Panafrican News Agency

Mali officials sensitized on fighting child sexual exploitation

Bamako, Mali (PANA) - Magistrates, police officers and social workers on identification of child victims of exploitation have completed a sensitisation workshop on the fight against sexual exploitation of children in Bamako.

Organized with technical and financial support from the non-governmental organisation ECPAT of Luxembourg, the workshop helped to build the participants' capacity on the different forms of sexual exploitation of children, the steps of taking psychosocial burden and legal and judicial management of the phenomenon.

At the end of the meeting on Saturday, participants made recommendations, including increasing public awareness of reporting and denouncing sexual exploitation of children and increasing the number of actors, material support to police stations and brigades for better care of children who are victims of sexual exploitation and the return of training at the municipal level.

Child sexual exploitation manifests itself in several forms: prostitution, sex trafficking, child pornography and other forms within the community.

According to a study carried out by ECPAT Luxembourg in 2014, sexual exploitation of children was on the rise in Mali.

The NGO revealed that out of a sample of 1,472 children who responded to the general questionnaire, 28.2% were identified as victims of one of the three forms of commercial sexual exploitation selected for the study, namely, child prostitution, child sex tourism and sex trafficking.

-0- PANA GT/TBM/BBA/AR  26Aug2019