Equitable Tourism Options (EQUATIONS), a research, campaign and advocacy NGO working on social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts of tourism on local communities in India, recently organized a day-long panel discussion on Voluntourism. The objective of the discussion was to create awareness to prevent sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism industry. The event, organized by EQUATIONS, Just Your Type (JYT), The Code, ECPAT and UBS Optimus Foundation, witnessed the presence of attendees from cross sections of the society including tourism, government officials, NGOs working on child rights, child rights advocates, academicians and media.
Addressing the gathering, Joyatri Ray, Director, EQUATIONS, explained that Voluntourism is an emerging form of tourism and should be looked in depth for issues of safety and protection of children.
“The volunteers can be domestic as well as international and generally work with the children to provide support to vulnerable groups of communities. These services are generally related to teaching classes, art classes or fun activities with the children. Though (volun)tourism itself doesn’t pose direct danger to the children, there are many avenues opened through this for a perpetrator to use and abuse the relationships with the local community. The anonymity that comes with a tourist being in a space act as a facilitator for the exploitative activities carried out,” Ray added.
Delivering the keynote address, industry veteran Ashwin Shirali said that we should all first accept that child sex abuse is real and is happening all around us as an organised crime. He noted that apart from the issue itself, one of the fundamental challenges is that there are many misconceptions around this topic in the context of tourism industry. “One of the most common misconceptions is that only foreign tourists are engaged in such activities, and they’re confined only to Goa and Kerala. The fact is that domestic abusers are a huge percentage in many states including West Bengal, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
“The second misconception is that everyone involved in this is a paedophile. Actually, the abuser profile is quite varied and is dependent on the circumstances. Newer tourism products such as voluntourism bring in people from varied backgrounds to volunteer especially in orphanages. Similarly, unregulated tourism carried out through homestays, ecotourism, slum-tourism – has made it more difficult to act on this issue. And the last but most relevant conception is the myth that ‘trafficking doesn’t take place in hotels and surely doesn’t take place in the hotels that we work in, but the fact is that it can take place in any location at any time,” Shirali added.
Shirali noted that hotels are a breeding ground for such crimes and therefore are at the key actors in preventing such incidences. He added that it is important for all the hotel chains and other tourism industry players to become part of a circle with government and NGOs to make more noise about this issue. Increased awareness is one of the most important way to prevention of such crimes not just at individual level but at the institutional and societal level, he suggested.
Anindit Roy Chowdhury, Director – Programmes and Policy, Save the Children, said though the volunteers come for a short period of time they’re continuously with the children and sometimes even more than the organisational staff who work with them on daily basis. “The volunteers interact with the children in both formal and informal spaces and therefore a clear guideline must be set up by the organisations for these interactions. The organisations should have a child safeguarding policy of their own along with background checks for incoming volunteers. He added that this can also be to an extent managed if there are groups of volunteers coming in from another organisation so that the checks are done by both – source and recipient – organisations.
Br. Steve Rocha, Founder Director of PRATYeK said that internal organisational policy needs to be in place before any such initiative is planned. He noted that if there are students coming in from colleges then one can check whether the college has child protection policy in place. He added that once the children openly speak about their organs and processes the people engaging with them also understand that the child is aware about his/her body and rights.
Sahan Wiratunga of ECPAT Sri Lanka said that there is a need to collaboratively advocate for better child protection laws and policies within the system. “There need to be clear behavioural guidelines for volunteers and anyone engaging on field with children. Organisations must also undertake research studies to understand the problems faced by children in the community so that actions can be taken accordingly.” Wiratunga added.
Dr. Toney Thomas, Asst. Professor in School of Tourism Studies, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, said that tourism brings in a lot of difficulties too in the society and bringing in changes to the economy. Educational institutions have the responsibility to generate and disseminate knowledge and therefore it is important to even go beyond textbooks.
M R Sahoo, Chairperson, Child Welfare Committee, Puri spoke about the Ratha Yatra, annual 10-day temple festival wherein the state government this time is expecting almost 1 crore tourists. “There is also a discussion to make the Yatra child friendly by taking certain measures which Mr. Sahoo explained in his talk. A multistakeholder group of tourism board, child rights organisations, a group of volunteers, vendors, shopkeepers are part of the plan in making the Yatra child friendly and safe,” Sahoo informed.
Manabendra Mandal, Chairman, ATSEC South Asia and National Coordinator, ATSEC India gave examples of how child sexual exploitation happens in educational institutions – schools, colleges, universities. Since there is power hierarchy in educational insitutions such cases do not come to light often however, the children who are exploited carry the trauma for all their lives and the incidences affect their course of life.
Ashok Yaragatti, Member, Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights was of the opinion that at all tourism establishments, the government should display helplines and guidelines which will help people get information about the need for a child safe destination.
Damien Brosnan, Program Manager, The CODE, spoke about The Code, a responsible tourism initiative of ECPAT international and the tourism industry with a mission to provide awareness, tools and support to tourism industry in order to prevent sexual exploitation of children. The Code asks its members to train the volunteers on basics of child protection measures, do a background check of the volunteers, undertaking of good conduct etc.
Summarising the day’s discussions, Ray said that the call is to join hands together and work collaboratively to uphold child rights through awareness tools, well defined child protection policies, training staff members in tourism industry and a robust communication strategy to inform the guests/ volunteers at each access points about the zero tolerance towards any violation of child rights. She concluded by asserting that if these measures are followed then it will only help in making tourism sustainable and also achieve child well-being and social cohesion.
