids drawn into this are the victims not the criminals. The abusers, who are often pillars of the community, are the criminals. What needs to happen is that the young people who have been exploited must be afforded public assistance to help them overcome this trauma so they can be reintegrated into society.'
 
SAGE has even created a model rehabilitation program for abusers who have been caught and jailed. This can include workshops, training and psychological help. Jails. 'We need severe criminal sanctions for abusers,' said Hotaling, 'but we also need a re-socialization process for everyone. Violence and exploitation is learned behavior.'
 
Hotaling said that she faces an uphill battle in attracting funds for her programs because foundations tend to see sexually exploited children as 'rotten eggs' who deserve neither educational programs nor basic health and safety services.
 
How To Get Involved
 
If your organization doesn't focus on issues of child sexual exploitation, take a tip from child rights advocates who have spent their lives working on this issue.
 
Stay Informed. For the latest statistics about child sex exploitation in the U.S., check out the Estes/Weiner report. Also visit ECPAT-USA to join campaigns and get updates on the work of North American activists and the results from Yokohama.

Educate Others: Carol Smolenski, Coordinator of ECPAT-USA's New York office urges all NGOs to 'hold forums about child sexual exploitation in North America for their members and constituency. No one realizes the extent of the exploitation problems in the US and we all have to spread the word.'
 
Link the Issue of child sexual exploitation to your own work. 'Everything is connected,' says Miriam Lyons of Focal Point. If you work on child education issues, for example, realize that children denied an education and vocational training are more vulnerable to sexual exploiters. Poverty is another enabler and it includes the emotional poverty of some 'latch key' children who suffer when their parents spend more time at work, than with their families.

Remain Vigilant: Look out for tell-tale signs of children drawn into sex trafficking rings. Lyons says that kids who are trafficked into the US for sex often end up in a prison run by the Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS).  'When you hear that a big group of non-English speaking children are arriving in US airports all by themselves with no papers you should be thinking about the possibility of a child trafficking ring.'

Work To Remove the stigmas attached to young victims of sex exploitation. In both personal and professional circles, help spread the word that children drawn into commercial sex work are victims, not criminals. 'I have lived the lives of these children,' says Norma Hotaling of SAGE. 'I know the tremendous negative impact of blaming children instead of the men who are abusing them. Perpetrators are often the people we know-the 'regular' guys, our brothers, our bosses. We need to stop blaming the children. Children alone are our most valuable resource.'

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