(IPS) feature
When Denise Ritchie, a 45-year-old New Zealand lawyer, called on men in her country to participate in a public event to highlight the dominant role that men play among child sex abusers, she was asked to ''get lost''.That reaction was only one of the many hostile responses that local newspapers ran in their letters section in October, following the publication of a news story that had Ritchie urging men to participate in a 'Day of Shame' to protest the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
She had proposed observing the Day of Shame to underscore the role men play in the sexual abuse of young people. She said that between 1996 and 2000, 99 percent of convicted cases of child sex abuse in New Zealand involved male offenders.
Other letter writers, all of them men, declared they were ''saddened and angered'' by Ritchie's initiative, and insisted that men should ''stay proud'', instead of bowing to ''the request to turn Father's Day into a day of shame".
Shame Dame
Since then, Ritchie who has been dubbed by the local press as the Shame Dame, has also learnt a fundamental lesson: A tough battle lies ahead for those determined to prevent children from sex abuse by drawing attention to the ones who drive the demand - the sex exploiter.
''If we are not prepared to deal with the issue of demand, we will not stamp out the commercial sexual exploitation of children,'' said Ritchie who as a child rights activist has been championing this issue since 1999.
"We need a clear strategy to deal with demand.''
However, those like Ritchie appear to be a minority at the ongoing Second World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children here in Yokohama. Much of the discussions, debates and awareness efforts address the child victims of the sex trade, who run into more than a million in Asia.
''The demand issue has been completely sidelined,'' affirmed Gracy Fernandes, a child rights activists from India. ''There are very few non-governmental organisations dealing with it."
''It has to be made a central issue, a conscious topic,'' added Fernandes, research director at the College of Social Work in Mumbai, India. ''The exploiters cannot be ignored.''
There is already a significant change from the way the sex exploiter is being described and analysed, here at the Yokohama congress.
Sex exploiter profile
According to discussions at the workshops, the sex exploiter does not fit into a single profile. This is unlike the first world congress on child exploitation in Yokohama in 1996, where the sex offender was largely seen as a paedophile, experts and activists say.
''There are people (adult and child, male and female) who sexually exploit children in many different ways, for many different reasons and in many different social contexts,'' states a conference backgrounder on the sex exploiter.
''If there is to be real progress in eliminating commercial child-sex, the exploiters' diversity must be recognised and understood,'' it adds.
Swedish psychologist Anders Nyman illustrated this with evidence about sex exploiters worldwide, most of who are male.
''One-third of all sex crimes against children committed globally are by those who are under 18 years,'' said Nyman, who works for the international child rights lobby Save the Children.
Equally significant is for society to dispel the myth that foreign tourists are key players driving the demand in developing countries, added child rights activist Juan Manuel Garland, pointing to the countries in Latin America as examples.
''In Brazil and Peru, there are local tourists who seek young girls for sex,'' revealed Garland, a coordinator at Save the Children's South America office. ''They believe the younger the better because it also gives the men more power, more control over the girls.''
Garland says the Latin American cultural concept of machismo is a key factor behind such behaviour. ''Machismo definitely contributes to this in other places too, like Chile, Nicaragua and other parts of Central America. You hear it in the speech of the men.''
Sex tourism
The sex tourist, however, has been notorious in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.
In countries like Kenya and South Africa, on the other hand, men continue to exploit girls living in poverty. These exploiters, called sugar-daddies, are largely older men who ''provide youthful sexual partners, including adolescents, with long-term financial support of gifts, accommodation or access to entertainment and a lifestyle that would be otherwise beyond the youth's reach.
''Combating the sex exploiter requires more than a legal approach,'' asserted Vitit Muntarbhorn, a child rights expert from Thailand. ''We need an integrated strategy to combat demand.''
Such efforts have to include cultural and social action too, added Muntarbhorn, who teaches law at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
''We have also to acknowledge how the demand has changed due to advances in technology, like the Internet, and the increase in trafficking.''
But activists like Fernandes from India and Garland from Peru admit that there has been little effort in their respective regions to combat demand.
''Even when we sought funding for a national study on who the exploiter is - to stop the demand for child sex in India - we did not get any money,'' conceded Fernandes.
For Ritchie, the success of the Yokohama congress depends on what commitments and the actions are made across nations to eliminate the demand for child sex. ''We can't deceive the children. How can you end commercial sexual exploitation without eliminating demand?''
Malaysiakini is running a series on child sexual exploitation starting today in conjunction with the Second World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, which is currently being held in Yokohoma, Japan.
