Banking and financial sector a "key partner" in Azerbaijan’s fight against child sexual exploitation and pornography

The government has already signed the 2007 Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, the Council of Europe said.

Experts from the Council of Europe, the region’s oldest political institution, are concerned by the ease with which sexually abusive images of children are purchased on-line.

The Internet Watch Foundation’s annual report, published in April 2009, revealed that some 1,500 websites worldwide are responsible for the online commerce in child pornography. Some 69% of the victims exploited in images or videos appeared to be under 10 years of age.

The Council of Europe sees ratification of its treaty as the “logical next step” to be taken by its 47 member states in the fight against the trade in child pornography.

If the convention is approved, banking and financial sector officials will join counterparts in information and communication technology and the tourism and travel industry in a partnership with national authorities.  It is designed to improve public-private sector coordination and to prevent business structures from being used to feed the child sex trade.

“Private sector enterprises, particularly those related to the information and communication technology sectors, the banking and finance industry, and the travel and tourism sectors, are likely to be in contact with situations giving rise to sexual exploitation and abuse of children,” said the Council of Europe’s Deputy Secretary General Maud de Boer-Buquicchio at a conference last March in Toledo, Spain,.

The convention’s multi-agency approach requires the government to improve coordination between national education authorities, the health sector, social services, law enforcement and judicial authorities.

The treaty encourages law-makers to make sure that confidentiality rules “do not constitute an obstacle” to the reporting of suspected crimes. It also recommends that national law covers so-called ‘sex-tourism’ offences. This would allow courts to try nationals suspected of committing criminal offences against children in foreign countries where they escape prosecution by benefiting from legal loopholes or from the ‘blind eye’ of authorities.

Today.Az