“Don’t look away”

The launch of the “Don’t Look Away” campaign piggybacked the United Nation’s “World Tourism Day,” celebrated September 27.

The campaign, being run in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, urges tourists to report any suspicious behaviour they witness while on vacation that may be linked to the commercial sex business of children through a government hotline set up in partnership with the non-governmental organisation End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT).

“The main drive of the campaign is to get more information, because right now only a few cases of this type are reported,” says ECPAT project coordinator Marion Kreissl.

Since the UN day was first celebrated in 1980, tourism has become a staple economic sector for many countries, especially in developing regions. While the expansion of tourism has brought jobs and injected cash into struggling economies, tourism has also lead to sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

ECPAT works in over 70 countries to stop and prevent human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children. It says the sexual abuse of children in poorer countries by foreign vacationers, “sex tourism,” is a major issue and to successfully prosecute perpetrators of these crimes more information and investigative resources are needed.

“A big challenge for us is getting reliable information about suspicious incidences…but when we do have the information we have been successful in convicting perpetrators,” says Kreissl.

Over the last year the organisation has worked in partnership with the German, Swiss and Austrian government to establish hotlines for reporting cases of sex tourism. ECPAT hopes the hotline will get more witnesses to come forward.

“We expect that with the hotline the number of cases that get investigated increases and that when the governments see how big of an issue this really is they will respond by allocating more resources to combating it,” she says.

It also created a video clip called Witness. “The video spot tells travellers not to look away if they see other tourists doing suspicious things in foreign countries, because perpetrators can be convicted in their home countries.”

ECPAT has partnered with several tourist companies – including Condor,
Studiosus Reisen, Rewe Touristik, Deutsche Bahn (DB) and the Hotel group Accor – that will circulate the message by incorporating the video into their website or by showing it as an on flight video.

The sex trade has blossomed alongside the growth of the tourist industry. According to UNICEF the annual turnover for child pornography and prostitution is around 250 Billion Euro worldwide. It estimates that one million boys and girls per year become victims.

ECPAT estimates that there are 800,000 child prostitutes in Thailand, 400,000 in India, and 60,000 in the Philippines. Up to 500,000 children are being exploited in the sex trade industry in Brazil.  

To contact the hotline:

Germany: stopp-missbrauch@bka.de
Austria: meldestelle@interpol.at
Switzerland: www.stop-childsextourism.ch