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Mission Report

Combating Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC)

 Study Tour to Thailand

1-6^th September 2003

By: Hangama Anwari

The study was started by a welcome speech and briefing on the program by the focal point of the UNICEF office for South Asia (ROSA) and was followed by the country level presentation by each of the representative about the issue of Commercial and Sexual Exploitation of the Children (CSEC) and the measures has been taken by each of the respective countries in this regard

In the first day of the official start of the program a theoretical input was provided about the 5 main thematic area in regard of CSEC in Thailand and the protective legal framework in regards of CESC; by the senior officials from the Thai government, a professor of the law faculty and a NGO working in the same area.

The rest of 3 days of the tour was spent on visiting the polices system both at national and provincial level, visiting the GO/NGO joint initiatives for the recovery programs for the victims of CSEC, visiting the GO structure and setups in confronting CSEC in Thailand. Each visit was organized by presentation from the officials of the section followed by Q&A sessions and where appropriate visiting the site and direct interviews with the victims.

The last day of the tour was specified for the planning one activity follow up plan in which each national team was responsible to select one of the activities from what they have seen and prepare a draft strategy paper, the draft strategy papers was presented to the group for comments and was submitted to UNICEF for the follow up with the UNICEF country offices in the south Asia. ( annex 1. draft activity plan for Afghanistan)

Thai Government initiatives in confronting CSEC:

Based on the South Asia conference in Yokohama 2002, the government of Thailand as produced a National Plan of Action (NPA) which is consisting of the following five areas on confronting the CSEC:

1. Prevention:

Many different initiatives were taken to prevent children form exploitation, as follows:

1. Formal and informal education was the main target which was mainly focused on improving the school system the education curricula and also providing scholarships for the children at risk, poor families etc.

2. Career development program: this program was consisting of providing skill training, income generation projects, family development program, etc.

3. Village radio program, village saving fund, mobile cinemas,  audio/visual programs were among some other preventive measures which was largely implemented by the GO/NGO as preventive actions.

2. Protection:

Rescue and protection of the victims was one of the largest program, which was involved both GOs /NGOs in many ways with in the country and with the neighboring countries.

Citizens sense of responsibility on the reporting of the incidents and cases, well trained police on the issue of protection, protecting the victims from the media, signing MOUs are among the successes of the program.

Police forces: in each district police office a special unit was exist under the name of child protection unit consist of trained police officers 3-5 police who were particularly concern on the issues regarding children; mainly trafficking and CSEC. The police unit was in close contact with the other actors in this area such as psychologist, social worker, NGOs.

Example of collaboration

Police informed about the case

Police contact the Social worker

Identify the victim

Sent the victim to the shelter

contact the psychologist

contact the psychologist

Provide assistance in terms of education, health, social services through contacting NGOs/GO offices.

• Media: in order to protect children from the open coverage in the media all actors in the area and the media themselves have been informed and advise not to publish the photos of the victim but the emphasis is on publicizing the offenders as a moral punishment.

• MOU: in order to overcome the problem of CSEC in Thailand the Government has prepared and sign different type of MOU (memorandum of understanding) among different actors in this area, e.g. the MOU between GO offices, GO and NGO, different NGOs and the MOU between Government of Thai & Cambodia on the cross bordering issue.

It was planed to sign the MOU with other neighboring countries.

3. Legislation:

In order to confront the CSEC from the legislation point of view lots of efforts have been put in to the practice for reviewing the exist laws and passing new laws; some of the initiatives in this regard was containing the strong punishment for the offender, prepare law enforcement mechanisms, form judges forum to strength the feeling and commitment of judges to the process.

4. Repatriation/Recovery/ Reintegration:

To bring the victim back to a normal life some of the initiatives are as follow:

• Associate the victim to the society by using participatory approaches

• Community participation to protect the victims ( because there are lots of possibility for rejection of the victim by the village, or even the family)

• Follow up with the family to protect the victims ( in most of the cases it is the parents who are selling their children or encouraging them to involved in the CSEC)

• Shelters: in the different parts of the country many shelters and homes have been built by the Government to provide the victims with the adequate facilities.

In these shelters the victims from different places are brought up, once they identified by the police, these shelters are equipped with all kind of facilities and services like the psychology section, teaching class, skill training class, etc.

Also they have different kind of entertainment, like sport, competition, site seeing, TV/Radio program

When a victim is brining to the shelter first of all she/he will be bring to the psychology section for treatment and after a while when they recovered they will have a tour of the shelter different sections and based on their choice they will select one of the sections like beauty puller, tailoring, hose keeping, etc.

They will stay their, until they recovered and come back to the normal life, and the shelter management is helping them to find a proper job or will introduce them to the government school for education.

These shelters are run by the government and the NGOs are coming in to provide health, education, skill training, phsicotropy services to the victim.

5. Monitoring: 

In terms of monitoring the cases which has referred to police is registered their and the joint efforts form all actors are using to follow up with the cases, e.g. what happen to the case, is the behavior of the victim have been  changed or not.

Protective and supervising bodies: 

In order to implement the above mentioned protective mechanism there are a number of initiatives taken to make particular groups responsible for overseeing the program;

The National Committee on CRC: the committee is appointed by the prime minister and has the authority to work on laws, procedures and systems to confront the CSEC. This committee is working with another commission for Youth and Children leading by the Vice minister of the Social development and human security.

The committee for Youth and Children: is working under the ministry of social development and human security and it directly supervising the shelters provided for the victims of CSEC plus many other preventive and protective actions.

The Ministry of Social Development and Human Security:  the Government of Thai has been just established a new ministry by the name of social development and human security; as was said by the voice minister of this ministry this is a governmental body which is hosting the issue not owning but all other actors in this process they have their own responsibility, this ministry is acting as a leading organization in the issue of trafficking of human in general and as was mentioned they have a unit for the Youth and children which is dealing directly with the CSEC.

Ministry of Interior: by establishing the special police unit for the children this ministry playing a very important and strong role on confronting the CSEC.

 Ministry of Tourism: because Thailand is one of the biggest place for the tourist, there are lots of problem with the tourists coming form different parts of the world in it increase the chance of CSEC. The ministry of Tourism is working closely with the different NGOs mostly international NGOs to raise the awareness of the hotels, resorts, travel agencies etc.

Non Governmental Organizations: NGOs both national and international are very active in the area of CSEC in Thailand; they are registered with the ministry of culture, but working closely with the above mentioned actors in the ground to confront the CSEC.

One of the good initiatives in this area is training the staff of the hotels, mainly big hotels for not allowing the customers to use their hotels for this purpose (mainly sexual exploitation) with providing posters, stickers, announcements, etc.

UNICEF: UNICEF is very active in the process of helping the Government for their capacity building of the staff, supporting the shelters, drafting the MOUs, etc.

It means many of the activities taken in the Thailand is supporting by the UNICEF country office and as well as ROSA office.

Impacts:

As was explained by many of the presenters in the tour the initiatives in regard of confronting CSEC was started from more than 2 decades but it was mainly in the form of activities and the commitments at the national level; the Yokohama conference which was a regional conference and was resulted to the agreement of the region in producing the NPA for coming 4 years, was very useful for brining in more resources for this struggle.

As a result of this initiatives;

• The issue of CSEC mainstreamed in the context of the country

• The number of child prostitution has decreased

• Public become more aware and sensitized to the issue of CSEC

• The compulsory education was pushed to the 9 grade from 6^th grade to reduce the number of incidents

• All laws was reviewed and improved in terms of nondiscrimination

Observations:

Lots of efforts are put together in order to overcome the CSEC in Thailand; producing laws, procedures, establishing new structures, offices, capacity building programs for staff, shelters for the victims, establishment of good policies and programs like coordination among GO and NGO are the best practices have initiated their, but due to poverty as a pushing factor, tourism as a puling factor it is difficult to protect children from being exploited.  

Acknowledgment:

It is worth mentioning the initiative of the UNICEF in terms of providing the opportunity for sharing the experience in the region by organizing the study tour is very much appreciating and the opportunity provided was one of the good examples of resource sharing and experience sharing among the other initiatives of the UNICEF.

Also we are appreciating the hospitality of the UNICEF team in Thailand and ROSA for coordination of the activities and organization of the study tour.

Also we are very much appreciating the initiative of UNICEF country office for Afghanistan and in particular the Child protection unit for providing the opportunity for the AIHRC to be part of the study tour, which will contribute a lot for the improvement of our initiatives in regards of Human Right and especially Child Right.