In light of the first 'European Day for the Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse' taking place today, the NGO ECPAT Luxembourg has used the opportunity to take stock of the three years of campaigning that have led to significant advances in this field.
As hundreds of thousands of children are victims of exploitation and sexual abuse, a light must be shone on these serious violations of children's rights. This creed, of developing way to address this issue and take concrete steps towards tackling it, has been at the heart of a campaign launched three years ago by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT), a global network of associations with the sole mission of endig child sexual exploitation.
Entitled 'Do Not Look Away' ('Ne détournez pas le regard'), this campaign addresses the sexual exploitation of children within the contexts of travel and tourism. Studeis have revealed that many travellers have witnessed worrying situations in this regard whilst travelling, and yet have encountered endless obstacles in trying to report them. Several European ECPAT Groups, of which ECPAT Luxembourg is one, therefore decided to collaborate with the travel and tourism industry, as well as its users, to develop concrete answers to this form of sexual exploitation.
To this end, an internationl online platform for reporting such incidents was developed. www.reportchildsextourism.org was the result of collaboratio between ECPAT, Europol and natioal police services. In the Grand Duchy, the site is registered under www.childprotection.lu. In this way, ECPAT was able to support the travel and tourism industry in taking an active role in the protection of children, including through awareness and training.
The www.ecpat-serious-game.eu site allows both students and professionals in tourism to grasp the basics of the issue in an interactive way. It is available in the 8 languages of French, German, English, Spanish, Russian, Dutch and Bulgarian. In addition, an extensive action research programme was conducted in African tourist destinations which are facing a growth in the sexual exploitation of children, including Senegal, South Africa, Kenya, Madagascar and Gambia.
