Five European ECPAT groups and six south partners have joint forces and implementing a three-years project aiming at increasing awareness and knowledge on sexual exploitation of children in tourism and building up the capacity for preventive actions among tourism professionals, students as well as other relevant stakeholders such as law enforcement and governmental authorities. The project 'Offenders Beware - Raising Awareness, Capacity and Motivation for the Protection of Children from Commercial Sexual Exploitation in Tourism' is supported by European Union and several national partners. The project has been finished in March 2011.

The overall objective of the project was to contribute to the protection of minors from Commercial Sexual exploitation in travel and Tourism. More specifically, the project aims to make it more difficult for European perpetrators to abuse minors in developing countries and put pressure on them to refrain from this severe human rights perpetration.

The specific objective of the project was to increase the awareness, capacity and motivation to take action for the protection of minors from commercial sexual exploitation of children in tourism among European actors involved in tourism from the public and private sectors, media and individuals.

1. Addressing tourism professionals and students through awareness raising measures (including producing materials) for tourism professionals and tourism students in the EU partner countries including an e-learning-course

2. Addressing key persons and multipliers in private and public sectors through advocacy and sensitization activities as well as European and national parliamentarians and other EU/national key decision-makers and politicians; organizing joint expert meetings with the tourism industry, law enforcement, governmental authorities, NGOs and with South partners

3. Information of public and media on child sex tourism through press work, tourism fairs, documentation and publications

4. Train-the-trainer (ToT) seminars and development of training manual and standards for awareness raising measures in the EU partners' countries

March 2009
December 2009
March 2010
August 2010
December 2010
March 2011

ECPAT has developed an e-learning course on child sex tourism for travel agents, tour guides and managers. The online course can be followed by an account using: www.childprotection-tourism.org. The course consists of several modules. The basic module, which every participant follows lasts 20 minutes. After the basic module the participant follows an in-depth module of 10 to 15 minutes. After completing the course participants receive a certificate. The e-learning is free to use and available in several languages​​.

This comprehensive brochure for professionals in the travel industry describes the problem of child sex tourism and the role of the travel industry in combating it. Besides general information on child sex tourism, the brochure also contains training materials and locations where child sex tourism occurs. Click here for the brochure.

This report is a gathering of cases of different types of child sex tourists, some convicted in land of origin, some in land of destination and some managed to escape. The cases illustrate how time consuming it is to convict a child sex tourist, due to the international character of the crime. From the cases it also becomes clear that the conviction depends on collaboration. When authorities are reluctant to open a case against a child sex tourist, media attention gives a great boost to get procedures started. NGO's are usually the ones initiating media attention. Click here for the report.

In the expert meeting on 7th to 9th of March 2010 in Berlin the role of different stakeholders in tourism destinations and countries of origin of sex offenders were discussed in relation to the improvement of reporting procedures. It focused on existing reporting procedures for child sex tourism cases in different countries and how the number of reports can be improved. This meeting brought together over fifty international experts on combating child sex tourism from the tourism sector, law enforcement and NGOs. Over twenty different countries were represented at the meeting. Read here the report of the meeting.

Within the project, ECPAT the Netherland, together with ECPAT Germany organized an expert meeting on 8, 9 and 10 March 2009 about the multi stakeholder approach to combat the sexual exploitation of children in tourism. The role of tourism professionals as well as NGOs in tourism destinations and countries of origin were discussed in relation to law enforcement. More than forty participants from law enforcement agencies, NGOs and tourism businesses attended the meeting. Press here to read the report of the meeting.

Among others the following Powerpoints were used during the presentations on the expert meeting:

Combating child sex tourism: the destinations point of view
Philippines (Shay Cullen, PREDA)
India (Rosemary Visnawath, Equations)
Costa Rica (Milena Grillo, Paniamor)
Brazil (Francesco Rosario, CTI-NE)
Kenya (Elizabeth Wanguba, Solwodi) 

Combating child sex tourism: the international law enforcement point of view
INTERPOL (Mick Moran)
EUROPOL (Torbjörn Ull)
Police Schiphol Airport Netherlands (Henk van Ee) 

The Code of Conduct as a tool to combat child sex tourism
The Code International (Giorgio Berardi, ECPAT International)
The Code in local destination Costa Rica (Milena Grillo, Paniamor)
The Code in local destination: Russia (Olga Kolpakova, Stellit)
The Code in local destination: Dominican Republic (Luiz Mendez, MAIS)
What experts think on the Code of Conduct (Celine Verheijen, ECPAT-NL)

ECPAT interviewed 31 experts from tour operators, hotels, airline
companies, NGO's, tourism schools and governmental organizations in five countries to gather opinions on how to improve signing, implementation, monitoring and communication of the Code of Conduct. Read the report here.