You are here
Child sexual exploitation
Child exploitation refers to the use of children for someone else’s advantage, gratification or profit often resulting in unjust, cruel and harmful treatment of the child. These activities are to the detriment of the child’s physical or mental health, education, moral or social-emotional development. It covers situations of manipulation, misuse, abuse, victimization, oppression or ill-treatment.
There are two main forms of child exploitation that are recognised:
Sexual exploitation: the abuse of a position of vulnerability, differential power, or trust for sexual purposes; this includes profiting monetarily, socially or politically from the exploitation of another as well as personal sexual gratification.
Examples: Child prostitution, trafficking of children for sexual abuse and exploitation, child pornography, sexual slavery.
Economic exploitation of a child: the use of the child in work or other activities for the benefit of others. This includes, but is not limited to, child labour. Economic exploitation implies the idea of a certain gain or profit through the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. This material interest has an impact on the economy of a certain unit, be it the State, the community or the family.
Examples: Child domestic work, child soldiers and the recruitment and involvement of children in armed conflict, child bondage, the use of children from criminal activities including the sale and distribution of narcotics, the involvement of children in any harmful or hazardous work.
-
Child Protection in the Digital Age: National responses to online child sexual abuse and exploitation in ASEAN Member States
A recently adopted ASEAN Regional Plan of Action on the Elimination of Violence against Children includes the development of preventive measures against violence on the internet. In contribution, UNICEF has undertaken a mapping of existing frameworks, leg
-
Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation: A guide to action for religious leaders and communities
ECPAT is a network of 90 member organisations in 82 countries with one common mission: to end sexual exploitation of children. Together with Religions for Peace, ECPAT has produced this guide directed at religious leaders and communities for the protectio
-
Child Marriage in Ghana's Fishing Industry: Analysing the experiences of children who have witnessed or undergone child marriage
The Ghana-based organisation Challenging Heights rescues and rehabilitates 100 children each year from trafficking and child labour in communities along Volta Lake. It is estimated that about three-quarters of them, both boys and girls, have either been p
-
Offenders on the Move: Global study on sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism 2016
The first of its kind, this global study on sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism (SECTT) explores emerging trends and possible solutions. Marking the 20 th anniversary of the 1 st World Congress on the Sexual Exploitation of Children, the
-
Safeguarding Children From Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in the Context of UN Peacekeeping Operations
The Keeping Children Safe (KCS) coalition is a membership network or organisations working together to increase safeguards offered to children, of which Save the Children is a member.. Although the number of registered complaints of sexual exploitation an
-
Dynamics of Child Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Solomon Islands: Cross provincial study
This report is based on research conducted by independent consultants in the last quarter of 2014 in Solomon Islands to gain better understanding on the nature of child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children in Solomon Islands in the p
-
Webcam Child Sex Tourism, Becoming Sweetie: a novel approach to stopping the global rise of Webcam Child Sex Tourism
Terre des Hommes Netherlands embarks on an investigation of a relatively new form of online child sexual exploitation known as “webcam child sex tourism” (WCST). WCST takes place when adults pay or offer other rewards in order to direct and view live stre
-
Stopping Child Sexual Abuse in Bangladesh: Documentation of good practices
This publication is an outcome of the project ”Improving Child Protection and Rehabilitation of Children from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation in Bangladesh (ICPRC)”. The project mainly focused on developing community-based protection mechanisms so that the
-
LINEA Inaugural Meeting: Learning initiative on norms, exploitation and abuse
In 2014, the Gender Violence and Health Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine launched a new initiative known as LINEA—the Learning Initiative on Norms, Exploitation and Abuse. As part of this initiative, the Centre created the LINE
-
Sex, Abuse and Childhood: A study about knowledge, attitudes and practices relating to child sexual abuse, including in travel and tourism, in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam
This report presents the findings of four separate studies, each undertaken to contribute to Project Childhood Prevention Pillar. An Australian Government initiative, Project Childhood’s main strategy, in combating the sexual abuse of children in the trav
-
Learning From Children Exposed to Sexual Abuse and Sexual Exploitation: The Bamboo Project study on child resilience
This report presents the findings from an 18 month participatory research project in Nepal from 2012 to 2013. The project looked at what could be learned from the life experience of children, adults, families, and communities, as well as programme practic
-
"I've Never Experienced Happiness": Child Marriage in Malawi
With this report, Human Rights Watch investigates child marriage in Malawi. It describes factors contributing to child marriage, the severe consequences of child marriage, the risks that girls face when they resist these marriages, and the abuses they fre