The United Nations launched on May 25 2010 a major campaign for universal adoption of treaty protocols that outlaw the sale of children, child prostitution and pornography, and protect youngsters in armed conflict, with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling for full ratification by 2012.
 
"The sad truth is that too many children in today’s world suffer appalling abuse," Ban was quoted by the UN News Service as having told a ceremony at the headquarters of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in New York marking the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the two optional protocols strengthening the Convention on the Rights of the Child by providing a moral and legal shield for youngsters vulnerable to prostitution and pornography or caught up in armed conflict.
 
"Two-thirds of all member states have endorsed these instruments. On this 10th anniversary of their adoption, I urge all countries to ratify them within the next two years," Ban said.
 
Ban cited recent advances: the release three months ago by the Maoist army in Nepal, under UN supervision, of more than 2000 soldiers who had been recruited as children; the UN-assisted freeing of children from the ranks of armed groups In Côte d’Ivoire; the prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of former Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga for war crimes against children.
 
He said that fewer and fewer states now permit children to join the armed forces and reiterated his previous calls to the Security Council to consider tough measures on those states and insurgent groups that still recruit children.
 
More countries are also reforming legislation and criminalizing the sale of children, child prostitution, child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children, with international cooperation helping to dismantle paedophile networks, remove child pornography from the internet, and protect children from sexual exploitation by tourists.
 
"Nonetheless, much remains to be done," Ban said. "In too many places, children are seen as commodities, in too many instances they are treated as criminals instead of being protected as victims, and there are too many conflicts where children are used as soldiers, spies or human shields."
 
UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said the Optional Protocols "represent a promise made to the world’s most vulnerable children – children born into extreme poverty and despair, children in countries torn apart by conflict and children forced into unimaginable servitude by adults who regard them as commodities."
 
The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict has been ratified by 132 States; 25 States have signed but not ratified it and 36 States have neither signed nor ratified it.
 
"We know from the situation on the ground that much remains to be done. Violence against children in all its forms remains a challenge for societies in the world," Ban’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy said, the UN News Service reported.
 
"There are a multitude of conflicts where children are used as soldiers, spies, human shields or for sexual purposes. Every additional ratification of the Optional Protocol would therefore bring us closer to a world in which no child is participating in hostilities and forced to serve the national military or irregular armies."
 
"The Optional Protocol is an important tool for tearing through the mantle of invisibility surrounding the sale of children, child prostitution, child pornography and other forms of sexual exploitation, to mobilize societies and to translate political commitment into effective protection of children from all forms of violence," Ban’s Special Representative on Violence against Children Marta Santos Pais said, citing significant law reforms to criminalize such crimes.
 
At a later news conference, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde Johnson cited called the use of child soldiers and their sale and misuse in pornography and slavery-like sex work as two of the most brutal abuses of children. "This has to come to an end, so the first step is to ensure universal ratification," she said.
 
Santos Pais praised the change that has taken place over the past 10 years, with new legislation introduced and protection system strengthened in most countries. "But unfortunately we are halfway. We are absolutely impatient to see this process of change touch upon the lives of all children in the world."
 
Meanwhile, on May 25, International Missing Children's Day, European Commission Vice-Presidents Viviane Reding, responsible for EU Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, and Neelie Kroes, responsible for the Digital Agenda, urged EU member states to step up their efforts to introduce child alert systems and to make the missing children's hotline 116 000 operational as soon as possible.
 
"Every missing child is a tragedy, and we must do everything we can to prevent such tragedies. The Commission created the European 116000 hotline to report missing children and offer guidance and support to their families, everywhere in Europe. I regret to see that the hotline works only in 11 Member States," a European Commission media statement quoted Reding as saying.
 
"It is hard to come to terms with the fact that measures that could help are not yet fully operational across the Union. It would be a double tragedy to imagine a missing child trying to call the 116 000 hotline only to hear an answering machine playing a pre-recorded message announcing that the service will be operational in 2012. I call on member states to put every effort to change this."
 
Kroes, responsible for the Digital Agenda, said that EU member states must respect their legal obligations to not only put in place the missing children hotline number as a matter of urgency but also ensure that the public is well-informed about it.
 
The EU has already put in place the rules to ensure that the 116000 number is set aside everywhere in the EU for hotlines to report missing children and offer guidance and support to their families, the European Commission statement said.
 
These hotlines are currently operational in 11 member states (Belgium, Denmark, Greece, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia).
 
With the adoption of new EU telecoms rules in November 2009, EU member states are obliged to make every effort to ensure that the 116 000 hotline is activated by May 25 2011.
 
The European Commission said that it would "closely monitor" the implementation of this obligation by the member states, as it did for the single European emergency number 112, which now works free of charge anywhere in the EU, according to the statement.
 
The Commission also supports the creation of cross-border child alert systems that help in the search of abducted children by enabling the public to provide the relevant authorities with real-time information.
 
Alert systems exist in eight EU member states: the Netherlands, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Greece, Germany and the UK.
 
On May 25, Bulgaria’s Focus news agency, quoting Romanian agency Mediafax, said that more than 3200 Romanian children had disappeared in the past year, 10 times more than the 2003/2004 period when 300 children were reported missing.
 
Adrian Dumitrescu, chief of the Romanian police investigation department, said that 140 of the missing children were aged under 10, and said that 324 other children were reported missing by April 21 2010 and about 3286 missing children were found by the police over the past year.
 
Dumitrescu said that about three per cent of the total number of missing cases were accidental and one per cent of the missing children were victims of kidnapping or human trafficking for sexual abuse. 
 
Greek newspaper Ethnos, quoted by Focus, said on May 25 that authorities in Heraklion, Crete, solved two cases of sexual exploitation involving Bulgarian citizens.
 
Four people had been arrested and three were being sought, the newspaper said. In both cases the people involved were relatives.
 
One of the two cases involved a 15-year-old girl being forced into prostitution with the knowledge and approval of her parents.
 
Earlier in May, French police have arrested a group of Bulgarians who allegedly forced their eight children into prostitution on the streets of Bordeaux, south-western France.