Commercial sexual exploitation of children

Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is a commercial transaction that involves the sexual exploitation of a child, such as the prostitution of children and child pornography. CSEC may involve coercion and violence against children and amount to forced labour and a form of contemporary slavery as well as offering the sexual services of children for compensation, financial or otherwise.

A declaration of the World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm in 1996, defined CSEC as:

CSEC includes child sex tourism and other forms of transactional sex where a child engages in sexual activities to have key needs fulfilled, such as food, shelter or access to education. It includes forms of transactional sex where the sexual abuse of children is not stopped or reported by household members, due to benefits derived by the household from the perpetrator. CSEC also potentially includes arranged marriages involving children under the age of consent, where the child has not freely consented to marriage and where the child is sexually abused.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) states that roughly one out of every five girls and one out of every ten boys will be sexually exploited or abused before they become of age.UNICEF says that child sexual exploitation is “one of the gravest infringements of rights that a child can endure.”

Child pornography is prevalent on the international, national, regional, and local levels. The differences of production, distribution, producers, evasion techniques, and status are explained in figure one. Child pornography is a multibillion-dollar enterprise that includes photographs, books, audiotapes, videos and more. These images depict children performing sexual acts with other children, adults, and other objects. The children are subjected to exploitation, rape, pedophilia, and in extreme cases, murder. Pornography is often used as a gateway into the sex trade industry. Many pimps force children into pornography as a way of conditioning them to believe that what they are doing is acceptable. The pimps may then use the pornography to blackmail the child and extort money from clients.

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