Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-29-Speech-3-178"
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"en.20000329.10.3-178"2
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"Mr President, I should first, of course, like to congratulate Mrs Klamt on her report. It is not only excellent in quality but also extremely useful. Everyone agrees on the idea that children are the future of the world but, at the same time, they represent one of the most vulnerable groups in the population of this planet. Indeed, the United Nations Convention of 20 November 1989 granted them specific rights and all our actions should take their inspiration from recognition of these rights.
We must tackle a dreadful scourge, the sexual exploitation of children. There are ‘clients’, if one can use the word in such a horrifying situation, who buy children in order to indulge their sexual fantasies. These clients, from Europe, the United States or Japan are the hard core of child abusers. This horrendous phenomenon occurs principally in third countries where there is great poverty. The chief causes are poverty and social inequality, the collapse of family and community protection, discrimination against girls and ignorance. All these causes combine to form a melting pot where lives are shattered by the greed of some parties and the deviance of others.
We might remember the old Japanese proverb which says, ‘The traveller knows no shame’. Some people have no qualms about doing in another country what they would not do at home. It is a compound of anonymity and impunity coupled with a scorn one might describe as racist, which permits some individuals to treat a child as an object to be used, defiled and rejected. Most child prostitutes are part of the general prostitution market run by Mafias of procurers. It is very hard to locate these children and to extract them from a life of prostitution. Unfortunately, some individuals use the Internet to provide details of their base acts and addresses where children can be procured.
We cannot remain indifferent to this scourge which represents an appalling infringement of children’s rights and human rights, and we must protect these children by attacking the origins of the problem and by pursuing the paedophiles. The origins of the problem can be attacked by tackling poverty and ignorance. There must be criminal penalties for child abusers. The first chapter of the European Charter on the Rights of the Child states that ‘child’ refers to any person under the age of 18. I suggest that we adopt this age limit and say that all minors must absolutely be protected. It is our duty to this generation which represents our future, a generation which expects us to protect and respect it."@en1
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