Child Abuse: World Travel Market Boosts UN Campaign

The United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) campaign to Protect children from exploitation in travel and tourism has received a boost from the chairman of the World Travel Market, Fiona Jeffery. Jeffery said that children labour and sexual exploitation in the global travel industry must end, insisting that children must come first in every consideration. Jeffery, who made the declaration at a pre-launch meeting at the on-going World Travel Market in Excel, London said that the campaign would make people realise that abuses against children were totally unacceptable and cannot be tolerated anywhere in the world. ''I hope World Travel Market's support in some modest way will help to give the campaign more public profile, influence and, of course, publicity. Clearly, that is what we need, to signal loud and clear our total abhorrence of what can only be described as something straight out of the pages of a dark Charles Dickens novel. ''It's about children's rights, rights to safety and protection at all times, enabling them to lead normal lives,'' she said , adding that ''the terrible fact remains that despite increased reporting of sex offenders who are arrested for child abuse abroad, governments are not working to stop child sex tourism. '' Jeffery also appealed to the 45,000 delegates attending the meeting to join the UNWTO initiative and spread the word globally. According to an estimate by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 246 million children are engaged in child labour, while millions are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

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