Poverty is primary cause of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
Most victims in the commercial sexual exploitation of children are girls over the age of twelve years but young boys are also at risk. A study on the issue also revealed that the victims are mostly facilitated by their parents and poverty is the primary cause for CSEC. Earlier today, this form of sexual abuse against children came under sharp focus at a symposium organized by the Special Envoy for Women and Children, Kim Simpliss Barrow. News Five Delahnie Bain reports.
Delahnie Bain, Reporting
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children is practised in Belize but the issue is often swept under rug. The First National CSEC symposium, however, intends to change that.
Pearl Stuart, Executive Director, NCFC
“The two day symposium, as you know is to sensitize the folks out there as to what’s happening with CSEC and most importantly to come up with a plan of action to eradicate, eliminate, CSEC. It’s important to us there at the National Committee for Families and Children because our mandate is to advocate on behalf of children. In my estimation the worst form of abuse is in fact the commercial sexual exploitation of a child.”
kim simpliss barrow
Kim Simpliss Barrow, Special Envoy for Women & Children
“There have already been efforts carried out recently as a result of collaborations with international donors, with the Ministry of Human Development and Social Transformation, with the National Committee of Families and Children and with several other government and non-government agencies. These collaborations did serve as catalysts in bringing this issue to light.”
What also needs to be brought to light is that CSEC cases are foten overlooked because the arrangements are orchestrated by the victim’s parents.
diana shaw
Diana Shaw, Chairperson, Child Development Foundation
“The main difference between CSEC in Belize and the rest of Central America; in the rest of Central America it’s heavily concentrated in the tourism industry. Here in Belize there is CSEC in the tourism industry but most of the victims are actually persons who are living in homes with their parents and their parents are intermediaries or persons who are facilitating their involvement in sexual relationships for money.”
Pearl Stuart
pearl stuart
“We cannot continue with this culture of we are parents, we brought our children into this world, they belong to us so we can do what we want with them. That is not so.”
The message to CSEC perpetrators and facilitators is simple… “it’s wrong”. As for the general public, the culture of acceptance has to change if the problem is to successfully be addressed.
Diana Shaw
“Even if you’re poor and you’re suffering and you don’t have anything, you should have a value for your body that you don’t want to sell it to get money. We want to make information available to victims so that they understand their rights. A lot of these young people didn’t know their rights, they didn’t know that they could say no or what help is available to them if they said no. We also want to let perpetrators know that this is a crime and if you are guilty of this you will be convicted and you will go to prison and you will spend a lot of time in jail.”
Peter Eden Martinez, Minister of Human Dev. & Social Transformation
“As Belizean men we have a duty to stand up and let our brothers who engage in this type of activity know that their behaviour is totally unacceptable. It is downright criminal, as a matter of fact.”
A national situational analysis, sponsored by the International Labour Office (ILO) was presented today to reveal the true severity of the CSEC problem in Belize.
Diana Shaw
“They went out and they interviewed young people in schools, they interviewed young persons who were involved in tourism, they did observations and found young girls who were working in bars and in night clubs as exotic dancers and some of them were giving sexual services to men in those bars. So we recognized that this was happening, this was a problem.”
Pearl Stuart
“It brings it home to bear. We’re heard about the international aspect of it, now we’ll know exactly what is happening here in Belize. So it indeed becomes our problem. So we will see what our problem is and of course you need to be aware of your problem so you can come up with a solution. So I think it will be eye opening.”
In Thursday’s session of the two day symposium, a national plan of action will be drafted, outlining a way forward and the coordinating bodies involved.
Diana Shaw
“We don’t just want to put documents together that look nice. We want to have things that actually will impact the lives of young people out there, that there will be programs that will intervene where they are; in their schools, in their youth groups, in their sporting clubs wherever they are that will allow them to come out of this situation.”
Delahnie Bain for News Five.
The CSEC bill to increase penalties for offenders should be taken to Cabinet at the next sitting.
Duh, how long did it take them to figure that out when people have been saying this for years!!
Thank you Diana and the rest of you for bringing this problem to the table. Parents selling their daughters for money to put food on their dinner table is not acceptable, and it has gone on long enough,and it has to stop now.
Our children need to be protected at all cost, if our mothers are not capable of instilling morals in our daughters, they should not have the right to have children.
This problem has been going on for years n sadly will continue to occur until these families r educated, have a way of making money honestly n can put food on their tables. Start coming down hard on these scum, the men, that r taking advantage of the situation, n go into the areas that it occurs in n start talking to these mothers n aunts n grandmas…
Most of these parents and grandparents are not invisible, their neighbors know who they are and what they are doing and they are ostracized. Instead of getting the children the help they need we end up with another generation of women who are whores and men who are delinquent. In ’71, one mother who came from a family of hustlers, forced her 11 year to marry the adult who impregnated her. Despite complaints and criticism from horrified neighbors, nothing was done, the mother lied about the child’s age, the pedophile Policeman next door who had married a 14 year old did not need the scrutiny. There are too many stories throughout the country that are similar & in families who appear normal from a distance.
We cannot expect a child to know that she owns her body if the adults in her home are sending a different message.
If we do not get the no hair to gray hair mindset out of our men, they will continue to be abusive. When a shopkeeper offers up groceries or anything else at no charge, we need to get across to parents that their children are being groomed. Assuming that because you are feeding & educating your children & not putting them in harm’s way is an illusion. How many of us walked to & from school or went shopping on Albert St. & had to curse the pedophile who tried to bribe us with books & this ….. had the prefect cover, children in our age group.
Stupidity is a crime when it leads to negligence & unless we prosecute the parents when it is shown that their negligence contributed to their children’s demise or they are complicit in the abuse, the cycle will not be broken.
Macal, you need to start having some respect for all the hard work various human rights organizations have accomplished throughout our world history!
You’re a blatantly ignorant nincompoop!
Good job First Lady… first time i hear she does something other than live richly whislt half the country is in survival mode. Maybe she can be also given the post of special envoy for making the PM do something about crime, poverty, high cost of living, exhorbitant fuel prices and the endless list of problems in belize.
Some parents are also responsible for the exploitation of some of these kids.Lets stop blaming poverty for every criminal activity.I grew up poor to,however i was taught to live with the little i had.
In a recent report in the Amandala concerning this same issue, it was the Mestizos who were mostly doing this, I am a Mestizo, but its so Hippocratic of our culture that resorts to the sexual morality of Christianity but yet are the number one perpetrators in sex crimes. It is this conservative culture that is damaging society, not helping it, like Macal Rivers up there.
The First Lady ………….ACTUALLY DOES SOMETHING.
GOOD TO SEE HER STEP-UP FOR A CAUSE!!!
AND…………. How do they plan to ERADICATE POVERTY???????????