4TH RED HEART CAMPAIGN BULLETIN
The Red Heart Campaign Bulletin is our 4th eddition to Promote Child Rights of Sexually Abused, Exploitated and Trafficked Children. It is an attempt to share our activities with our members to advocate and upholde child rights. The network provides an opportunity for organizations, activists, social workers, youths, media personnel, law enforcing agencies and other stakeholders working on children’s issues to make the campaign more interactive and visible.
Centre for Women and Children Studies (CWCS) organized the 9th Stakeholder Meetings to Promote Child Rights of Sexually Abused and Exploited Children with lawyers on 31 August 2024 at CWCS Conference room, Dhaka. The meeting was attended by 18 lawyers who are working as advocates in Supreme Court and Dhaka Judge Court at Dhaka on children related issues and providing legal services to child victims.
Prof. Ishrat Shamim, President of the Centre welcomed the participants and highlighted that child sexual abuse and exploitation are issues of grave concern. However, it is underreported due to its clandestinenature and being associated with shame and social stigma. CWCS is one of the consortium partner in Novel Strategies to Fight Child Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking Crimes and Protect their Victims – HEROES project which is funded by the European Commission (EC) Brussels and managed by Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM). It isbeing implemented by 24 consortium partners from Europe, Latin America and Bangladesh.
CWCS is one of the consortium partners leading the task on Child rights promotion and protection: awareness-raising, education and information. In this context, we had launched the Red Heart Campaign to Promote Child Rights of Sexually Abused, Exploited and Trafficked Children on 30 July 2022and subsequently, we have initiative the Red Heart Campaign Network which presently has 187 members from home and abroad. We have also developed the hashtag #SaveFACE4Children to maximize the visibility of the Red Heart Campaignto Promote Child Rights.
We have organized 8 Stakeholder Meetings to Promote Child Rights of Sexually Abused, Exploited and Trafficked Children with INGOs, NGOs, young men and women, university students and faculty members, social workers, parents, grassroots level CBOs, government officials and media personnel at Dhaka to carry forward the message of the campaign. This is the 9th Stakeholder Meeting to Promote Child Rights with Lawyers.
Prof. Shamim emphasized that child victim protection serves as a critical means of preventing further exploitation and victimization, including the risk of re-trafficking. It is also intimately tied to a trafficking victim’s access to justice, as well as to perpetrators being brought to justice. Here lies the importance of the effective role of lawyers in providing justice to child victims and to act towards children in a victim-friendly manner.
Participants introduced themselves and gave a short brief of their work related to crimes against children, especially child exploitation and trafficking.
It was followed by speeches by Guest Speakers from abroad namely Brief Overview of HEROES project and Online Child Exploitation: Global Perspective.
Ana Lucila Sandoval Orozco, Senior Researcher in GASS, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain gave a Brief overview of HEROES project and introduced the consortium partners from European countries, Latin America and Bangladesh. She briefly discuss about the HEROES objectives regarding prevention, investigation and victim assistance. Prevention includes: Measures to reduce THB and CSA/CSE crimes; Reduce the offer of risky/fake/dangerous services provided to victims; and Reduce the risk of (re-)offending. Investigation includes: Analyse possible involvement of organised crime groups; Develop new approaches investigate THB and CSA/CSE crimes; investigate THB and CSA/CSE crimes; Provide means to detect, investigate and bring down P2P networks; and Address new threats of child abuse.
Victim Assistance includes: Develop measures to ensure adequate victims’ protection and assistance; and to Develop new approaches to mitigate the impact on victims of THB and CSA/CSE and to reducere-victimisation in the short and long term.
Zoe Colpaert, HEROES, Europe Program Manager, International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC), Alexandria, VA 22214 USA presented the Global Fight against Online Child Exploitation. She elaborated on the activities of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) with headquarters in the United States and regional representation in 10 countries. However, they work in more than 120 countries to identify gaps in national and international capacities in the prevention, care and investigation of Sexual Abuse and Exploitation and missing children and offer support to governments, decision makers, law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, industry and civil society to reduce the gaps. She highlighted that 1/3of all internet users today are children. She shared the global reported cases of Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OCSEA) in 2023. Of these, 92% were assessed as containing ‘self-generated’ imagery and 55% of these reports showed 7-10 years old children. In 2023, 32 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation were made to National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children’s
(NCMEC’s) CyberTipline from nearly every country in the world. Bangladesh reported highest number of cases nearly 2,491,368 compared to United States, Thailand, France and other countries ICMEC offers different online live and in-person trainings, as well as e-learning on demand for a range of stakeholders namely law enforcement and first responders, lawyers, prosecutors and judges, educators, medical professionals, media, etc.
There are also hotlines that receive reports of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) and work to get them removed from the internet. The main goal of these hotlines are to provide a national reporting mechanism, coupled with prevention, awareness raising and multi-stakeholder initiatives around CSAM. She shared the reporting portals such as web pagesthrough which to report CSAM received by the IWF Hotline (UK) and informed ICMEC has worked with the IWF to provide reporting mechanism to 97 countries who do not have access to a national CSAM reporting portal or hotline. Also has research publication entitled Child Sexual Abuse Material: Model Legislation & Global Review where they have reviewed national legislation on and aroundCSAM in 196 countries including Bangladesh. In Bangladesh’s legislative battleagainst CSAM, ICMEC publication revealed that Bangladesh has legislationspecific to CSAM; Child Sexual Abuse Material has been defined; Technology Facilitated CSAM Offenses; Simple Possession whereas there is no legislation regarding Internet Service Providers (ISP) reporting.
Prof. Ishrat Shamim, presented a short presentation of the Red Heart Campaign to Promote Child Rights of Sexually Abused, Exploited and Trafficked and participants were invited to join
our movement and become Red Heart Campaign Network members. She elaborated on the Red Heart Campaign’s mission which is committed to promote child rights and protectchildren from sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking. The vision is to havea world free from child sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking wherechildren can grow up happy, healthy and safe.
Group work and presentations
In the Open Discussion session, participants weredivided into two groups to discuss and focus on Challenges to Address Child Sexual Abuse, Exploitation and Trafficking and Put Forward Looking strategies to reduce and eliminate such crimes against children and protect the victims.
Group A discussed on Challenges to Address Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation and to Put Forward Looking strategies. Some of the challenges identified by lawyers were: lack of awareness among victims; lack of information and knowledge regarding their rights and specifying victim’s age; facing social insecurity to report such incidences; publicity and social stigma; bias of the media in reporting such cases; negligence of the police to file cases and take prompt action; no counselling service being provided at the police station; lack of police training; lack of awareness and care about forensic report; ignorance about law and court trials; less confidence on the existing justice system; bias among the Public Prosecutors and brokers regarding sensitive cases of child abuse and exploitation; non-existence of camera trials whenever needed. In addition, victim want to remain in the family’s safe custody.
Moreover, victims and their family members refrain from taking further legal action for lack of economic and social safety or when there are threats from perpetrators. In such cases, victims compromise with the accused person outside the court and try to resolve the case by mutual understanding. With regard to the above challenges, the lawyers provided valuable forward looking strategies. Some of these were: building social awareness; family education and awareness; state to ensure good governance; courts are to be facilitated so that justice could easily be ensured with in the span of short time; parents, especially mothers are to be directed not to give android mobile phone to their children; instead of android mobile phone, playground could be arranged for sports and outdoor activities for children.
Group B discussed on Challenges to Address Child Trafficking and to Put Forward Looking strategies. Some ofthe challenges identified by lawyers were: law enforcing agencies reluctance to havecognizance of the cases; in accordance with section 61 (1) of The Child Act 2013, a board necessary to monitor and oversee the cases was to be formed which have not been executed; use of mobile phonedevices; broken family where there is separation of parents; intensity ofpoverty compel parents who are beingfrustrated to send their children to work in the elite families; laws are notproperly implemented and moreover perpetrators are favoured by political leaders.
With regard to the above challenges, the lawyers provided valuable forward lookingstrategies. Some of these were: creating awareness among the family members and children about sexual abuse,exploitation and trafficking from secondary school level; schoolauthority should arrange an extra awareness class in school once in a week; andalso students should get proper orientation about physical sexual abuse, exploitationand trafficking; parents should be more careful about their children as to howthey are using their mobile devices; parents should install parenting control appsto their children’s devices; parents should train their children how toidentify good friends and in this regards, parents should overlook theirchildren’s friend circles.
At the Closing session, Prof. Shamim invited participants to join the movement and become RedHeart Campaign Network members. All the lawyers showed their interest to conveythe messages of the campaign among their colleagues. Moreover they joined ourcampaign enthusiastically and became members of the network to activelyparticipate in our future activities. Some of the senior advocates alsosuggested to prepare a list of recommendations for amendments in the lawsregarding child rights and their protection to be presented to the relevant lawministry for their prompt action in this regard.
