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During this third World Congress on Sexual exploitation, 300 of the 3000 participants are children and young people from about 20 countries. Participants and readers are used to hearing about children's involvement and input into such global meetings, but what happens behind the scenes, how is their involvement organised and what are the challenges organisers and facilitators have to face?
CRIN talks to Rasa Sekulovic, Child Rights Adviser for Plan International in Asia, who is part of the Child Protection Committee for the III World Congress. Rasa was involved in the regional preparatory meeting for children and young people in South East Asia. He has been working on child protection and participation for several years, including during the process of the UN Study on Violence Against Children. Here, he shares some thoughts on the preparations for the Congress, the last days leading up to Rio and questions as to how can child participation really be meaningful.
In the preparation process for the regional meetings, we developed a good practice model of inter-agency coordination, with ECPAT, Save the Children, World Vision and the ILO. We set up a participation working group to draw on previous experiences such as the Violence study process, the Special Session and the second World Congress.
The criteria for children's involvement was that they should be from underprivileged backgrounds or circumstances. Many of the children are also from rural and remote areas and are involved in community based projects. But their participation was not about their personal history but their involvement in preventing, addressing and combating commercial sexual exploitation.
Most of the young people from Asia are themselves survivors of trafficking or commercial sexual exploitation and some of them still live in shelters or protected areas. But it was not necessary to share this, and nobody raised it.
One of the big challenges in preparing for such big events is the amount of information organisers want to share with children. In a way, we have to be careful as we risk invading their space and their own time to share their own experiences.
Another challenge was that we did not know whether they would actually be going to Rio until about five days before. The NGOs involved had allocated money in a common pot for the regional meeting, but did not have the funding for Rio.
All NGOs have to face the legitimate dilemma and decide whether allocating big amounts of money for a few children to attend the Congress is the best way to spend money. And many of us were a little sceptical about previous processes where huge momentum was created but with very little follow up.
Eventually, the government of Brazil allocated money for flights, hotels and other expenses for the children. This still left us to find the funds for the chaperones . There were many discussions back and forth and problems with booking flights and lack of funds and in the end more funding was received from the Swedish Government and just a few days before the Congress opened, children were told they were going.
We then had a couple of days to get visas and some even had to get passports issued in one day. It was a logistical nightmare but we were very happy for them as they had worked really hard to prepare for this.
Once we arrived in Brazil a few days before the Congress opened, we had to face a whole new set of logistical challenges and were running around like crazy. We did not know anything about whether there was medical assistance, we did know whether we were also in charge of the protection of all the Brazilian children who are participating, children were arriving at different times, etc.
Thankfully we worked with the Participation Committee, we distributed roles and two Brazilian organisations had prepared a wonderful space for children.
Logistics is vital though. It really impacts on meaningful participation.
Once the Congress opened, there were again a lot of pressure on children. They had to listen to a number of presentations about the outcome document and their input, but they did not know about this previously. Others were constantly being snatched to prepare for meetings and worked really long hours, sometimes until 2am.
Of course we understand that people here wanted them to be involved, but it should also be a celebration and they should also have time to relax, have fun, go on visits, etc.
We decided to do our best to create a child friendly space and really wanted to avoid them having a bad experience. But many children were quite unhappy. Several times their space was taken over by a meeting here or there, others were unhappy because they felt children were not involved enough in the workshops.
Everybody is working really hard though, the two Brazilian NGOs who organised the youth space are working around the clock.
In a press conference children were handed out a speech to read out by one organisation... but some of them said “no, I will not read anybody's speech”. They approached us afterwards and raised this as an issue of concern for them.
The media who were attending had not been briefed either, anybody could register. There was one incident where a Norwegian journalist went up to two girls from South East Asia and bluntly asked them: “how does it feel to be a victim of commercial sexual exploitation”? These young people were not here to talk about their personal experiences but to contribute to the debates. Other journalists were just interested in taking pictures of an indigenous boy but did not even think about asking for his permission.
There was no disability awareness either. We actually had to pay to use wheelchairs. One girl with crutches was not allowed to walk past the very long queue but was sent to an entrance for participants with disabilities which was at the other end of the room. It is not the fault of the security staff, they were probably just not briefed on such issues, but they should be. Instead they would let journalists in, when this event is about those children.
I feel we are not practicing the lessons learned from the Special Session and Violence Study. Despite sharing our experiences, the same problems are not being addressed. We should be taking child participation to a new level. I feel we are recycling old ways.
Of course we are trying to balance the positive experiences with the challenges. Ultimately, there was very little time to prepare and it must be acknowledged that everyone has been working really hard to put systems and policies in place.
Now things are more relaxed, they have had a free night, they have been able to exchange ideas, engage each other.
We are getting there. By the end of the congress, children and young people will travel back home with good and useful learning and new friendships. But of course we were concerned about them going home with a bad experience. What kind of messages would they bring home, how will they be able to continue their work? They have a responsibility to take this home and share with their peers and follow up.
Children and young people are a new and emerging generation, they speak new languages, have new patterns of behaviour, we need to engage with them and learn from them. We need to be more progressive and be prepared to create new spaces to engage with them, not just bombard them with information.
More information about the Congress here: www.crin.org/violence