OKSEs medverkan på Child10 och CBSS event om människohandel

Idag medverkade ombudsmannen på Child10 och Östersjöstaternas råds (CBSS) sidoevent till OSCEs årliga tredagars konferens om människohandel. Eventet handlade om vikten av att implementera ett barnrättsperspektiv vid identifiering och tillgång till vård och stöd för barn som utsätts för människohandel eller andra former av kommersiell sexuell exploatering.

Förutom ombudsmannen medverkade även Valiant Richey från OSCE, Edi Mujaj från CBSS, Diane Schmitt från Europakommissionen, Morgane Nicot från UNODC, Nadine Finch från Child Circle och Tomislav Ramljak från Center for Missing and Exploited Children i eventet.

Läs hela Gabriellas tal nedan: 

“As the Swedish Ombudsman against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, my aim is to ensure the right to protection, support and justice for all child victims of exploitation. To achieve this, I talk to victims and report on their needs and views and review how well the efforts of the state meet those needs. Apart from my role as Swedish Ombudsman, I am also the founder of Sweden’s largest survivor organization for victims of commercial sexual exploitation, called Not Your Whore. And as a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation as a child, I want to stress the importance of survivor inclusion. When we invite survivors to not only share their experiences, but engage in the discussion on combating commercial sexual exploitation, we will have greater success in crafting effective policies and practices. Survivors have first-hand knowledge of the reality of commercial sexual exploitation and the obstacles that victims face when trying to access protection, support and justice.

It is together with other survivors, in my work as the Swedish Ombudsman as well as in my work with Not Your Whore, that I have identified keys to improve the official protection system for child victims.

One of those keys, which I find is fundamental for child victims’ access to their rights, is that society needs to view all children as children up until the age of 18, and that society looks upon all victims as victims with equal rights to support and protection. This might sound obvious, but in reality victims’ access to their rights vary depending on the circumstances around the exploitation, their ethnicity, their gender and their age.

While the commercial sexual exploitation of younger children is sanctioned as the sexual abuse it is, the exploitation of older children is far too often viewed as something the child engages in of free will. This is an attitude problem in society, but it is also a judicial problem seen in most countries’ criminal law. The exploitation of older children is investigated under laws on prostitution rather than laws on trafficking and sexual abuse, due to arbitrary regulations regarding sexual consent, despite international framework stating that a child can never consent to exploitation.

The majority of survivors I meet have not received protection, support or justice when they have disclosed the exploitation to law enforcement, social services or health care, as the exploitation has been looked upon as voluntary prostitution, sexting or even as a form of anti-social behaviour. When reporting the exploitation to the police, no investigation is opened as the exploitation isn’t even viewed as a crime. When reporting the exploitation to social services, child victims are being locked up in institutions to rehabilitate them from their anti-social behavior. The problem is also evident in the identification of child victims, where tools to identify child sexual abuse material often only recognizes prepubertal children as children.

While there are many great efforts and mechanisms in place to combat commercial sexual exploitation of children, these will fail to reach the goal of eliminating all exploitation if only some victims are looked upon as victims. We will not succeed if we limit our efforts to victims that meet the standard of the perfect victim.

Thank you.”

Talet och eventet i sin helhet kommer laddas upp på Child10s hemsida.

För mer information vänligen kontakta:

Gabriella Kärnekull Wolfe, ombudsman mot kommersiell sexuell exploatering av barn
Mail: gabriella@okse.nu

Johanna Wilkens, presskontakt
Tel: 079 102 36 36
Mail: info@okse.nu