Brazil struggles to prevent child exploitation(2)

Exploitation, page 2. 

Save the Dream is a joint initiative of the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) and the Qatar Olympic Committee.  Pinto said that the campaign will attempt to gather concrete data about the link between mega sporting events and violence against children until the 2016 Olympics.

“Sport has a great responsibility towards human beings, society and human rights,” said Pinto.

On Jun. 20 Pinto took part in an event to publicize the preliminary results of the Proteja Brasil (Protect Brazil) campaign against sexual exploitation of children, under the auspices of UNICEF and the Brazilian government in the framework of the World Cup.

One of the strategies to encourage reporting acts of violence against children was the creation of an application that can be downloaded free to smartphones and tablets. The Protect Brazil app is an unprecedented initiative worldwide, said Ideli Salvatti, the minister of the Human Rights Secretariat.

The app aims to make use of the more than 70 million cell phones in Brazil, a country of more than 200 million people, to spread reporting of child abuse. It is available in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

Casimira Benge, chief of UNICEF’s child protection program in Brazil, said that as Brazil is a country of mega events, violence against its 56 million children and adolescents is also on a large scale.

“We learned a lot from the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. Children had no classes because the schools closed during the championship, and so they were left unsupervised. Here in Brazil we are working to provide accompaniment and support for children, even during the school holidays,” Benge said.

Since the launch of the online app on May 18 until Jun. 20, it has been downloaded 60,000 times and 3,800 telephone calls were made to child protection agencies. According to UNICEF, in just one month the campaign reached 40 million people.

Analysis of reports to the Dial 100 hotline found that nearly 50 percent of victims were female, 60 percent were Afro-Brazilian, and victims of violence were mainly aged 8-14, with 65 percent of the aggressors belonging to their immediate family.

Sexual violence ranked in fourth place among the Dial 100 complaints in 2013, at 26 percent. In 2012, when there were over 130,000 reports, one-third of them were related to sexual violence.

In Benge’s view, the best strategy against violence is prevention and enabling reporting of incidents.

Sexual violence is classified in two categories, she said: domestic abuse of a minor, like statutory rape, and sexual exploitation for profit, like prostitution. In 2013 there were 28,552 reports of abuse and 10,664 of sexual exploitation.

Benge said cities in the north and northeast of Brazil, like Manaus and Ceará, deserve special attention because they are more vulnerable.

“There must be vigilance in all 12 host cities, but greater attention must be paid to those with a higher incidence,” she said.

Since the FIFA World Cup began there have been no reports of arrests in the host cities for offenses of this nature, but two weeks before the police closed two venues in Rio de Janeiro, allegedly for child sex exploitation.