Information and Publication

Funders: Groupe Developpement/European Union, Stichting Kinderpostzegels Nederland, SIDA, UNICEF Thailand, The British Embassy, General Funds

Total Expenditures: 255,873 USD

Website
The new ECPAT International website (www.ecpat.net) was launched in August, including a unique database of information on implementing the Stockholm Agenda for Action. All ECPAT International publications were made available for download, and most of the resource center reference materials, including news clippings, can be searched online. A ‘Bulletin Board’ has also been developed in order to provide a forum of discussion within the network. The website is constantly updated in several sections, and is available in English, French and Spanish. A section on the UNGASS meeting was later added, with a link to their homepage.

Newsletters
Five issues of the ECPAT Newsletter were published, with 3,500 copies distributed for each issue. The June 2001 issue focused on the situation of CSEC in the Asia/Pacific region, the September 2001 issue focused on CSEC in the Americas, and the December 2001 issue on CSEC in Europe. All of these ‘focused’ publications were made in preparation for the 2nd World Congress in December 2001, for a round-up of the situation of CSEC and of the regional activities and responses: they provided background material for the Congress and were widely distributed throughout the event. The January 2002 issue provided an overview on the Congress itself. Finally, the April 2002 issue discussed child pornography, detailing much of the new material made available at the World Congress, and developments in this modern form of child abuse.

All issues of the Newsletter were translated into both French and Spanish and published electronically on the ECPAT website. The English versions were published both in hard copy and electronically on the ECPAT website.

Agenda for Action
The annual ECPAT Report on the Implementation of the Agenda for Action was issued in November 2001. It was published in English (3,000 copies), French (1,500), Spanish (1,500), Russian (1,000 copies), Arabic (500 copies) and Japanese (500 copies), totaling 8,000 copies distributed altogether. In addition, in order for the large Japanese audience expected to attend the 2nd World Congress to have a good background on CSEC, both the 2000 and the 2001 Reports were published in book format in Japanese. The Reports for both 2000 and 2001 were also published in Arabic. Press launches were held in Bangkok, Paris, Barcelona and Winnipeg.

All language versions of the Report were also very widely distributed at the Congress.

Ad-hoc Publications
The French version of Questions and Answers about CSEC was updated and reprinted, as well as the updated version of The ECPAT Story, edited by Jo de Linde and published with a new title: ECPAT: A Network for Children.

Resource Centre
Around 100 new acquisitions were catalogued and filed in the Resource Centre. Each month, a list of new acquisitions, with bibliographic details, was circulated to the network. Staff of the Resource Centre regularly receive students, researchers, and other guests who make use of the materials in the Centre. The Information Department also responds to the many email and telephone enquiries pertaining to our issue.

Miscellaneous
Finally, various promotional and display materials connected to the 2nd World Congress were produced, and intensive public relations work was undertaken. The Information Department maintained two exhibition areas during the Congress, answering enquiries, distributing and collecting materials from other participating groups and promoting the new website.

Protecting Children Online
The project has been highly successful as one of the pioneer initiatives in Asian countries to address the issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. With its high-speed transfer of data, its virtual anonymity and its formidable networking capacity, the Internet is facilitating the spread of child pornography, increasingly becoming a favourable terrain of pursuit for those who seek to sexually exploit children.

Various awareness-raising materials, such as Protecting Children Online: an ECPAT Guide and the Net Smart Rules on the back cover page have been made available to children, parents, educational institutions, GOs and NGOs, providing information as well as disseminating useful prevention and protection measures.

Following translation into local Asian languages and adaptation, Protecting Children Online was distributed in several countries: 3,000 copies in Thailand, 2,000 in Indonesia, 2,000 in Japan. A further 2,000 will be distributed in the Philippines, and another 1,600 within Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

The excellent media coverage received both on the launch of Protecting Children Online and on the launch of the research on Internet use by children in Thailand greatly contributed to highlighting the issue amongst several sectors of the Thai and other Asian societies.

In collaboration with The Bangkok Post, consulting company Prasena, PR agency Frontier Digest and the Thai rock-band “PRU”, ECPAT International started a research project on Internet use to ascertain what risks the Internet posed to Thai children in regards to child sexual exploitation, as well as the awareness of parents and teachers concerning such risks. The research analysis will provide the basis for the next phase of the project, whose objective is to foster effective prevention and protection initiatives to ensure Internet child safety, particularly through the development and implementation of training modules and Internet use policies within Thailand’s schools system. After piloting in Thailand, such training and policies implementation may also be replicated in other countries.