FOCUS December 2007 Volume 50

Regional Conference on Enhancing Child Protection Through Database Development: Mapping of Existing Database Efforts to Fight Child Trafficking in South East Asia (October 2007)

Conference Statement

We, the participants of the "Regional Conference on Enhancing Child Protection Through Database Development: Mapping of Existing Database Efforts to Fight Child Trafficking in South East Asia" held in Bangkok on 22-24 October 2007 coming from non-government and government organizations from Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, support the initiatives of the Asia Acts Against Children Trafficking protecting the rights and dignity of the trafficked children in South East Asia, and hereby recommend the following:

* Intensify efforts to collect information on trafficked children at the grassroots level and from reliable sources where possible such as reports from the media, social workers, and the police;

* Work towards having a common regional database system on child trafficking that would aid efforts to combat child trafficking by various stakeholders;

* Agree on common objectives, indicators, and definitions based on the ASEAN Guidelines for the Protection of the Rights of Trafficked Children to guide the development of a national/regional database on child trafficking;

* Develop comprehensive training and users manuals to include detailed technical and ethical guidelines in the collection, collation, and dissemination of information on child trafficking;

* Explore or intensify collaboration with the government at the national and regional levels, where possible, in the development of a centralised database system on child trafficking;

* Intensify lobbying efforts for the adoption and implementation of the ASEAN Guidelines for the Protection of the Rights of Trafficked Children;

* Contribute information on the situation of child trafficking in South East Asia and undertake parallel activities in preparation for the World Fit for Children session in New York in December 2007, and the 3rd World Congress on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Brazil in 2008;

* For Asia-ACTS to revisit its position on child trafficking not only as a human rights issue but also as a law and order problem.

The Recommendations of the Conference Regarding a Regional Database

Rationale:
A regional database

1. Provides evidence for advocacy for the adoption and implementation of the human rights standards for trafficked children
2. Provides authoritative information about the issue
3. Presents the real situation on trafficking of children for policy advocacy
4. Identifies gaps on services to victims
5. Develops coordination among service providers from both government and NGOs and monitors what the governments are doing
6. Draws regional trends on work done on the issue.

Results:
After three years, the following results will be generated from the database:

1. Situational analysis of child trafficking in the region
2. Facilitated development of at least one cross-border coordination effort in case intervention; at the country level, identified gaps in service delivery/provision of interventions to victims
3. Adoption of the proposed guidelines on protecting the rights of children-victims of trafficking.

Strategies:

1. Develop the standard documentation format (paper and electronic formats). This includes systems for data entry, pre-testing and hands-on training, identification of fields in the database, determining cases that cannot be covered due to inaccessibility, deciding on information that cannot be shared, updating frequency, and development of controlled vocabulary. At the country level, review and improvement of existing formats
2. Formation of the data management team (including adoption of criteria for identifying the [members of the] team, formulation of the operational structure and defining the roles and functions of the team)
3. Development of users' manual
4. Data collection, data entry, data retrieval, data analysis, packaging and dissemination of results
5. Training on data analysis (regional and country level).

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