Awareness Key to Anti-Child-Trafficking Project

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador — This hot, dingy town — officially named Nueva Loja — 12 miles from the Colombian border is home to just 26,000 people. But it boasts no less than 200 bars, pool halls, karaoke clubs, discotheques and brothels. The last may be the best indication of the industry that keeps this town running.

Here, where some 7,000 military men, oil workers and merchants converge, sex sells. And much of the sex that is selling is with minors.

Signs on bar doors all over Lago Agrio advertise for "señoritas para trabajar en bar," or "women to work in the bar." Tending those bars — three-quarters of them — are underage girls as young as 10 years old. And most of the places scattered around Lago Agrio — Ecuador's oil capital and one of the country's poorest communities — offer commercial sex with minors.

"It's very sad," says Maria Helena Posada of the Social Ministry of San Miguel de Sucumbios, the province in which Lago Agrio is located. "Many victims here are just girls, really, who are either victims of violence to start with or come from very poor families with lots of problems."

Colombian teenagers are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Fleeing the civil war in Colombia, many travel south to Ecuador, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs and few prospects. They and their impoverished Ecuadorian counterparts often turn to the street — and the bars — in an attempt to earn money to help their families. Many girls serve as waitresses at first and are coerced or forced into prostitution later by organized crime groups operating out of the bars.

Afraid to come forward and expose their exploiters, many victims lie about their age. Bar and brothel owners and others involved in the sex trade have created a network, made up partly of local government officials, that falsifies the identification necessary for adult prostitution, which is legal in Ecuador.

"And just when you've gained the trust of one of the girls and made a connection with them, they get moved to another location along the established routes of the trade," says Maria Helena.

Cloaked under the guise of legal adult prostitution, the issue goes widely unnoticed, not only by government and law enforcement officials, but by civilians too. The hidden nature of sex trafficking in the region is essential to its survival. Its invisibility is encouraged by a culture that is accepting and ignorant of the problem at the same time.

"There is just a real lack of understanding here of what constitutes sex trafficking," says Jorge Acero, coordinator of the Social Ministry of San Miguel of Sucumbios, a key partner in a Catholic Relief Services project aimed at preventing trafficking in children and adolescents. "The judicial system isn't used to it. The police don't know how to identify it. There just is not a logic yet to understand the scope of the problem."

First Steps Toward Change

CRS believes the first step in changing the cultural and legal acceptance of the issue is to raise awareness. To that end, CRS and its partners are creating a communications strategy aimed at some of the various groups that are part of the solution.

Part of the plan is to cover the region's bus terminals, hotels, restaurants and tourism offices with literature that condemns sex tourism and explains the national laws against trafficking and the prostitution of minors. Working with the private sector and local government, the project will create campaigns and offer incentives for those establishments that do not promote trafficking and commercial sex with minors.

The project will also update an earlier study of trafficking in the region, examining the factors that make adolescents most vulnerable, the organizational makeup of the criminal groups involved, the cycles and routes in which trafficking takes place and the conditions in which its victims are forced to live.

Training will be Critical

Health care professionals, teachers, psychologists, lawyers, police and other authorities charged with protecting children and adolescents in the region will receive training to help them better identify the problem and care for victims of the sex trade. A system for ensuring that cases are reported to the appropriate authorities will also be established.

The project will promote the kind of interagency sharing of information and experience that is necessary for creating advocacy campaigns.

"Ultimately, we are trying to foster an informed and united community that has the tools it needs to protect victims of trafficking and to advocate for better policies for the prevention and elimination of trafficking in children and adolescents," says Patricio Benalcazar, the project's coordinator for CRS.

The project will serve as a model to be replicated in other parts of Ecuador.

Last year, the Ecuadorian government established a national plan to combat sexual exploitation and other problems, but has been unable to commit the resources necessary to bring about real change.

"Our hope is that this very local experience will show that it is possible to do the same thing on a national level," says Patricio. "We want to start taking baby steps toward a national plan."