The Child Protection Alliance (CPA), will on Wednesday, May 21, 2008, organise a day stakeholders meeting on child sex tourism, at the Paradise Suites Hotel in Kololi.

Discussions at the workshop will be centered on “commercial sexual exploitation of children, definitions, forms, and impact on children, code of conduct of The Gambia Tourism Authority for the protection of children, promoting responsible tourism in The Gambia, legal regimes on CSEC in The Gambia, among other things.

As a major component of The Gambian economy, tourism is vital to the well-being and development of the country.  Every year, tens of thousands of tourists visit The Gambia, hailing primarily from England and the Scandinavian countries. However, while the rapid growth of tourism represents much economic promise for the country, it also produces a negative socio-cultural impact, in particular, in the exploitation of children through sex tourism.

In the interest of promoting responsible tourism and the protection of children, the Gambia Tourism Authority (GTA) set up the Child Sex Tourism task force, to mainly identify and come up with strategies to combat the sexual exploitation of children in tourism. In May 2004, the aforementioned task force, under the aegis of the GTA, UNICEF and CPA set about the task of “Gambianising” the World Trade Organisation’s “Code of Ethics for Tourism”.

The goal was to design a code of conduct that was more complete and included active protection for children. After intense discussion and hard work, the task force finalised and adopted the “Code of Conduct of the Gambia Tourism Authority for the Protection of Children” as The Gambia’s version of the Code of Ethics for Tourism. The overall objective of the Code of conduct is to prevent children from sexual abuse and combat the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism.