May 18th is National Day to Combat Abuse and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents (ESCA). To mark this important date and bring attention to the efforts that still need to be carried out to prevent ESCA, Promundo spoke with the ECPAT team about its work in Brazil.
ECPAT Brasil is a national network of civil society organizations that work to eliminate the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents. The network is created in partnership with the ECPAT International Network, which is dedicated to encouraging the global community to ensure that children and adolescents have all their fundamental rights guaranteed and are free and protected from commercial sexual exploitation.
The ECPAT Brasil network team responded collectively to the questions. Check out!
1) Tell us a little about ECPAT’s work in Brazil. How did it start and what results do you consider to be the most positive in articulating this network?
ECPAT Brasil arises from the 1st International Congress to Combat the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, held in Stockholm in 1996. This event created a global agenda that aimed to combat the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents. In 1997, the network was created in Brazil following the 1st National Meeting with all Brazilian organizations that participated in the 1st Congress.
The Network is organized through a collegial coordination made up of 3 organizations and has 29 affiliated entities. Its mission is to have a political impact on combating the commercial sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, through the articulation and mobilization of different segments, with a view to guaranteeing sexual human rights.
ECPAT follows the meetings of the Intersectoral Commission to Combat Sexual Violence against children and adolescents, the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents and is part of the National Committee to Combat Sexual Violence against children and adolescents. Their presence in these spaces is aimed at addressing the issue of sexual exploitation and defending the rights of children and adolescents against possible setbacks.
Furthermore, ECPAT is part of the Brazilian alliance of the Down to Zero Project, together with PLAN Internacional and CEDECA Bahia. This is a project, in international cooperation with ECPAT Netherlands, which works to reduce the number of children at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation in communities in the city of Salvador by 2020.
Of the positive results, we highlight, firstly, several professionals, activists and teenagers who, by participating in ECPAT's articulation spaces, were able to train and strengthen themselves as social actors. We highlight the mobilization carried out in all twenty-six Brazilian states and the Federal District to disseminate the national plan to combat sexual violence and design coping strategies. We also initiated a set of work meetings between civil society, the judiciary and the police of the triple border (Brazil, Colombia and Peru) to strengthen the work in combating the trafficking of children and adolescents for sexual purposes and developed a Campaign for the self-protection of sexual rights aimed at to teenagers – ANA Campaign .
2) For you, what are the challenges of combating the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents (ESCA) in Brazil?
One of the main challenges still lies in the field of cultural transformation and change in social imaginary that causes the problem to be naturalized and victims to be blamed for the violence they suffer. This puts the problem in a cloak of invisibility, because, although we have made some progress in terms of recognizing sexual abuse, we still have little dialogue about the ESCCA.
Public policies to deal with this issue are outdated and disjointed, and there is little budget allocation to maintain the quality of services that cut across this issue.
Some points, in a synthetic way that we can list are:
– Invisibility of the problem: ESCCA is still a veiled problem, whether for the population in general, or in defense and protection services for children and adolescents. Not seeing the issue prevents you from giving it due importance and creating alternatives to face it.
– Blaming victims: patriarchal culture and the current economic model mean that, when ESCCA is perceived in the social fabric, victims are held responsible for the violence suffered;
– Underreporting and lack of support: The points above influence the fact that we have very low reporting of sexual violence and, in turn, we do not have public policies to assist victims and their families. Linked to this, we have a low budgetary allocation for prevention, care and defense policies and low technical capacity to meet demands related to ESCCA in the most diverse services in the State;
– Culture of impunity: When the issue is reported, the perpetrators of the violence are rarely held properly accountable, increasing the population's disbelief in the report. Furthermore, we have few police intelligence services that identify articulated ESCCA networks or that prevent problems such as trafficking, pornography and sexual tourism;
– Implementation of a developmental model without appropriate measures to mitigate negative impacts: the explosion of development works in Brazil created a scenario of large movement of male workers to impoverished regions. This has created a favorable scenario for ESCCA without measures to prevent this problem.
3) Between the 8th and 12th of May, the week of national mobilization of the networks took place on the agenda of the 18th of May – the day to combat sexual abuse and exploitation of children and adolescents. Can you point out the prospects for progress in combating ESCA based on the discussions and articulations promoted during this week?
Mobilization Week brings together, for five days, two large national networks that work to combat sexual violence, ECPAT Brasil and the National Committee to Combat Sexual Violence against children and adolescents. During these days we were able to debate structural issues, our articulation and what steps need to be taken as a movement to improve our network coping practices.
On the first day, we began to strengthen our relationship with the tourism sector with an embryonic dialogue to implement a tourism code of conduct at the national level, which is linked to The Code, the international code of conduct and with ECPAT Brasil as the local representative institution. .
On the second and third day, we held a strategic meeting with the ECPAT Network where the implementation of the DtZ Global Alliance in Brazil was discussed, pointing out guidelines for the next two years of the alliance.
The new coordination and new executive secretariat of the National Committee were also elected. And we have arrived at the conclusion that it is necessary to affirm and demand the effectiveness of legal councils as responsible for monitoring public policies.
Anyone who wants to know more about the work of the ECPAT Brasil network can find news on our website ecpatbrasil.org.br and/or follow us on Twitter @ECPATBrasil.
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