The international effort to end child pornography

Coalition Seeks to End Child Pornography.

By Terry Vanderheyden
LifeSiteNews.com
Thursday November 10, 2005

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia, November 10, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Following on yesterday’s LifeSiteNews.com report http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05110905.html that child pornography has become a multi-billion dollar commercial enterprise, and is among the fastest growing businesses on the Internet, an international group has announced an aggressive plan to put an end to child sexual exploitation.

A 22-country coalition unveiled an action plan that proposes a 17-point plan including creation of a universal three-digit phone number for reporting missing children; the establishment of an expanded database of convicted pedophiles; and the development of a system to track child traffickers across borders.

The action plan also includes measures to eradicate the commercial viability of child pornography by January 1, 2008, by mobilizing banking and financial industry leaders; by developing a uniform system for the reporting of child pornography by Internet Service Providers; by advocating that every country criminalize the possession of child pornography; and by expanding efforts to identify children used in child pornography.

The action plan was adopted last week by the attendees at the first U.S./European Summit on Missing and Exploited Children held in Buonas, Switzerland. Margarida Barroso, wife of the President of the European Commission, said, “More than ever, Americans and Europeans must stay close together in the defense of the most vulnerable. But the task is so urgent and so immense that all actors must mobilize.”

The program will be modeled after the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). John Walsh, co-founder of NCMEC, host of “America’s Most Wanted,” and father of an abducted and murdered child, said, “. . . 24 years ago, there was nothing. I never dreamed that a meeting like this was possible, or that we could unite to help children everywhere.”

See the NCMEC web-site devoted to child sexual exploitation:
http://www.ncmec.org/missingkids/servlet/PageServl...