Continuity and Change
Concern over CSA has escalated in the global South over recent decades, with major aid agencies, governments and NGOs investigating the problem across a number of regions. The recent focus on CSA in African nations, for example, has been stimulated by high rates of HIV/AIDs amongst the young.[293]
Yet advocacy has had to take fundamentally different forms from the West.
In some regions, sexual intercourse with minors was and is accepted practice, and can be institutionalised in the law and culture. Child marriages remain common. Almost one in ten children in some countries in East Asia are married by the age of 15.[294] In Bangladesh, over a quarter of girls are married before the age of 15. Older teenagers, too, are regularly married: in Laos, for instance, 37 per cent of children are married before they turn 18, while in the Solomon Islands the figure is 28 per cent.[295] In some areas in Africa, the rate is even higher: in rural areas of northern Nigeria, it is estimated that 90 per cent of girls are married before they are 12 years old.[296] The low age of female marriage in countries such as Nigeria has been shown to be a primary indicator of both female poverty and reproductive ill-health.[297] Despite the risks, sex with a minor is not necessarily read as a criminal act, but rather marriage renders sexual activity both legal and socially condoned.Further, there remains an often hidden underbelly of criminalised behaviour against children, including sex trafficking, sex tourism, child pornography and related cyber crimes that cross the boundaries of the globe. UNICEF has estimated that over a million children have been trafficked annually to the West from countries in South and South-East Asia, South and Central America, and eastern Europe, generally to work in the sex industry.
Other more conservative reports put the figure at around 600,000-800,000 children trafficked each year across international borders.[298] In addition, children may be forced into sex work in their own country: it is estimated that around 2 million children and youths work in the commercial sex trade in Asia alone.[299] There is evidence too of growing rings of child prostitution in Africa, including in Senegal, Ghana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[300] This is a particular problem in conflict zones: in Sierra Leone, for example, it is estimated 37 per cent of sex workers are aged under 15 years, and displaced children are particularly at risk.70 Some regions have legislated in an attempt specifically to combat sex tourism. In Thailand, for instance, the age of consent was initially raised from 13 to 15 in 1987, but it was raised to 18 for girls working in prostitution.71Though sexual exploitation for commercial purposes and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) have garnered a lion's share of attention in studies of abuse in developing nations, continued emphasis needs to be placed on detecting, policing and studying CSA in the domestic home and community. In many regions in Africa, for instance, it remains impossible to quantify CSA.[301] Similarly, some nations in the Asia-Pacific have no statistics on violence against children.[302] It is significant that, in some areas, repercussions for CSA are handled within the community through local or traditional law, and no formal records are kept.[303] Further, there are broader issues, including lack of qualified staff and low budgets for policing and prosecuting. In regions suffering political, economic and/or social turmoil, investigation of CSA is likely to be overlooked.[304] And when it is investigated, once again, the tendency to externalise abuse - onto the stranger and in this case the trafficker - has acted to hide the dangers of CSA within families and neighbourhood communities.
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