A/HRC/7/8
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provide shelter, food, health care, psychosocial counselling, training and interpretation, and their
services are provided free of charge for persons in need of assistance. In Slovakia, special
assistance for mistreated and abused children who had to be isolated from their family was
available in the Children’s Homes. Support for children as well as adults in a crisis situation
were also provided through the Crisis Centres, run by local authorities and NGOs. Cyprus and
Luxembourg stated that cases of minors who were victims of commercial sexual exploitation
were rare due in part to their small number, but that victims of these abuses were treated as
children in need of care and protection, as no specific programmes designed for this target group
had been established. In Monaco and in Zimbabwe, several NGOs for the defence of children’s
rights and welfare were active in the prevention of commercial sexual exploitation and the
trafficking of minors. Oman replied that it had not established such programmes or shelters,
because the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography were not perceptible
phenomena there. However, it did take steps to prevent it, by enacting domestic laws and statutes
and by acceding to the relevant international treaties. Finally, Poland had introduced a number
of measures aimed at crime prevention regarding sexual abuse and human trafficking, in which
several ministries, administrative bodies and NGOs were involved, in line with programmes of
the European Union.
60. The same questionnaire was sent to non-governmental and international organizations
working in the field and they have also highlighted the following examples of programmes in
the following regions and countries.
C. Good practices: examples of projects developed by NGOs and civil society
61. Terre des Hommes has been running programmes and facilities for children at risk and
victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking in Cambodia and in India.
62. The Terre des Hommes facility and programme in Kolkata, India, operates together with
the NGO Sanlaap. This programme is designed for children or minors who are victims of sexual
commercial exploitation and trafficking, and also includes a few children who are abandoned
and children whom the court considers to be in danger if they return to their families, as well as
infants/children of victims. The rehabilitation programme follows a holistic approach, aiming at
covering all aspects of care as an integral unit. It operates like a hospital or a care facility
requiring multiple partners, including counsellors, home mothers, social workers, case managers
and legal officers. The focus is on developing low-cost “compassionate human resources”, rather
than high-cost physical infrastructure or technical human resources, because the partner NGOs
believe that healing and protection, whether in the family or the institution, is a matter of
personal human contact. In the shelter and throughout the programme, primary consideration is
given to the significant psychological and protection needs of trafficked and abused girls, many
of whom have severe emotional disturbances, social problems, suicide risks and mental and
physical challenges. This project is intended to be a model of the functional application of “child
rights” and “child protection” and aims at bringing shelter-based and community-based
care-giving systems2 up to internationally accepted minimum standards of care; establishing an
2
“Guidelines for the operation of care facilities for victims of violence against women and
children: rationale, basic procedures and requirements for capacity building”, developed by
Terre des hommes.
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