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	South Asian countries must toughen their laws to protect children by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)   27 August 2008   The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called on South Asian governments to strengthen their laws to tackle child trafficking, a neglected form of the wider scourge of human trafficking.   Although there are few reliable estimates of the true scope of child trafficking in the region, UNICEF says that most South Asian nations are countries of destination, origin and transit in a new report launched today.   Trafficking children in the area are exploited both sexually – in such guises as prostitution, sex tourism and child pornography – and for labour to work on farms and as domestic servants, among others. The agency says that trafficking is not only committed by organized crime, but that friends, relatives and even parents can be complicit.   “This signifies that governments in South Asia have multiple responsibilities: to prevent trafficking; to protect children who are victims or who may be at risk; to prosecute perpetrators; and to ensure the recovery and empowerment of children who are victims of trafficking, exploitation, abuse and violence,” the report states.   While authorities have set up action plans with some countries codifying the criminalization of human trafficking, the agency said tougher laws are needed, along with legal and psychosocial support for child victims.   To date, no South Asian nation has ratified the 2000 Palermo Protocol, the first international pact to define trafficking in humans and specially addressing children.   “Measures should be taken to ensure that a trafficked child is never criminalized and that people’s migration is not jeopardized,” the report notes, adding that children must also be protected legally from secondary victimization and must not be prosecuted for offences committed as trafficking victims.   The study, entitled “South Asia in Action: Preventing and responding to child trafficking,” was released at a gathering of South Asian government and non-government organization representatives, that is currently being held in Kathmandu, Nepal, to discuss tactics to curb trafficking and exploitation.   20 August 2008   Efforts to curb child exploitation must be stepped up, says UN-backed group.   Further measures are necessary to curb child exploitation across East Asia and the Pacific, despite the recent positive steps taken to tackle the issue in the region, a United Nations-backed gathering said today.   “The region’s governments need to take their anti-exploitation efforts to another level and push through much tougher anti-child sex measures,” said Anupama Rao Singh, Regional Director for East Asia and the Pacific of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).   Hundreds of experts, government officials and activists from the region attended a two-day meeting in Bangkok organized by UNICEF, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the non-governmental organization (NGO) ECPAT International.   “While acts of commercial sexual exploitation are acts of violence as well as violations of human rights, they are not always treated as crimes,” said Shigeru Mochida, ESCAP’s Deputy Executive Secretary.   Participants conferred on setting goals to address child prostitution, trafficking, cyber crimes, and abuse in travel and tourism. Targets discussed included setting up child sex offender registries in every country to make sure abusers are monitored and prevented from travelling abroad, and stepping up Internet protections through such means as having more specific laws to criminalize all forms of child pornography.   The Bangkok gathering, which wrapped up yesterday, will be followed by the World Congress III against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents which will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in November. The three-day event is expected to draw over 3,000 people.
	The justice system in Cambodia lacks legal knowledge of children’s rights by Alastair Nicholson Children’s Rights International   The justice system in Cambodia lacks structure as local authorities and police have very little expertise and no basic legal knowledge of children’s rights or legal documents. Once children are arrested and detained by the police, they are typically “punished” in some extrajudicial way if the offence is minor. If a child is prosecuted and enters the court system, the lack of a separate juvenile justice system condemns the child to be tried in adult courts, under adult laws. If sentenced to prison, the child will be incarcerated alongside adult inmates.   All children in conflict with the law – and child offenders serving prison sentences – have rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), an international human rights treaty that Cambodia has ratified and acknowledged in the Cambodian Constitution.   Cambodia is therefore required to ensure that children in conflict with the law, and those already incarcerated, receive appropriate treatment as a right in order to meet international obligations under CRC. Visit the related web page
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