Transcript Ms. Eliana Riggio

Tackling the Demand for Sexual
Exploitation of Children
Toward a preventive strategy
Palais des Nations,
Geneva, Switzerland
7 March 2016
Eliana Riggio
ECPAT International
Tackling the demand to tackle
the causes of SEC
• Approaching the SEC market from the
perspective of demand re-orients both the
analysis and the solution of the problem toward
a preventive, rather than a curative, point of
view
• Shifting focus on the factors that prompt
perpetrators to sexually abuse children helps
identify means to stop them before harm is
done
Toward building a comprehensive
prevention framework to tackle SEC
Need for a conceptual shift toward adopting a
comprehensive policy and programming
framework
Addressing recovery of victims and prosecution
(and possibly rehabilitation) of perpetrators
while
Seeking to protect all children from SEC and
prevent everyone from potentially
turning into a predator
Only a prevention framework to SEC can ensure a comprehensive and
systematic roadmap to achieve a more organic solution of the problem
Shifting towards a
human rights-based approach
Recognise that averting an abusive act from
occurring ensures that children’s rights are
protected before being infringed, as opposed to
being invoked after the offence – and the life-long
trauma – have been caused
Adoption of a proactive rather than a reparatory
methodology in human rights implementation, as
promoted in international law
Learning from the
Public Health experience
Re-orient current SEC-related policies and replace
a clinical with an epidemiological philosophy
No longer targeting only the individual victim
or offender
but also creating shields aimed at
defending entire groups potentially at risk
From a Primary Health Care to a
Primary Protection model
Promote a Protection for All initiative based on the
progress made by the Primary Healthcare movement in
promoting Health for All over four decades
A Primary Protection model distinguishing between three
levels of intervention:
1. Primary Prevention aiming to prevent demand for SEC
before it occurs
2. Secondary Prevention aiming to prevent demand for
SEC in high-risk groups
3. Tertiary Prevention aiming to prevent further SEC
offences through interventions targeting child victims and
offenders
Levels of prevention
crossing the three layers of the SEC Demand Tree
The Demand Tree.
Layers of Causality
Levels of prevention
Pre-Primary
Direct offenders
Facilitators
/Intermediaries
Underlying factors
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
Learning from successful
strategies to prevent SEC
by tackling demand
Eradicating the demand tree
from its roots
ECPAT engagement in preventing demand for SEC
across its global network:
• Raising awareness and spreading information and education
• Supporting gender transformative processes
• Promoting rights-sensitive norms and practices
• Targeting hot-spots – child abusive groups and high prevalence
geographical areas
• Leveraging the Internet to protect children
• Developing comprehensive strategies with and for children
• Strengthening legal measures through advocacy
• Engaging young people and listening to victims’ voices
Creating new awareness on SEC
by focusing on demand
Activities to raise awareness help strengthen defence mechanisms
while discouraging demand
Prevention campaigns, through mass media, the Internet and social
mobilisation effectively adopted to contrast SEC
ECPAT USA, in parallel to Shared Hope International - well known
experiences in the United States to mobilise national-level efforts and
adopt multi-pronged strategies to raise awareness of commercial
sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of children
- Prevention campaigns, through mass media, the Internet and social
mobilisation
Fostering gender-transformative
processes &
Re-educating men
Boys and men as a cross-cutting priority in awareness,
education and capacity generation prevention initiatives to
change perceptions of masculinity and foster gendertransformative processes
The Man to Man campaign launched by Beyond Borders/
ECPAT Canada projects high-profile Canadian men taking a
stand against commercial sexual exploitation of children
Involves men who represent healthy examples of masculinity
to propose positive role models for male children
Leveraging the Internet
to prevent demand
ICTs - a double edged sword in child protection
Boundless opportunities for empowering and protecting
young users
ICTs can be turned to the advantage of children and used to
connect them to each other offering mechanisms that can
protect them
The Make IT Safe campaign, a global initiative spearheaded
by ECPAT International - empowering young people to
approach the Internet safely, educating ICT teachers and
orienting Internet café owners among others
Engaging children in making
their environments safe
A powerful role by young people - re-shaping the
environment where they live to make it safe
Mobilising their families, schools and local leaders, raising
awareness, helping monitor activities by local traffickers,
online predators and other offenders, and supporting at-risk
peers
In Latin America, through the Youth Partnership Project
programme established by ECPAT Guatemala, ECPAT Mexico
and PAICABI (Chile), young stakeholders
involved in
research, programming, monitoring and advocacy to prevent
demand for SEC
Thank you for your attention.
Merci pour votre attention.