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During Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, ECPAT-USA has reflected on its connection with our own organizational roots. The month was selected to mark the May 1843 arrival of the first Japanese immigrants to the United States as well as the Chinese immigrants whose labor was essential to building the Transcontinental Railroad, completed in May 1869. Originally a week long, President Bush expanded Asian American Heritage observance to one month in 1990, adding “Pacific Islander” recognition two years later.
At the same time that the United States was beginning to publicly recognize and celebrate the vital contributions of the AAPI community, ECPAT-USA was examining aspects of our country’s less admirable engagement with Asia, namely the crisis of child sex tourism fueled largely by U.S. and Western European travelers. Recognizing the need for action on a global scale, the “U.S. Committee to Support the Campaign to End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism” (later shortened to “ECPAT-USA”) joined the ECPAT International network to eradicate the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Our early decision to take on this cause, now seemingly so obvious, was fraught with challenges at the time. Few U.S. humanitarian groups wanted to address the uncomfortable truth that Americans were traveling to Thailand, South Asia, and other regions around the globe with the purpose of buying children for sex, even though one ECPAT International study conducted at the time found that U.S. citizens made up the largest group of buyers. Another study examined the rationalizations travelers gave for purchasing children. Some of the excuses were not surprising - a feeling of safety and anonymity in a foreign country, a reluctance of tourism-dependent businesses to report the clientele, corruption, and a lack of local political will to shut down lucrative enterprises or prosecute customers. But perhaps the most disturbing finding was that many of the purchasers believed the children they exploited were a “different class of human beings,” describing their cultures as more “open,” “natural,” and “free” than Western culture. By seeking out children whose racial and ethnic backgrounds are “different” from their own, sex buyers engage in fetishization, dehumanizing the child and therefore persuading themselves that no real harm is done.
It was this “othering” of Asian children that drove ECPAT-USA to take decisive action. Arguing that all children have a fundamental right to the integrity of their bodies, regardless of the color of their skin, ECPAT-USA advocated for -- and won -- the passage of federal legislation that outlawed child sex tourism, imposing both fines and jail time on U.S. travelers who included child sexual abuse as part of their vacation plans.
The landmark legislation, coupled with partnerships with the travel and tourism industry, propelled ECPAT-USA to turn our lens to sex buying in our home country. Sadly, but not surprisingly, we discovered that some of the same themes identified abroad can be found in our own backyard, as children of color make up the majority of youth trafficked for sex but are often stigmatized and criminalized rather than provided access to services. For Asians and Asian Americans, the consequences of fetishization are not only psychologically harmful but, as seen in last month’s Atlanta massage establishment shootings, deadly.
Guided by our Survivors’ Council, ECPAT-USA has been building on the early successes of our work to protect children of all backgrounds. This past year has seen a deepening of the early conversations held nearly three decades ago, fueled by the impact of COVID-19 and the racial justice movement. Please join us on May 27 as we continue these discussions with a panel held in honor of AAPI Heritage Month, featuring AAPI leaders (including ECPAT-USA’s Director of Private Sector Engagement, Yvonne Chen) in the movement to create a world in which no child is bought, sold, or used for sex.
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