Context

ECPAT Luxembourg's first development education and awareness-raising framework agreement started in January 2015 and runs for a period of three years. This multi-year project aims to raise awareness, inform and educate various Luxembourg target groups on the protection of children in developing countries against sexual exploitation. It is about showing how our behavior here can have an impact on children in developing countries. From there, it is a question of raising awareness of this scourge and the means that can be developed to fight against it.

Hundreds of thousands of children from developing countries are victims of commercial sexual exploitation every year, through prostitution, trafficking and pornography. These children are exploited in part by people from our industrialized countries, which makes this exploitation a global problem where the actions of some have repercussions on the lives of others. It is therefore important to make the Luxembourg population, in its various components, aware of the consequences of its actions.

Objective

Global objectives

• Strengthening the protection of children in developing countries against sexual exploitation

• Hold the general public and the private sector accountable for their role in child protection

• Strengthen the national and international legislative framework for the protection of children against sexual exploitation

Specific objective

Sensitize and mobilize the general public, young people in particular, as well as key institutional and private actors, so that they become aware of and get involved in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children in developing countries.

Description

The project aims to raise awareness and mobilize the general public, young people in particular, as well as key institutional and private actors, to get involved in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children. To achieve this objective, the project implements the following four components:

• Public opinion is made aware of the factors that make children in developing countries vulnerable to sexual exploitation, informed of the mechanisms that exist to report cases they may witness, and mobilized to commit themselves to a better child protection.

Concretely, this is done through various activities, such as information evenings and film and discussion workshops to arouse interest and make the general public more sensitive to the issue; polls and surveys to better understand how topics related to child sexual exploitation are perceived in the country and where are the greatest needs for additional information; the search for signatures via a "Responsible Citizen Charter" developed as part of the project, which will serve to provide simple advice to the general public on how to act for better child protection.

• The tourism and travel sector, including travelers, is made aware of its responsibilities in the protection of children through the implementation of policies and procedures that strengthen the protection of minors against sexual exploitation. ECPAT Luxembourg will carry out information and training sessions with tourism professionals to raise their awareness of the issue of the sexual exploitation of children in the context of travel and tourism so that they are able to identify and report the abusive situations.

ECPAT Luxembourg also collaborates with the tourism industry in Luxembourg to relay information campaigns to travellers.

Tourism professionals are key actors in the fight against sexual exploitation of children in tourism and travel (ESETT). At the heart of the organization and realization of trips and stays, they are well placed to relay information and to put in place measures to prevent and detect possible cases of exploitation within their establishments. It is therefore essential to collaborate with this sector both in Luxembourg and in the foreign countries where we are developing our projects. It is in this perspective that ECPAT Luxembourg has privileged partnerships with certain players in the sector, such as LuxairGroup, which relays our awareness campaigns for travelers and which provides us with a stand at the Vakanz Fair each year, or Accor Hotels which has set up clear child protection procedures and regularly has its staff undergo training by ECPAT Luxembourg

As the national representative of the Code of Conduct (for the protection of children against sexual exploitation in the context of tourism and travel), ECPAT Luxembourg also promotes this multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at the tourism industry. The mission of the Code of Conduct is to provide tools and support to this industry to combat ESETT.

• The Luxembourg State is mobilized through advocacy actions, to ensure that it respects its commitments in terms of children's rights at national, European and international level.

This component takes, concretely, the form of a monitoring and monitoring process of the Luxembourg State's international legal commitments in the area of children's rights, and the drafting of follow-up reports, such as the "Report on 'NGO on the implementation in Luxembourg of the Optional Protocol to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography', published by ECPAT Luxembourg in 2015.

Luxembourg, which has ratified the aforementioned Protocol, is in a period of review by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2015-2016. Thus, the government submitted its initial report to the Committee in early 2015, following which civil society was invited by the Committee to submit additional information. ECPAT Luxembourg collected relevant information from around ten actors involved in child protection in the country and drafted an NGO report which was submitted to the Committee. In October 2015, accompanied by the Ombudsman for the Rights of the Child (ORK), ECPAT Luxembourg presented the report to the Committee in Geneva.

• Young people are sensitized and educated on the sexual exploitation of minors in developing countries and mobilized to engage directly through the design and dissemination of a public awareness campaign.

Among the youth awareness activities that take place within the framework of the project are, in particular, film & discussion workshops for young people between 15 and 20 years old, interventions in high schools and in tourism schools, interventions in houses young people. The debates held with young people focus on the risks associated with the use of the Internet and new technologies and on the sexual exploitation of children through prostitution and pornographic images. The aim is to sensitize young people, but also to listen to their points of view and impressions on the topics discussed, and to find solutions together which make them less vulnerable to being victims themselves, but also more aware of the fate of thousands of young people around the world. (See below for a flagship activity of the project carried out by the young people themselves).

ECPAT You(th) Campaign

ECPAT You(th) Campaign is part of the framework agreement and is organized in collaboration with the association 4motion, which supports the training and supervision of young people (between 15 and 25 years old) who actively participate in the campaigns of awareness and information for other young people and the general public. Concretely, the young participants receive training based on the principle of non-formal education which aims to inform them about the issue and prepare them for the role of multipliers with a view to promoting peer-to-peer learning. peer). The young people develop and realize together a communication campaign according to their own ideas, the communication media can be chosen freely (a few examples: writing a script and directing a short film, organization of events for the general public, writing articles, etc.).

Campaign tools will be promoted throughout the project, in particular with the creation and dissemination of a Responsible Citizen Charter that the Luxembourg population will be invited to sign in order to adopt responsible behavior in the face of the sexual exploitation of children.

ECPAT You(th) Campaign was launched in October 2015 and is based on the theory of youth participation according to Hart's ladder (see figure below), and aims to place at rung 6, and to motivate young people to go even further towards level 7.

Duration

36 months – January 2015 > December 2017

Location

Luxemburg

Budget

€300,467