The problem of child sexual exploitation poorly tackled in Latin America

Only 10 out of the 35 Latin American and Caribbean nations have laid out action plans of their own to cope with the ever-growing trade of child sex, a report issued by an international organization asserts.

Those national action plans aimed at staving off the sexual trade of children and teenagers were mapped out in late 2002 by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, according to a research study conducted by ECPAT, an international network of 71 organizations from 62 countries joining their hands in the struggle against child prostitution and pornography.

However, only Colombia and El Salvador have earmarked funds to set their own plans going, the analysis indicates.

ECPAT is now in charge of monitoring both the development and application of national plans in as many as 159 countries that have committed themselves to the Stockholm (Sweden) and Yokohama (Japan) action plans in the wake of two congresses on child sexual exploitation held in those aforesaid cities in 1996 and 2001 respectively. Less than a quarter of the committed nations (23 percent) have complied with the agreements.

“We’ve seen some headway but not good enough and that social phenomenon (child sexual exploitation) is growing,” Bruce Harris, a representative of the House Alliance Organization and a member of the ECPAT Latin American Council, said in a press conference.

Milena Grillo, a representative of Bread and Love, a Costa Rican organization attached to ECPAT, averred this organization is way too wary because child sexual exploitation is on the rise despite ten years worth of efforts to do away with this social disgrace.

“Action plans should be devised as a means, not as an end in itself,” Mrs. Grillo pointed out and added there are still huge gaps to bridge –especially as far as legislation is concerned- to prosecute child exploiters who remain “protected by impunity and anonymity.”

In Mr. Harris’s own words, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic are the two Central American nations hit hardest by child sexual exploitation, a phenomenon closely linked to the development of tourism.

As many as 3,000 boys and girls in Costa Rica are victims of child sexual exploitation while some 16,000 cases have been reported in Mexico, according to official stats collected by House Alliance on the heels of a regional investigation on child trade, prostitution and pornography, as well as on child sexual tourism in Mexico and Central America.