We all have an obligation to protect children from abuse 
The Universe
(May 22, 2005)
This month is the fifth anniversary of the passing of the United Nations optional Protocol against the exploitation of children in pornography.
Since I wrote last week on the urgency for all countries to co-operate, and especially for developing countries to address this serious situation of child pornography and cyber-sex, I have had some important responses. Most expressed their outrage at the abuse, saying it was the first time they had heard of such deviant behaviour. One person wrote to give total support saying she was a survivor of child sexual abuse and could hardly believe that this was allowed to happen live, as if on TV. The lack of public awareness is a big part of the problem.
The public has a right to be astounded and I know that survivors of child sexual abuse who are perhaps holding their pain and life-long trauma in silence can be empowered to bury it no more. Some of our strongest supporters are survivors themselves. They know what it is like, they understand the damage it does to the lives of countless children who are beaten, sexually abused, raped and even abducted.
Working to save children can be a healing process and by all of us working together, more abusers can be brought to justice and the children can recover. I was verbally abused and physically slapped, caned and punched all through my school life and can never forget it. I do what I can so other children never get beaten by cruel teachers or playground bullies.
The impunity of the internet server providers who host child pornography sites and enable others to access deviant materials on their servers must be held responsible when they are perfectly well aware of the content. They claim that the storage and distribution of this material, illegal as it may be, is not their responsibility. There are some laws that uphold this but they are wrong on this point.
The convention on the rights of the child - which every country except the United States has ratified - explicitly, makes illegal "the exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials". This is extended in the Optional Protocol to the convention adopted by the UN general assembly in May 2000.
The protocol states that production, distribution, dissemination, importation, exporting, offering, selling or possessing child pornography are criminalized if any of those acts are for the sexual exploitation of the child (Article 3:1). An attempt to commit any of the acts, or complicity or participation in any of the acts must also be covered under the criminal law of the ratifying states (Article 2).
The Philippines has signed and ratified this protocol. Likewise, the Philippines ratified the declaration and agenda for action of the World Congress against the commercial exploitation of children in Stockholm, Sweden in 1996. I was there myself to witness the Philippine vote. The protocol made abundantly clear the intentions of the world community, ratifying countries would:
"Develop or strengthen and implement national laws to establish criminal responsibility of server providers customers and intermediaries in child prostitution child trafficking, child pornography, including the possession of child pornography and other unlawful sexual activity."
The internet server providers are up to their neck in empowering and enabling the pedophiles and child pornographers to do anything they want in exploiting and abusing children. There is a crime going on in their front room so to speak, and they are turning the other way.
We all have a moral obligation to protect children from such abuse. Business corporations who allow the criminals to peddle their deviant wares have much to answer for. [End]
