Child sexual abuse and exploitation is a global phenomenon. It exists in most cultures irrespective of material wealth and state ideology. The World Health Organisation Report on Violence and Health (2002) states that about twenty percent of women and five to ten percent of men have suffered sexual abuse as children. Studies from around the world appear to confirm these figures, although some studies have higher figures (Commodities in Stigma and Shame 2001). Furthermore, the UN reports that millions of children are annually being exploited by the sex industry.
Child sexual abuse occurs frequently within the family and in the local community. Children are in addition sexually exploited through trafficking, tourism, pornography and the sex industry. Girls and boys are also sexually abused and exploited in war and refugee situations, in the education system, at the workplace and on the streets, in religious settings, leisure activities, in prisons and even by people and services meant to protect and take care of them.
The abuse may be extremely brutal, for instance, children who must endure the continued abuse from infancy or children who are forced into marriage or kept as sex slaves in brothels. Girls are most at risk, making it necessary to consider gender dimensions when developing interventions and taking measures. It should be noted that children might be abused by their peers as well as by adults.
©International Save the Children Alliance
