Child sex tourism (CST) is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, which is commercially facilitated child sexual abuse. The definition of child in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is “every human being below the age of 18 years”. Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, which may include sexually transmitted infections (including HIV/AIDS), “drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and death”. Child sex tourism, part of the multibillion-dollar global sex tourism industry, is a form of child prostitution within the wider issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Child sex tourism victimizes approximately 2 million children around the world. The children who perform as prostitutes in the child sex tourism trade often have been lured or abducted into sexual slavery.
Users of children for commercial and sexual purposes can be categorized by motive. Although pedophiles are popularly associated with child sex tourism, they are not the majority of users. There are two types of offenders:
preferential abusers who specifically prefer children, because they seek to build a relationship with a child or because they perceive the risk of sexually transmitted infections to be lower; and situational users, which are abusers who do not actively seek out children but for whom the actual act is opportunistic. For situational users, there may be a lack of concern to check the age of a prostitute before engaging in sexual activity.
Travelling child sex offenders can use the Internet to plan their trips by seeking out and trading information about opportunities for child sex tourism and where the most vulnerable children can be found, generally in areas of low income.
Child sex tourism has been closely linked to poverty, armed conflicts, rapid industrialization, and exploding population growth. In Latin America and Southeast Asia, for instance, street children often turn to prostitution as a last resort.
Additionally, vulnerable children are easy targets for exploitation by traffickers. United States, Canada, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil, and Mexico have been identified as leading hotspots of child sexual exploitation. Also, child victim ages have been found in Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand to range from 6 to 11 years old, followed by 12 to 15 years old, and 15 to 17. Child sex tourism has also been complicated by varying ages of consent laws where, for example, the age of consent is 13 in Japan while it is 21 in Bahrain.
Every year more than 2.4 million tourists visit India and growth of the tourism industry in the country has contributed to an increase in the sexual exploitation of children by tourists. Child sex tourism is prevalent in Goa, North Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, West Bengal and in Rajasthan. Child sex tourism involves hotels, travel agencies and tour operators and some companies openly advertise availability of child prostitutes. They have contacts with adult sex workers, rickshaw pullers; petty traders who make contact with street or other vulnerable children and bring them to tourist hotels and lodges. Children are often promised better jobs and then ‘forced’ into sex and in many cases moneylenders force parents to sell their children to repay debts. A traveler may not intend to engage in sex with children while he is away from home, but he does so because a child is made easily available to him. Opportunistic exploitation, then, along with organized child sex tourism, is a critical factor compounding the complex socio-economic factors that push children into local prostitution industries.
There are factors like Organised prostitution, Poverty and economic insecurity, Weak family structure, Trafficking, Pornography, Devadasis (temple prostitute) system that make children vulnerable to sex tourism.
In response to CST, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the tourism industry, and governments have begun to address the issue. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) established a task force to combat CST. The WTO, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) and Nordic tour operators created a global Code of Conduct for the Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism in Travel and Tourism in 1996.
Child Sex tourism is the dark side of the global phenomenon of tourism.
Restoring dignity to children who have been exploited is not easy. Traffickers and parents who expose their children need to be stopped and held accountable.
The question still arises, why more voices are not raised in protest against Child Sex Tourism and its continuance?
How a parent can do such pitiful things with their own child?
Do societies and Government need not to show concern and respect towards these ‘Gift of God’ called children?
In quest of the answers of these heart-wrenching questions……..