United Nations Children's Fund Hails Realization of Accord to Outlaw Sale of Children for Prostitution

UNICEF announced that 89 nations have signed an international agreement to ban child prostitution, pornography and slavery, and it called for quick global ratification of the accord to combat the exploitation of children.

Those who ratified the "optional protocol" to the 10-year-old Convention of the Rights of the Child are: Andorra, Bangladesh, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iceland, Kazakstan, Morocco, Norway, Panama, Qatar, Romania, Sierra Leone, Spain, Uganda, the Vatican, and Vietnam. The protocol came into force on Friday after the three-month waiting period that followed its ratification by ten nations. Six more nations ratified it during the last three months.

The protocol serves as a global framework standardizing national legislation against the sale of children for sexual exploitation, for illegal adoption or for use of their organs. UNICEF estimates that about a million children -- most of them girls -- enter the multi-billion-dollar commercial sex trade each year, lured by promises of education or a job. They appear to be recruited at an increasingly young age, partly due to the mistaken belief that young girls are unlikely to have AIDS -- or that sex with a virgin can cure the disease.

Signatories to the main children's rights convention have the choice of joining the optional protocol. The protocol allows the United States to participate even though it has yet to ratify the overall treaty.

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