Dr. De Villiers introduced the new Secretary General of UNWTO, Taleb Rifai who addressed the meeting and underlined the need for ongoing action again this evil crime. He said that progress was being made in getting the agreement of some countries to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes in their own countries even if the crime was committed elsewhere but much more needed to be done to create greater awareness amongst the travelling public to identify and report these crimes where they suspected them or became aware of them. He congratulated some of the international airlines for showing in-flight videos to create greater awareness by those people travelling.

 

Skål International has been a member of this Task Force since the beginning and was represented at the meeting by the Secretary General, Jim Power.

 

The meeting reviewed a training manual to fight trafficking in children for labour, sexual and other forms of exploitation, presented by Ms. Yoshie Noguchi, Senior Legal Advisor International Labour Organisation (ILO).

 

A presentation entitled Training for Child Sex Tourism Prevention – two new tools aimed at the prevention of Child Sex Tourism was presented by Mr. Giorgio Berardi, Programme Officers for combating child sex tourism, ECPAT International and Ms. Marion Kreissl, ECPAT Germany.

 

A third presentation was entitled Every Child – Everywhere – Child Protection Training in the Travel Industry. This is an e-learning course developed by ECPAT UK and ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) and was presented by Ms. Alice Macek, Information Officer, ECPAT UK.

 

The meeting also heard a number of reports on government actions taken by India, Indonesia, Brazil and Vietnam.

 

Reports on travellers responsible attitudes and travel agents support were also made by The Childsafe Network “Childsafe Tips for Travellers presented by Alice Kostler, representative of Germany for Childsafe Network – Friends International. Dutch Travellers Can Report Child Sex Tourism presented by Ms. Sietske Gras-Dijkstra, Member of the World Committee on Tourism Ethics and Lecturer, NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands. Another report entitled “The Child Protection Campaign and the Travel Agents’ World was presented by Mr. Michael W. Th Gebhardt, Head of Community Management, Counter Energy – The Travel Agents Community.

 

Two contributions from international organisations were also presented: The OSCE’s research project on the use of codes of conduct to combat trafficking in human beings was presented by Ms. Joanna Benfield, Adviser, Office of the Special Representative and Coordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings (OSCE) which is the largest security organisation comprising 56 member states.

 

The final contribution entitled Japanese Travel Trade and the Members Fee of “The Code Organisation” was presented by Yoshihisa Togo, Vice Chairman, Japan Committee for UNICEF.

 

Copies of all these reports can be obtained from the UNWTO website www.unwto.org and go to Task Force.

 

More information for Skål members is available by contacting the General Secretariat at skal@skal.travel