01/08/09, 02:54:45 UTC

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South Africa: Fair Trade in Tourism Says Children May Be Sex Target for 2010 Visitors

allafrica.com

THE 2010 Soccer World Cup was likely to lead to an increase in incidents of child sex in SA, which would have huge social consequences for society, Fair Trade in Tourism SA warned yesterday.

The executive director of the nonprofit organisation, Jennifer Seif, said yesterday at a media briefing in Johannesburg that "the mega sporting events have a certain footprint of attracting mostly male foreigners" who often wanted to engage in sex with children or younger people.

Seif said SA was a "watch spot" for child-sex tourism. The body describes child-sex tourism as "the commercial sexual exploitation of children by men or women who travel from one place to another, usually from a richer country to one that is less developed, and there engage in sexual acts with children, defined as anyone aged under 18".

"Tourism is a key economic growth sector in developing countries such as SA. The social consequence is that tourism enables child-sex tourism."

Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth were "potential hot spots" for child sex tourists as they offered cheap commodities, including children.

Seif said the problem was part of a wider phenomenon where people from the developed north often came to developing countries in the south with big purses and were able to afford things that they often could not pay for at home. They were then able to "pay for sex", she said.

According to the Police Child Protection Unit in Johannesburg, about 28000 children are engaged in prostitution and 15 new girls between the ages of 15 and 18 are arrested every month.

End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (Ecpat) estimates that a quarter of Cape Town's street children are involved in sex work. Globally, children as young as eight are targets for child-sex tourists.

Since the introduction of the Ecpat network in Thailand more than a decade ago, countries in affected regions have launched national campaigns in a bid to fight the scourge. Countries in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have introduced a code of conduct -- a voluntary global initiative for tourism and hospitality companies to actively stamp out child-sex tourism. At least 21 countries have signed the code.

In Africa, only Kenya has signed the code, but other global signatories represented at the workshop have made a commitment to improve the situation.

This included hospitality industry players such as Hotel Group Accor and the Radisson Group, which are the only global signatories to the code in SA .

Accor Southern Africa spokesman Laurence Heddar-Mnqali said the tourism and hospitality sector had to train staff to implement the code to prevent the escalation of child-sex tourism.

"It is important for big business to be proactive. For Africa, Accor has started with a prevention campaign, training employees and partners. We will start with tour operators next."

Seif said that in SA factors such as HIV/Aids and poverty were fuelling the problem.

"Structural factors increase the vulnerability of children. The chances of children doing sex work is higher."

She said responsible tourism involved people who would not have a negative effect on local people, and SA needed to provide the leadership in Africa.

 Printable Version  | published Aug 14, 2007