The brutal murder of a 6-year-old blonde-haired “beauty queen” at her home in the United States in 1996 made headline news for years as the case remained unsolved. Then in June 2006, John Mark Karr, a clean-cut 41-year-old American living in Bangkok, confessed to the crime. At the time, he had just started a new English-teaching job in a local grade school. Although there was no indication he had harmed any Thai child, suddenly the international media swarming on him also leapt to stories on the sexual exploitation of children in Thailand. What they found was a Thailand bent on protecting children from various types of abuse. After years of lobbying by non-government groups and United Nations agencies, the Thai government began in the 1990s to build walls of protection against, in particular, the sexual exploitation of young people.

Since a bureaucratic revamp in 2002 that created the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, Dr Sasithara Pichaichannarong, one of its Deputy Permanent Secretaries, has been making a stand on what the government will no longer tolerate. Now she is overseeing the drafting of the National Policy and Strategy on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation of Children in the Tourism Industry and pulling in forces from the ministries of justice, immigration and social welfare as well as the tourist police and civil society groups and academics, calling on them to work together toward producing “concrete, tangible” actions that go beyond the considerable legislation already in place and focus on real enforcement.

With tourism being a huge source of income for the country, controlling tourist behaviour, as well as abusive locals, can be a tough endeavour. Several child protection officers, however, acknowledge changes in attitudes at all levels, even among corrupt authorities who close both eyes to prostitution but now refuse to allow the abuse of children.

Because of its warm weather, beach lifestyle and low cost of living, Thailand attracts many visitors – in 2005, some 12 million people came through the country. A large proportion of them are single males, many of whom retire here or come to do some kind of business. They open bars or other enterprises or they teach. As more and more Thais desire to learn English, the foreigners easily find jobs in language schools or in formal Thai schools where all that is required is being a native speaker and having a degree of any kind.

The attractions have long given Thailand a reputation as a pleasure capital, from culinary paradise to tropical paradise to sexual paradise – even though prostitution has been illegal since 1960. But flaunting that law are many red-light districts of urban centres that also double as popular tourist attractions.

The government estimates the number of women employed in prostitution is between 150,000 and 220,000 (male prostitutes are a tiny fraction of that).

How many children are involved remains unclear. According to Amanda Bissex, a child protection officer in the UNICEF Thailand office, the majority of "child" sex workers in Thailand are aged between 16 and 18. She also says that former estimates that a third of the total number of sex workers are under-age are unlikely to be true now (if they were true before, she adds), as there has been a decrease in under-aged girls available in the sex industry. The situation with boys is less clear, she says.

According to Kitiya Phornsadja, also a child protection officer in the UNICEF Thailand office, a decade ago there was far greater incidence of abductions and forcing or selling young girls into a brothel. She also says the numbers of Thai children found in facilities for “rescued” trafficking victims has been going down; ten years ago they out-numbered children from neighbouring countries (Burma, Laos and Cambodia), whereas the reverse is now true.

Compulsory education of nine years for Thai children and the government’s provision of scholarships to young people to keep them in school have had considerable impact, Phornsadja says. Although in the past few years she has started to detect an increase in young girls seeking out prostitution, even students.

According to volunteers working with ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) in northern Thailand, college students are being approached and sexually exploited by local adult men who offer themselves as a “sugar daddy”.

Other child protection officers also see declines in the sexual exploitation children. Luc Ferran works with ECPAT, a non-government organization that started as a campaign in Thailand to address the problem of children in sex tourism in Asia in the late 1980s and has since grown to international proportions. He believes that generally the problem of sexual exploitation of children is not as widespread as it was a decade ago, though “it is dire” in certain geographical spots.

Sudarat Sereewat of FACE (Fight Against Child Exploitation) Foundation, which was set up in 1995 to monitor Thailand’s legal systems, was part of the original ECPAT campaign and has been researching the problem since 1987. The passage of laws against prostitution (1996) and trafficking of women and children (1997) “announced that using children in the sex industry is not acceptable and is punishable”, says Sereewat.

“Attitudes have changed,” she says, noting a significant decrease of children in the sex industry but also the ongoing difficulty in actually punishing abusers. But several foreigners and many locals have been prosecuted and sent to jail, both here and in other countries, she adds. However, she would like to see the police create paedophile and computer crime units to better target what she says are the more difficult crimes to pursue.

Many countries, such as the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, now have laws to prosecute citizens that commit child sex offences abroad. The US reportedly has convicted nearly 20 people (several for crimes in Thailand) under the 2003 PROTECT law.

The decline of children in the sex industry is attributed largely to NGOs calling for a change and working with UN agencies to lobby the government for needed legislation. The Thai government responded with several fronts of policy and legislation, beginning with the National Policy and Plan of Action for the Prevention and Eradication of the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in 1996 and eventually developing the Child Protection Act of 2004 that touched on every aspect of child protection.

The concerted efforts of the Thai government, UN agencies and NGOs over the past decade to crack down on sex tourism and child trafficking for sexual exploitation has included the training of police, harsher penalties for people who exploit children, treating victims as victims rather than as criminals who were jailed or deported and working with neighbouring countries to establish legal agreements to tighten border controls and better treatment for victims returning from other countries.

In 2000, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) joined the global fight against the sexual exploitation of children and committed itself to the ECPAT Child Wise campaign to end the promotion of Thailand as a sex tourism destination. Now the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, responsible for certifying tourism-related operators, monitors them to ensure the policy is followed. Working with ECPAT, the Ministry of Tourism has supported the training of tour guides and hotel staff on child protection.

The Accor hotel chain has taken a lead in Thailand, working with the ECPAT network, especially the ECPAT International Secretariat and the organisation Child Wise (ECPAT in Australia) to train staff on the issue of sexual exploitation in tourism, develop information materials, and fundraise to help local organisations working with child victims of sexual exploitation. Nearly, 6000 Accor staff have received training on child sex tourism. Accor is a signatory to the Code of Conduct to Protect children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism.

Under the direction of Deputy Permanent Secretary Saisithara, the Ministry of Tourism will be pushing for stronger campaigns to raise awareness among tourists against the exploitation of children. Child protection officers working with her, however, continue to push to fill what they see as a major gap: the lack of reporting mechanisms that foreigners can use if they suspect crimes against children.

While ECPAT has become an international organization working on the problem of sexual exploitation of children in all countries, FACE as well as many other NGOs continue to focus on prosecutions, campaigns and protection services in Thailand. The Center for the Protection of Children's Rights Foundation provides legal aid and shelters to sexually abused children and the Development and Education Programmes for Daughters and Communities Centre works on prevention programmes to stop children being trafficked into the sex business by providing higher education in secondary schools for girls at risk.

To go after foreigners working illegally in the country, Thai Immigration authorities in 2006 made changes in visa renewals for people staying long-term. Since the John Mark Karr case, the immigration police work more closely with embassy focal points and liaison officers, meeting monthly to discuss various problems and cases of wanted criminals. They also more closely monitor such criminal alerts as the American FBI Most Wanted and the US Marshal’s wanted lists as well as researching the Internet for lists of known sex offenders. Those with credible evidence are placed on the immigration’s “watch list”. Immigration police also now liaise more closely with the department in the education ministry responsible for verifying the credentials of foreigners applying for teaching jobs. This step up recently resulted in one teacher caught who was wanted for raping a child in his native England.

"There are still tourists coming here to seek sexual pleasure from children," adds UNICEF’s Phornsadja. It is harder for them though and they are heading to remote parts of the country or to neighbouring countries, she adds.

To stem this unwanted “traffic”, Thailand’s proposed National Policy and Strategy on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation of Children in the Tourism Industry addresses five key areas: mechanisms (including guidelines for both incentive and punishment) for preventing human trafficking and child sexual exploitation in tourism business enterprises, awareness raising, human resources development, protecting the rights of women and children at risk of sexual exploitation, and national, regional and international cooperation.

Once the government approves the proposed National Policy and Strategy on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation of Children in the Tourism Industry, existing legislation related to human trafficking and child sexual exploitation will be revised. Such addendums to existing bodies of law will include a clear definition and scope of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation. A Royal Decree on the prevention of sexual exploitation of children within the tourism industry will also be introduced.

Other progressive changes will focus on increasing the penalties for human trafficking and child sexual exploitation offences and include customers of sexual services as well as the providers. As part of the national policy, Thailand will also improve its children-friendly legal process and work jointly with international counterparts to enforce extra-territorial legislation. And in terms of regional and international cooperation, the Ministry of Tourism is looking to develop a registry of known child sex offenders and greater collaboration between Thai and foreign law enforcement.

Date of article: 1 February 2007
Source: Ministry of Tourism and Sports

KUONI GROUP COMMITTED TO PROTECTING CHILDREN
Greater Mekong Sub-regional Seminar on Protecting Children from Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation in Tourism — November 2007
Please click to view

Contact information:
Ministry of Tourism and Sports
Office of Tourism Development
Tel: +66 (0) 2283 1500
Fax:+66 (0) 2216 6658
Web site: www.mots.go.th

ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS
News Room sincerely thanks Dr Sasithara Pichaichannarong, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, the UNICEF Thailand office, ECPAT International and the Coalition to Fight Against Child Exploitation (FACE), Thai immigration authorities and immigration police and the Tourist Police Division for the tremendous insight and support extended to News Room on this special feature.

Ministry of Tourism and Sports
www.mots.go.th
http://www.mots.go.th/tourism/index.php?lang=en

UNICEF
The United Nations Children's Fund - UNICEF - works for children's rights, their survival, development and protection, guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
http://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_introduction.html

UNICEF Mission Statement
http://www.unicef.org/media/media_35908.html

ECPAT International
http://www.ecpat.net/eng/index.asp
ECPAT is a network of organizations and individuals working together to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children. It seeks to encourage the world community to ensure that children everywhere enjoy their fundamental rights free from all forms of commercial sexual exploitation. The ECPAT acronym stands for 'End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes'. ECPAT has Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).

Coalition to Fight Against Child Exploitation (FACE)
http://www.un.or.th/TraffickingProject/FACE/face_home.html

Light A Candle for the Innocent Victims of Online Child Pornography
http://www.lightamillioncandles.com