Mexico Acts To Protect Children

There's more to fighting child exploitation than making new laws, according to creators of a child-protection handbook being delivered to parliamentary leaders gathered here this week.

Children's advocates say lawmakers also need to use their budget pens and investigative powers to protect children from violence, exploitation and abuse.

"We often have seen very good legislation and little follow up," Karin Landgren, the chief of child protection at the United Nations Children's Fund. "They're in a good position to hold government and institutions accountable"

The child-protection handbook -- written by UNICEF and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a Geneva-based organization designed to promote exchanges among lawmakers around the globe -- will be presented to lawmakers on Tuesday by film star Jessica Lange, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.

The handbook spells out practical ways in which lawmakers can enforce regulations that hold people exploiting children accountable and ensure programs protecting children are adequately funded.

Visiting a child development center for street kids Monday on Mexico City's rough outskirts, Lange got a lesson from the center's director on the harsh realities facing children here.

"A lot of these children no longer have a family," Lange said.

The center's director, Veronica Espinosa, said most children have had to make a living wading through traffic to wash car windows.

Also Monday, lawmakers from around the world gathered in the Mexican capital to discuss international conflicts and whether the fight against terrorism has damaged human rights.

Lange spent Friday in the Caribbean resort Cancun learning about a program that includes enlists cab drivers and hotel employees in the fight against child exploitation.

Poverty still routinely pushes Mexican children into labor, usually at informal, menial jobs. But the country has taken some effective steps to crack down on the sexual exploitation of children, according to Bruce Harris, Latin America director of Casa Alianza.

In one case, Mexico tracked down in Thailand a man accused of having sex with boys in Puerto Vallarta.

San Francisco financier Thomas Frank White was arrested in Thailand last year at the request of Mexican officials after Mexican street children came forth with allegations that White had lured the boys into his luxurious home with video games, drugs, pornography and money and then molested them. Harris had received permits to build a children's shelter in Puerto Vallarta before complaints surfaced about his behavior.

Mexican authorities hope to try White, and witnesses were scheduled to testify at an extradition hearing this week in Thailand.

Harris said the sexual exploitation of children remains a booming business internationally, despite international conventions designed to discourage such abuses.

"We need to be much more aggressive against attacking the demand side," said Harris, who will participate in a panel here Wednesday on the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

Beyond the world's parliaments, people working in the tourism industry are being urged to protect children.

On Wednesday in New York, groups including UNICEF are scheduled to launch a "Code of Conduct" for the North American tourism industry.

Mexico City travel agent Rosa Martha Brown supports provisions of the code that require the tourism industry to cancel contracts with businesses that participate in the exploitation of children.

"You just have to make a general policy that this is a crime," Brown said.

Activists involved in this week's events said international conventions and protocols on the rights of children have been ineffective on many fronts.

Under the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by more than 190 countries, children have the right to be protected against all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse.

"What happens is that on paper the children have these rights, but in reality they don't," Harris said.

By Morgan Lee