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| Sunday, 6 January 2002 |
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South Asian bloc moves to fight abuse of women, children KATHMANDU, Jan 5 (AFP) - The seven-member South Asian bloc Saturday endorsed two conventions in a bid to stem the trafficking of women and children for prostitution. Foreign ministers from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries signed the documents in the presence of their leaders who are holding a summit here, giving effect to an agreement reached at the previous summit in Sri Lanka in 1998. Tens of thousands of women and children are forced into prostitution in South Asian countries and some are held as sex slaves while an increasing number of children are deployed as combatants in the region. The Regional Convention on Combating the Crime of Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution and the Convention on Regional Arrangements for the Promotion of Child Welfare in South Asia will now have to be implemented by member states with enabling domestic legislation. "With these conventions we have expressed our concern for the protection of women and children," said Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who took over as chair of SAARC from President Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka. At the last summit in Colombo, SAARC leaders decided to widen the scope of the charter on preventing trafficking in women and children to go beyond the issue of prostitution. However, member states of SAARC - which groups Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - have dragged their feet over ratifying UN conventions on protecting women and children. Only Bangladesh has signed and ratified two key UN protocols on children engaged in armed conflict and prostitution. Nepal and Pakistan have signed the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and the Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography but not ratified them. Sri Lanka has only signed and ratified the convention on child soldiers. Colombo has a serious problem with children being used as soldiers by Tamil Tiger guerrillas in the island's northeast. In Sri Lanka, there is also the problem of children, especially boys, being used for prostitution in coastal tourist resorts. Groups opposed to child sex estimate the number of child prostitutes on the island at between 10,000 and 40,000. |
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