End Child Prostitution Chid Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes

Promoting The Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism


Posted on 10-02-2011	Translate this page

In the United States, 200,000 American children are at risk for exploitation a year. Our youth are strategically targeted and manipulated by pimps who use hotel rooms as venues to abuse children, knowing that systems are not in place to protect the victims. With the use of online classified ads, child trafficking is moving off the streets and behind the closed doors of local hotel rooms. The children are transported from city to city via U.S. owned airlines and buses by traffickers. Air travel is also a primary means of transportation for child sex tourists– individuals who travel overseas to sexually exploit local children. Ending Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT) is a network of organizations and individuals working together to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children around the world. Their mission is to ensure that children everywhere enjoy their fundamental rights, free from all forms of commercial sexual exploitation. One of ECPAT's key projects is Protecting Children in sex traffcking and child pornography which is why they are gathering signatures agreeing to their code of conduct from transnational firms, such as the Hilton Worldwide and Delta. The Code helps these travel and tour companies create programs and policies to identify victims and traffickers so that they can effectively react. The Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism is the only voluntary set of guidelines travel and tour companies can implement to prevent child sex tourism and trafficking of children. The Code is a joint venture between the tourism private sector and ECPAT. Companies that endorse The Code are supported by ECPAT-USA to:
1. Establish an ethical policy regarding commercial sexual exploitation of children. 
2. Train the personnel in the country of origin and travel destinations.
3. Introduce a clause in contracts with suppliers, stating a common repudiation of commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. 
4. Provide information to travelers by means of catalogues, brochures, in-flight films, ticket-slips, homepages, etc. 
5. Provide information to local “key persons” who will be informally supportive of the Code, at the travel destinations. 
6. Report annually to the Code of Conduct Steering Committee. ECPAT was created in 1991 by a group of NGO workers and other concerned individuals in Asia as the campaign to End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism. By 1996, the sexual exploitation of children had exploded into an international crisis, so ECPAT widened its scope of work beyond sex tourism to encompass child pornography and the trafficking/prostituting of children for sexual purposes within all countries. ECPAT International has 80 groups in over 70 countries, including the US.