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Stronger Action Needed to Counter Child Sex Tourism in Thailand

Although awareness has increased concerning child sex tourism, too many governments were paying lip service to the issue and not taking enough action, said an NGO fighting the problem in Thailand.

Legal measures needed to be backed up with action to stop child sex tourism and other forms of child abuse, members of End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography & Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) said at the release of their global monitoring report.

"It's not a static problem, something you know and it stays the same," but it adapts with new technology from the Internet and the proliferation of mobile phones, to low-cost airlines and the rise in international tourism, Carmen Madrinan, executive director of ECPAT International said.

There has been progress with countries introducing laws where their citizens can be charged with paedophilia for having sex with minors in foreign countries, but governments needed to do more to make a difference, Madrinan said.  The issue requires international cooperation and laws that are enforced, Professor Jaap Doek, Chairman of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said. "The whole human rights thing is trying to convince states to act on their commitments. Changing the law is easy. The implementation is the next step and it takes longer in some countries than others," he said.

Wanchai Roujanavong of the Thai Ministry of Justice said one challenge was that police didn't consider the problem to be as important as murder and other violent crimes. Child sex cases got pushed aside, he said. He said Thailand was on the right track but needed a special police force that concentrated on that particular crime. He said it was an international issue, too, and cited how many paedophiles had started going to neighbouring Cambodia when Thailand cracked down on them. That moved the problem elsewhere rather than solving it, he said.

Adapted from: "Stronger action needed to counter child sex tourism." playfuls.com. 19 December 2006. (Source: UNIAP Thailand)