Sexual and Economic Exploitation

Pages164-166

Page 164

The Issue

Children orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS are at heightened risk for all forms of sexual and economic exploitation. Forced to make money for their families or to survive on their own, children often engage in dangerous manual labor or commercial sex. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children are trafficked each year, most sold into prostitution or used as bonded labor. These exploited children are much more vulnerable to HIV infection due to the nature of their activities and their lack of power to protect themselves from infection. They also are unlikely to have the ability to access treatment once infected.

Legal and Policy Considerations

Several international agreements deal with the sexual exploitation of children. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography, the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime all prohibit the use of children in prostitution, unlawful sexual activity, and pornography. Consent of either the child or the family should be irrelevant in prosecuting these forms of sexual abuse.

Many countries have enacted legislation that criminalizes child trafficking, commercial sex, and other exploitative activities. Nevertheless, some countries do not sufficiently protect children from exploitation, and others prosecute children forced into commercial sex or other illegal activities even though they are victims of crime themselves.

A number of international conventions protect children against economic exploitation and dangerous child labor. The Convention on the Rights of the Child requires states to protect children from "performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development" (Art. 32.1). The CRC obligates states to enact legislation regulating the minimum age for employment and hours and conditions of employment-a great many countries have implemented these protections. The ILO Minimum Age Convention sets the minimum age at...

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