When a US State Department official went for an evening stroll in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh recently, he was shocked by the open hawking of children for sex in the streets.
John Miller, the ambassador-at-large against international slavery, said he himself had been approached by a pimp who offered him 16-year-old children.
When he walked away, the man continued to pursue the envoy, offering him even younger children.
"Every time I turned down the offer, the age of the children kept coming down -- 16, 14, 12," Miller said.
"Sometimes it makes you wince when you hear about the plight of sexually abused children," he said at the launch of a US campaign on Tuesday to combat sexual exploitation of children by Americans travelling abroad.
DEMAND-SIDE ECONOMICS
In another recent trip to Thailand's northern city of Chiang Mai, also notorious for its child-sex trade, Miller discovered from non-governmental organizations (NGO) that tourists fueling the business were from the US, Britain, Australia, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.
"The problem is not just in countries where child-sex facilities exist, the problem also lies on the demand side and many of the child-sex tourists come from wealthy democratic societies," Mil-ler said.
The US State Department, the US Immigration and Customs and World Vision, a leading American NGO, are involved in the campaign to deter and nab Americans traveling abroad for child sex.
They will also work with Asian governments to stem the illicit trade.
Asia has become a growing destination for Americans pursuing child sex.
They make up about 25 percent of the global child-sex trade involving 2 million children, some as young as five years old, US statistics show.
In Latin America, for example, Americans make up about 80 percent of child-sex tourists.
Child-sex tourism is an organized, multi-million dollar industry which has its own tour guides, Web sites and other support systems, said Joseph Mettimano from child protection agency World Vision, which is spearheading the campaign.
"We are trying to work with all Asian governments to address this issue," he said.
Mettimano said some of the Americans engaged in child-sex tourism were pedophiles who regularly traveled abroad to have sex with children, while others were "situational offenders" -- those on legitimate business or holiday travel but who decide to experiment with local sex.
Last year, the US tightened its law against Americans who sexually abuse children abroad, raising the maximum jail sentence to 30 years. Since the law was beefed up in April last year, seven Americans have been extradited and sentenced to jail.
The first of those arrested, a 70-year-old man, was sentenced in June to 97 months in jail.
PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN
Under the campaign launched on Tuesday, banners and pop-up ads would be placed on the Internet in cooperation with search engine Yahoo to make it difficult for tourists to access Web sites marketing children for sex.
In addition, global television network CNN would air anti-child sex messages at departure terminals of 39 of the busiest airports in the US, where 700 million people pass through every year, Mettimano said.
"We are in active negotiations with US commercial airlines to run the same advertisements on flights to Asia and Latin America," he said.
US officials plan to meet representatives of 50 UN foreign missions soon to consider ways to cooperate more closely to check the problem.
Mettimano said the US campaign would be based on an aggressive strategy.
"Soft messages like `please protect the children' are gone; it does not resonate with these guys," he said.
"We are going for a hard, law enforcement penalty-based message: abuse a child in this country -- go to jail in yours," he said.
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