At ECPAT, we recognise the unique insights children possess into their own lives, and the transformative power of involving them as active participants in shaping solutions to combat sexual exploitation and abuse. This has fueled our commitment to developing a comprehensive Child Participation Strategy, rooted in the fundamental principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), particularly Article 12 and General Comment 12.
ECPAT operates on the principle that all children involved in our activities, projects and programmes should have their health, safety, well-being, and best interests prioritised. To ensure this, ECPAT has implemented a robust child safeguarding framework, which lays out the highest standards of professional behaviour, ethical and personal practice to prevent harm and safeguard children and young people throughout their involvement with ECPAT. Click here to learn more about Safeguarding at ECPAT.
Beyond ensuring the safety of children, ECPAT aims to create spaces and opportunities for children and young people to inform and influence action within the network and in the broader sector. In early 2000, our groundbreaking work with young survivors through the Youth Participation Project (YPP) and the establishment of the ECPAT International Child and Youth Advisory Committee (EIYAC) had paved the way for innovative projects that prioritised centreing the voices of young survivors and children in research and advocacy.
ECPAT International has developed a comprehensive multi-year Child Participation Strategy that serves as a roadmap, identifying priorities and actionable steps to strengthen and improve the child and youth participation culture within our organisation. The Strategy was developed through an extensive consultative process involving an internal mapping of ECPAT’s work with children, an external review of trends in the sector, interviews with ECPAT members, and consultations with 71 children. Many of these initiatives are geared towards enhancing our understanding and capacities, as well as providing support to our members to create more enabling environments for child and youth participation in the future.
Over the next five years, as an organisation, we will grow our understanding of, and illustrate our commitment to, child and youth participation – including the participation of young survivors. As part of that commitment, we will ensure that we promote and practice safe, meaningful, inclusive and contextual approaches to child and youth participation that aim to benefit those involved.
As a secretariat, we will pilot new approaches and strategies that will help our team, and our members, share, learn, reflect and access different types of guidance and support. We will learn from those with expertise in this area: including from the children and young people we work with; our members and; from external actors. The goal of this being to strengthen participatory processes and practices when engaging with the children and young people we work with.
Read our Child and Youth Participation strategy below:
Recognising the need for information that is accessible and engaging for children and young people, ECPAT has developed child-friendly versions of key documents, policies, and strategies. These resources are designed to be clear, age-appropriate, and engaging, allowing children and young to better understand our work and initiatives. Explore our child-friendly resources below:
ECPAT International is currently piloting ‘Children Know Better’ a project that aims at empowering children by building spaces to generate dialogues and influence strategies to promote a more accountable society free from child sexual exploitation. The project is being implemented with members Children’s Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN) in Nepal and Association for Community Development (ACD) in Bangladesh.
The project entails deep dive engagements with children over a period of 2 years, to develop their capacities to critically engage with child protection policies and interventions and support them to conduct child-led peer-to-peer data collection, analyse the data, come up with recommendations and implement them. By recognizing children as the experts of their own lives and supporting them to exercice their rights, we are empowering them to lead changes, challenge adult-dominated narratives, and strengthen accountability, effectiveness, and ownership of strategies to combat child sexual exploitation.
It is also envisaged that duty bearers such as policymakers will recognize the value of children’s leadership and participation in addressing sexual exploitation of children and be motivated to engage with children in bringing about social transformations linked to their rights to protection and participation.
The She Leads programme aims to increase the sustained influence of girls and young women on decision-making and the transformation of gender norms in formal and informal institutions. She Leads supports girl-led groups and local partners in creating their own agenda and making their own decisions on advocacy and strategy. This programme has a specific geographic focus on East Africa (Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya), West Africa (Ghana, Mali, Sierra Leone, and Liberia), and the Middle East (Lebanon and Jordan). This is five-year joint programme led by Plan International Netherlands, with Defence for Children – ECPAT the Netherlands (DCI-ECPAT NL), African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), and Terres de Hommes (TdH) Netherlands, in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the Netherlands and ECPAT International.
She Leads at the Senegal Regional Workshop 2024
Four young women from West Africa (Mali, Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone), representing the She Leads programme, attended ECPAT’s recent Regional Workshop in Senegal to present the experiences of their peers facing online child sexual exploitation, and to call for urgent action to addressing this growing crisis. During the workshop, these young leaders delivered a compelling call to action, urging collective efforts at all levels to protect girls and young women in digital spaces. Click here to download the Call to Action.
ECPAT has established a Global Expert Advisory Group on Child Participation. This group includes experts from key child rights mechanisms and treaty bodies, academics experts, international, regional and local civil society practitioners and dedicated young people and survivors. It convenes to share experiences, learning, explore models, practices and approaches to disrupt structural barriers to child participation, particularly related to preventing and addressing SEC and abuse, as a safe space for critical discussions about child and youth participation, with members contributing their knowledge and expertise towards promoting safe and sustainable systems and mechanisms to ensure real opportunities for children and youth, including young survivors, to influence narratives, policies and practices on highly sensitive issues such as childhood sexual violence. To collaboratively advocate for transforming narratives, policies, and practices. Join us in this important initiative to amplify children’s voices!
In recognising the expertise across the ECPAT network, this platform is dedicated to connecting our members, initiating and facilitating peer learning opportunities connected to child and youth participation, including the participation of young survivors. Members interested in the Peer Learning Network can sign up at any time by filing out this form. Through the Peer Learning Network, we will facilitate opportunities for knowledge exchange, reflection, peer learning and technical support to strengthen participatory practice through workshops, webinars, events, newsletter etc.
Child participation is not just about ‘voice’ and creating spaces to hear those voices, it is also about having an audience and creating real opportunities to influence that audience, prepared to take children’s views meaningfully into account. Our content aims to catalyze reflection, discussion and actions—ultimately creating momentum for child participation. ECPAT International also carries out advocacy in different ways targeting duty bearers, policymakers and donors. This includes among other ways, evidencing the value and impact of participatory approaches to address the sexual exploitation and abuse of children through research and evaluation in order to influence donors and other stakeholders to fund and create resources for engagement.
This initiative is dedicated towards connecting, recognising, appreciating and supporting young activists to enhance their skills and capacities to support their own initiatives and advocacy efforts in addressing child sexual exploitation. We will facilitate regular online exchanges to share experiences, opportunities for capacity development and information sessions for the children and young people on influencing and child-led advocacy.
Recent notable research projects conducted with children include:
