The graphic series of articles in this newspaper on child prostitution in the Philippines has exposed how rooted it is in poverty and injustice within that country and in the economic rift between the Philippines and richer societies. It is too easy for the relatively advantaged to overlook the bleak facts of brute poverty in an unequal world, whether in Ireland or on the other side of the globe. The same applies to the facts of sexual exploitation and paedophilia highlighted in these articles by Nuala O'Faolain.
In recent years the door has been opened on child sex abuse within Irish families, which is now reported with a regularity that does not cease to shock. The international dimension of child sex tourism, prostitution and paedophilia in Asian countries has been publicised here by several non governmental organisations, including Irish development workers and missionaries in the Philippines and Thailand. They have successfully lobbied members of the Oireachtas, leading to the introduction of private members' Bills in the Dail and Seanad which would enable citizens of this State to be prosecuted for organising, promoting or indulging in child sex abuse elsewhere, as if the offences had been committed here. The Bills enjoy unusual all party support, which presumably assures their passage.
Although no estimate of the number of Irish people involved is available, this series of articles demonstrates the necessity of the legislation. In the Philippines no foreigner has been convicted of child sex abuse. Foreign activists are pressing several such cases and have incurred great local unpopularity as a result. This is because child prostitution is entrenched in the culture of poverty and patriarchy there, and part and parcel of a long history of colonial and neo colonial exploitation.
It is the people of the Philippines themselves who must create the organisations capable of freeing them from such oppressions, along with international investment to provide alternative income sources. Much of the necessary energy was visible in the popular movements that brought Cory Aquino to power. It has been deflected and dissipated since then in the gross inequalities and political factionalism endemic in the Philippines, which have also prevented President Fidel Ramos from implementing his reformist programme. But he has made some headway against the social ills which contribute so much to the fierce poverty in which child prostitution thrives notably in his campaign for birth control facilities, in which he has faced vociferous opposition from the Catholic hierarchy. It remains unfortunately true that world and Philippine power structures contain the combination of sexism and racism which makes it extraordinarily difficult for anti prostitution campaigners to gather support.
This is why action must be taken in both the developed world, where the demand for sex tourism is found, and in countries such as the Philippines and Thailand where children are so horribly exploited.
Common humanity insists that the issue be tackled with universal values and a raising of consciousness about the close relationship between poverty and the prostitution of children.