Commercial sexual exploitation of children
Encyclopedia
Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) constitutes a form of coercion
Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. In law, coercion is codified as the duress crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way...

 and violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...

 against children and amounts to forced labour and a contemporary form of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

.

A declaration of the World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm in 1996, defined CSEC as:
‘sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or kind to the child or a third person or persons. The child is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object.’


CSEC includes the prostitution of children
Prostitution of children
Prostitution of children or child prostitution is the commercial sexual exploitation of children in which a child performs the services of prostitution, for financial benefit. The term normally refers to prostitution by a minor, or person under the local age of majority...

, child pornography
Child pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...

, child sex tourism
Child sex tourism
Child sex tourism is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, that is commercially-facilitated child sexual abuse...

 and other forms of transactional sex where a child engages in sexual activities to have key needs fulfilled, such as food, shelter or access to education. It includes forms of transactional sex where the sexual abuse of children is not stopped or reported by household members, due to benefits derived by the household from the perpetrator. CSEC also potentially includes arranged marriage
Arranged marriage
An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...

s involving children under the age of 18 years, where the child has not freely consented to marriage and where the child is sexually abused.

Forms of sexual exploitation

Prostitution of children
Prostitution of children
Prostitution of children or child prostitution is the commercial sexual exploitation of children in which a child performs the services of prostitution, for financial benefit. The term normally refers to prostitution by a minor, or person under the local age of majority...

 under the age of 18 years, child pornography and the (often related) sale and trafficking of children
Trafficking of children
Trafficking of children is a form of human trafficking. It is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receiving of children for the purpose of exploitation....

 are often considered to be crimes of violence against children. They are considered to be forms of economic exploitation
Exploitation
This article discusses the term exploitation in the meaning of using something in an unjust or cruel manner.- As unjust benefit :In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for...

 akin to forced labour or slavery. Such children often suffer irreparable damage to their physical and mental health. They face early pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy is a pregnancy of a female under the age of 20 when the pregnancy ends. It generally refers to a female who is unmarried and usually refers to an unplanned pregnancy...

 and risk sexually transmitted diseases, particularly AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

. They are often inadequately protected by the law and may be treated as criminals.

Child trafficking and CSEC sometimes overlap. On the one hand, children who are trafficked are often trafficked for the purposes of CSEC. However, not all trafficked children are trafficked for these purposes. Further, even if some of the children trafficked for other forms of work are subsequently sexually abused at work, this does not necessarily constitute CSEC. On the other hand, according to the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the definition of Severe Forms of Trafficking in Persons includes any commercial sex act performed by a person under the age of 18. This means that any minor who is commercially sexually exploited is defined as a trafficking victim, whether or not movement has taken place.
CSEC is also part of, but distinct from, child abuse, or even child sexual abuse. Child rape, for example, will not usually constitute CSEC. Neither will domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...

.

Although CSEC is considered as child labour, and indeed one of the worst forms of child labor, in terms of international conventions, in legislation, policy and programmatic terms, CSEC is often treated as a form of child abuse or a crime.

Causes

The causes of CSEC are complex and patterns differ among countries and regions. For example, in some areas the commercial sexual exploitation of children is clearly related to foreign child sex tourism
Child sex tourism
Child sex tourism is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, that is commercially-facilitated child sexual abuse...

, in others it is associated with the local demand. In most countries, girls represent 80 to 90% of the victims, although in some places boys predominate.

As is the case for other worst forms of child labour, severe poverty, the possibility of relatively high earnings, low value attached to education, family dysfunction, a cultural obligation to help support the family or the need to earn money to simply survive are all factors that make children vulnerable to CSEC. In order to make a living children are sold into the sex trade to provide food and shelter and in some cases money to satisfy the addiction of a family member or themselves

There are other non-economic factors that also push children into commercial sexual exploitation. Children who are at greatest risk of becoming victims of CSEC are those that have previously experienced physical or sexual abuse. A family environment of little protection, where caregivers are absent or where there is a high level of violence or alcohol or drug consumption, induces boys and girls to run away from home, making them highly susceptible to abuse. Gender discrimination and low educational levels of caregivers are also risk factors. Children with extreme poverty and marginalized families in coastal areas also becoming victims of CSEC.

On the demand side, certain factors can aggravate the problem. For example, sex tourists
Sex tourism
Sex tourism is travel to engage in sexual activity with prostitutes.The World Tourism Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, defines sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary...

 are a source of demand for prostitution. The presence of military troops or of large public works may also create demand. Client preferences for young children, particularly in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, pull in additional children. Additionally, the expansion of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 has facilitated the growth of child pornography.

Experience has shown that certain socio-economic characteristics, such as population density, concentration of night entertainment (bars and discos), high poverty and unemployment levels, movement of people, and access to highways, ports, or borders are also associated with CSEC.

Prevalence

While it is impossible to know the true extent of the problem, given its illegal nature, International Labour Organization
International Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues pertaining to international labour standards. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. Its secretariat — the people who are employed by it throughout the world — is known as the...

 (ILO) global child labour figures for the year 2003 estimate that there are as many as 1.8 million children exploited in prostitution or pornography worldwide.

The Rapid Assessment survey, developed by the ILO's International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and UNICEF, relies on interviews and other, mainly qualitative, techniques, to provide a picture of a specific activity in a limited geographic area. It is a highly useful tool for collecting information on the worst forms of child labour, like CSEC, that is difficult to capture with standard quantitative surveys.

General knowledge offered to a child can decrease the likelihood of children being exploited into prostitution or pornography. A national campaign in Thailand provided “9 years of basic education, ... awareness-raising activities to change attitudes about child prostitution, and a surveillance system to prevent children from being coerced into prostitution.”

Statistics

  • Past surveys indicate that 30 to 35 percent of all prostitutes in the Mekong sub-region
    Greater Mekong Subregion
    The Greater Mekong Subregion is not a geological region, but rather, a development project mooted by the Asian Development Bank in 1992 that brought together the riparian states of the Mekong River basin, namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Yunnan Province of China...

     of Southeast Asia
    Southeast Asia
    Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

     are between 12 and 17 years of age.
  • Thailand
    Thailand
    Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

    ’s Health System Research Institute reports that children in prostitution make up 40% of prostitutes in Thailand.
  • The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimate that 2 million children are exploited in prostitution or pornography every year.
  • An estimated 12,000 Nepal
    Nepal
    Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

    ese children, mainly girls, are trafficked for sexual commercial exploitation each year within Nepal
    Nepal
    Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

     or to brothel
    Brothel
    Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...

    s in India
    India
    India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

     and other countries.
  • Some 84 % of girls in prostitution interviewed in Tanzania
    Tanzania
    The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

     reported having been battered, raped or tortured by police officers and sungu sungu (local community guards). At least 60% had no permanent place to live. Some of these girls started out as child domestic workers.
  • UNICEF estimates that there are 60,000 child prostitutes in the Philippines and many of the 200 brothels in the notorious Angeles City offer children for sex.
  • In Brazil
    Brazil
    Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

    , UNICEF estimates that there are 250,000 children working in the child prostitution industry.
  • In El Salvador
    El Salvador
    El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

    , one-third of the sexually exploited children between 14 and 17 years of age are boys. The median age for entering into prostitution among all children interviewed was 13 years. They worked on average five days per week, although nearly 10% reported that they worked seven days a week.
  • In Malaysia, an estimated 150 children enter the child sex trade each year.
  • In Vietnam
    Vietnam
    Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

    , family poverty, low family education and family dysfunction were found to be primary causes for CSEC. Sixteen per cent of the children interviewed were illiterate, 38 % had only primary-level schooling. Sixty-six per cent said that tuition and school fees were beyond the means of their families.
  • In Sri Lanka
    Sri Lanka
    Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

    , children often become the prey of sexual exploiters through friends and relatives. The prevalence of boys in prostitution here is strongly related to foreign tourism.

United States

In 2001, the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work released a study on CSEC conducted in 17 cities across the United States. While they did not interview any of the adolescent subjects of the inquiry, they estimated through secondary response that as many as 300,000 American youth may be at risk of commercial sexual exploitation at any time. However, the actual number of children involved in prostitution is likely to be much smaller: over 10 years only 827 cases a year have been reported to police departments. Scholarly research funded by the National Institute of Justice and realized by the Social Networks Research Group at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (http://snrg-nyc.org/) and the Center for Court Innovation in New York City used Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS), Social Network Analysis, capture/recapture, and Markov based probability estimates to generate a prevalence estimate for New York City that suggests far fewer commercially sexually exploited children than the 300,000 and far more than the 827 suggested by these two most widely read sources..

Especially vulnerable are homeless and runaways. The National Runaway Switchboard says that one-third of runaway youths in America will be lured into prostitution within 48 hours on the streets and Kristi House reports on their website that 75% of minors engaged in prostitution have a pimp (www.kristihouse.org). This view of adolescent prostitution in the United States as primarily driven by pimp-exploiters and other "sex traffickers" has recently been challenged by SNRG-NYC http://snrg-nyc.org in their 2008 New York City study which interviewed over 300 under-age prostitutes and found that only 10% reported having pimps. A second study done in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by the same group incorporated an extended qualitative ethnographic component that looked specifically at the relationship between pimps and adolescents engaged with street based sex markets . This study found the percentage of adolescents who had pimps to be only 14% and that those relationships were typically far more complex, mutual, and companionate than has been reported by social service providers, not-for-profits, and much of the news media.

New York

The New York State Office of Children and Family Services estimates that New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 is home to more than 2,000 sexually exploited children under 18. At least 85 percent of these youths statewide have had some contact with the child welfare system, mostly through abuse or neglect proceedings. In New York City, 75 percent have been in foster care
Foster care
Foster care is the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward is placed in the private home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent"....

. Mishi Faruqee, who is in charge of juvenile justice issues for the Correctional Association of New York, questioned the reliability of the estimate. “We believe that number is really an undercount." This is confirmed by SNRG-NYC's New York City population estimate of 2008 which was 3,946. The average age for entry into prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

 is 12 in New York, according to Rachel Lloyd, founder of an organization called GEMS that helps under-age girls in the sex trade. She believes that “Many of the guys who buy sex with children would never consider themselves pedophiles. They’re not necessarily out there looking for 12-year-olds or teenagers. They just kind of don’t care." This age of entry claim has been contested by SNRG-NYC whose New York City study found that out of 249 underage prostitutes (48% female and 45% male) who constituted the final statistical sample, the average age of entry into the market was 15.29.

The Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth Act, legislation which would have provided services for sexually exploited youth instead of incarceration—making treatment of domestic youth parallel to that of foreign trafficking
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...

 victims—did not pass in New York in 2008. The New York Times criticized both the failure of the state government to pass the Act, and called for a "paradigm shift," away from blaming sexually exploited youth for their own exploitation
Exploitation
This article discusses the term exploitation in the meaning of using something in an unjust or cruel manner.- As unjust benefit :In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for...

, "If a 35-year-old pimp
Pimp
A pimp is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The pimp may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing a location where she may engage clients...

 puts a 16-year-old girl on the street and a 30-year-old john pays to have sex with her, how is it reasonable that the girl is most often the point in that triangle that is targeted by law enforcement?" Recent concern has been expressed among CSEC researchers that the bias towards girls-only that is reflected in the New York Times quote above leaves out the thousands of adolescent boys who inhabit similarly vulnerable social positions.

See also

  • Child Pornography
    Child pornography
    Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...

  • Cybertip.ca
    Cybertip.ca
    Cybertip.ca is Canada's official tipline for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children. The tipline is owned and operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a charitable organization...

  • ECPAT
    ECPAT
    ECPAT is an international non-governmental organisation and network headquartered in Thailand which is designed to end commercial sexual exploitation of children...

  • International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour
    International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour
    The International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour is a programme that the International Labour Organization has run since 1992...

  • Mongolian Gender Equality Center
    Mongolian Gender Equality Center
    The Mongolian Gender Equality Center ' is a non-governmental organization based in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It was established in 2002 with the aim of defending human rights and promoting gender equality...

  • OneChild
    OneChild
    OneChild is a Canadian-based, non-governmental organization which seeks to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children abroad....

  • Towards the Elimination of the worst forms of Child Labour
  • Trafficking in human beings
  • Trafficking of children
    Trafficking of children
    Trafficking of children is a form of human trafficking. It is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receiving of children for the purpose of exploitation....



Relevant ILO Conventions and Recommendations
  • Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention
    Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention
    The Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, known in short as the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, was adopted by the International Labour Organization in 1999 as ILO Convention No 182. It is one of 8 ILO fundamental...

  • Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation
    Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation
    The Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation was adopted by the International Labour Organisation in 1999 as ILO Recommendation No 190. The provisions of this Recommendation supplement those of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention and should be applied in conjunction with them...


External links

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