Sale of children must be eliminated: development and gender issues stressed.

• Position: Reports made to UN Commission on Human Rights

Children are being sold for prostitution, pornography and adoption at an increasing rate worldwide. That was the harsh conclusion of Ofelia Calcetas-Santos, a Filipina lawyer serving as the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, as she appealed to Governments to step up the fight to eradicate the sexual exploitation of children. She presented her report on 18 April to the fifty-second session of the Commission on Human Rights (Geneva, 18 March26 April).

In Asia, at least 1 million children are involved in the sex trade, in conditions virtually indistinguishable from slavery, Mrs. Calcetas-Santos estimated. Many are sold by relatives into sex rings that involve corrupt policemen and politicians. Globally, 1 million children join the ranks of the sexually exploited each year. She said that according to a recent United States Department of Health and Human Services report, up to 300,000 child prostitutes are walking the streets of the United States; many are no older than 11 or 12, and can be as young as 9.

Ms. Calcetas-Santos, who has a three-year mandate as Special Rapporteur, reported (E/CN.4/1996/100) equally harrowing allegations about the sale of children for pornography, adoption, labour, organ transplants and other purposes.

The Commission, on the basis of her report, expressed its profound concern that the situation of children in many parts of the world remained critical. It recommended that special rapporteurs, special representatives and working groups of the Commission and the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities pay special attention to situations in which children were in danger, including the plight of skeet children, exploitation of child labour, and children in armed conflicts, as well as children who were the victims of sale, child prostitution and child pornography. Governments were called on to take legislative, social and educational measures to ensure the protection of children from exploitation.

Deeply concerned at the persistence of such violations, the Commission recommended that States adopt measures to eliminate the existing market for such practices, and requested the group drafting a related optional protocol to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child to continue its work.

As regards this issue, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Jose Ayala Lasso will provide substantive support to the World Congress against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, to be held in Stockholm in August.

A round-up-of action

Meeting for six weeks, the 53-member Commission on Human Rights also adopted 83 other resolutions, as well as 14 decisions, the majority by consensus.

Among its measures, the Commission called for the creation of an open ended working group to develop policy guidelines for economic structural adjustment programmes and their effects on economic, social and cultural rights; and the holding by the Subcommission of a seminar of experts to develop guidelines on the subject of forced evictions.

The Commission extended the mandates of Special Rapporteurs on freedom of expression and on contemporary forms of racism; the expert for the special process on missing persons in the former Yugoslavia; the Secretary-General's Special Representative on the situation of human rights in...