The September monthly meeting began with Vanessa welcoming new members and greeting old members back in Dhaka after the holidays.

She introduced the morning’s speakers - Nigel Garvey, a designer and photographer and Marie-Ange Sylvain-Holmgren, a cinematographer.

Nigel showed his photographs of children in vulnerable situations – garbage pickers, labourers, the disabled, the very poor and the oppressed while Marie-Ange presented her documentary on commercial sexual exploitation of children in South East Asia.

“Some children have the opportunity to put forward their issues. Others in remote areas are not heard. They have no chance to tell their stories,” said Nigel.

One young girl picks through garbage to earn money. Her dream is to move up to bottles and cans, which are cleaner. She has never had the opportunity to see beyond the garbage heap.

Another boy works at New Market. But he is beaten and his earnings are stolen by the police and by gangs. He will never be able to achieve his dreams of going to school and becoming wealthy.

For her documentary, entitled “No is Not Enough”, Marie-Ange’s interviewed over 900 children and their families in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and China. Her interviewing methodology is being followed by the UN.

The documentary said that ten million children between the ages of 5 and 18 were used for sex worldwide, forced into the trade by parents, friends, poverty, violence, illiteracy and ignorance.

Tourists fuel the trade, as do unfounded attitudes such as virgins restoring youth and curing AIDS.

The trade in child sex, a multi-billion dollar business, is well organized, well funded and well protected. Children are brought from the poor areas of Asia end up as far away as Japan, North America and Africa.

Children sold into the trade work to pay off the price of purchase, travel and upkeep. They are always in debt and unable to secure their freedom.

The sex trade leads to child pornography on the Internet. It raises the question as to whether children ever recover from being used for sex. Many have HIV and do not know it. They do not have the power to insist their customers use condoms.

To counter this situation, ESCAP is working with UN agencies and international organizations to create awareness on sexually exploited children by developing policies and programmes with governments. Policies are attacking both the demand and supply sides. There are tougher penalties for parents. People who break the law in foreign countries will be prosecuted at home. Children will be helped so they can avoid going into the sex trade with education, vocational training and money management for parents to prevent them from falling into debt. Integration programmes will help exploited children to come home.

However, many governments hide the problem because of vested interests. The challenge was to translate policies into action, for which international cooperation was essential.

Speaking after the documentary, Marie-Ange said many countries were taking action to fight the child sex trade. More blame was being put on the clients and the children no longer had to go to jail but were put into centers. There were specific ministries in each country to deal with child sexual exploitation.
She refuted the idea that many children were sold by their parents. She said they were placed in the sex trade by other relatives or they had been kidnapped or run away.

She also said that tourists were in the minority as far as clients were concerned. Most were local people, especially in rural areas where there were no tourists.