EF Speech, 2020
I'm more than happy to greet you on this challenging day. My name is Isabella Duarte, a 10th grader enrolled at American School, Puerto Colombia and the topic that concerns me the most to the point that I'd like it to be solved is "children's sexual exploitation".
There's a traditional African greeting among the Maasai tribe that focuses on how the children are doing and it acknowledges the high value the tribe places on children’s welfare. The answer to this greeting is all the children are well, meaning that they are safe, well taken care of and that the tribe's priority is to keep the young and defenseless guarded.
If today I ask you how the children are doing and we use the lens of commercial sexual exploitation, the answer would be the children are not well.
These are Naomi and King, who are both perfectly happy children, coursing preschool, living their best lives, but what about Kate who wasn’t lucky enough to have access to her basic needs?, who needed to go out and search for food in the trash cans?, who never knew what family love means because her parents are divorced and her mother is always high?
The first time she was sold for sex, she was 6 six years old, so Kate was sold by her own mother; therefore, she wished anyone would let her out, a little girl who stopped believing in freedom. She missed dances and field trips, she learned horrible things instead, she never got to experience a fairytale ending, but she was rather being raped by doctors, lawyers, engineers showing her porn videos and forcing them to replicate the exact same thing.
We are privileged to have a bed, food more than 3 times a day, a family to go back and talk about everything that happened during our day, but what about the people that don’t?, haven't you stopped and wonder what is the reality of millions of children around the globe?
Abuse, rejection, pain, depression, and death are what they see on a daily basis. People are submerged in problems without an untroublesome escape. Most of this worry is created by other people who are taking advantage of the easy bait. Children are the easiest ones to trap, persuade, and control, sure let's go bribe a nine year old treat him like an animal, sell his or her body on the internet and wait for compensation, because they are literally hundreds of sick people that buy them.
Statistics proves it true, 300 thousand American children, 7
500 Colombian children, 10 thousand Chinese children are loaded into sex trafficking every year, and these are just some estimated numbers, taking into account that many of them never report the abuse and pain to which they have been subjected, for fear of being segregated and judged by today's society, that strives to be increasingly cruel.
All this problem continues to progress and grows due to civil and political problems,HIV, AIDS, and primarily poverty that has left many countries politically, economically and socially fragile. In this strained state, families must struggle for survival and children become more exposed to commercial sexual exploitation.
A clear example is Africa, a continent that remains with the highest poverty rates, 33% of the world's most impoverished population, and we hold accountability for 8% of child sex trafficking in the world.
And as if that wasn't enough, could you believe that this horrific mistreatment, is as a matter of fact, also influenced by cultural beliefs, traditions, and religion. In Ghana, very young girls (under the age of 10) are given to the local fetish shrine to investigate alleged offenses committed by a member of the girl’s family. This practice is known as Trokoski. The girl becomes his personal slave and must give any sexual service when needed.
Without any doubt, along our history, efforts and measures have been taken to combat this issue. Regionally and globally organizations such as the ILO, UNICEF, among others have established a number of legal protocols in an attempt of giving children the full protection they deserve. Solutions proposed include awareness raising, improvement of law enforcement mechanisms and the direct assistance to victim survivors, but truly are all these measurements enough?
It is crucial to understand that children are suffering, that they have been manipulated for decades, that this world is full of demented people that do not even bother for a second to look for another person’s well-being, it is unacceptable that children’s passion and love for life disappears in front of our bare eyes. So, now are you willing to contribute? or Do you belong to the epidemic?
By Isabella Duarte, Step 10
I'm more than happy to greet you on this challenging day. My name is Isabella Duarte, a 10th grader enrolled at American School, Puerto Colombia and the topic that concerns me the most to the point that I'd like it to be solved is "children's sexual exploitation".
It is crucial to understand that children are suffering, that they have been manipulated for decades, that this world is full of demented people that do not even bother for a second to look for another person’s well-being, it is unacceptable that children’s passion and love for life disappears in front of our bare eyes. So, now are you willing to contribute? or Do you belong to the epidemic? 