On Monday, June 29, Promundo held, in partnership with the Fernandes Figueira Institute, and support from ChildHope, a round table to discuss, problematize and present recommendations to combat the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents (ESCA).
The opening table featured a welcome speech from the Executive Director of Instituto Promundo Tatiana Moura and Suely Deslandes, from IFF. Suely spoke about the process of building public policies, outlined a path on how the issue of Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents enters the political agenda and the distance between the construction of policies and concrete actions. “Of the advances we have made in terms of policies to combat exploitation, the issue of child and youth protagonism is one of the ones that has made the least progress,” stated Deslandes.
Next, Vanessa Fonseca, Program Coordinator at Promundo, presented some reflections that Promundo's fieldwork has allowed us to raise on the topic and the paths to a qualitative approach with the public. According to Vanessa, the objective of Promundo's actions in combating the ESCA is to guarantee the autonomy and freedom of children and adolescents, pointing to the risk of not denying the sexual and reproductive rights of young people.
Sonia Regina, President of the Morro do Urubu Residents Association,
spoke of the importance of policies being sensitive to the reality and specificities of each territory to plan the intervention. “It is necessary to listen to the favela when developing policies”, he stated. Sônia also drew attention to the resistance of schools in opening up to discuss these topics and interact with the demands of the community. “Most projects make it a condition for the child to be enrolled in school, but those who are not enrolled are often the ones who need the most intervention and the policy never reaches them”, stressed Sônia.
The next speech was by Amana Mattos, professor at the UERJ Psychology Institute. Amana highlighted the importance of involving children and adolescents in discussion and dialogue on the topic, but taking care that intersectionalities, that is, issues of class, gender, race, etc., are addressed. are present in the approaches, so as not to make any social group invisible. “ESCA is related to a series of oppressions: machismo, racism, transphobia, homophobia. It is important to make young people aware of the different situations of violence that they are subjected to on a daily basis and that, until then, they did not realize,” he said. Amana also drew attention to the importance of regularizing adult prostitution, which is not a crime in Brazil but is not yet regulated, as the lack of regulation ends up making it easier for children and adolescents to become involved in exploitative situations.
Vanessa Leite, CLAM Researcher, reinforced the idea that working with sexual and reproductive health with children and adolescents cannot confuse protection with control, and that the experience of sexuality must be understood as a right. 'Child protection laws need to move away from the idea that children and adolescents must be free “from” to be free “for”,' he stated.
Marcos Nascimento, IFF researcher and former director of Promundo, ended the meeting by talking about research carried out a few years ago by Promundo that sought to understand the profile of men who pay to have sex with teenagers. “We realize that the man who pays for this type of sex understands himself in a purely commercial condition: he paid and received the “service”. He doesn’t see himself as an explorer.” And he stressed the importance of deconstructing norms of masculinity that end up legitimizing the view that the body of a teenager who is in a situation of exploitation does not need protection, and a tendency to blame the victim. Marcos also spoke about the invisibility of trans and transvestite people in public policies. “An articulated confrontation is perhaps the biggest challenge”, he concluded.
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