Chapter II

The words we use, and why

Some of the most common phrases in this field describe a child as having had a profession. They are worth changing, and the reason is not politeness.

In 2016 an interagency working group including ECPAT, UNICEF, Interpol and Europol published guidelines on what to call these crimes. The guidelines are not a style preference. They are an argument about what each word claims is true.

The principle underneath all of it is short. A child cannot consent to their own exploitation. Any word that implies they did is describing something that did not happen.

Instead ofchild prostitute

we writea child exploited in prostitution

Because The noun makes it an identity and a trade the child practised. It also quietly moves the wrongdoing onto the child and away from the adult who paid.

Instead ofchild prostitution

we writesexual exploitation of children in prostitution

Because Prostitution implies a transaction between parties who can both agree to it. One of these parties is a child, so the word describes a transaction that legally cannot exist.

Instead ofchild pornography

we writechild sexual abuse material

Because Pornography is a genre adults consent to make. What this material records is an assault, and every copy is a repetition of it. The guidelines now mark the old term red.

Instead ofchild sex tourism

we writesexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism

Because Tourism is a leisure activity, and attaching it to the crime lends the offender a holiday's worth of innocence.

Optional Protocol on the sale of children

Treaty

Requires states to criminalise the sale of children and child sexual exploitation.

Article 3 requires each state to criminalise the sale of children, the use of a child in what the Protocol still calls child prostitution, and child sexual abuse material, whether committed domestically or transnationally, and whether by an individual or an organisation. The terminology of the 2000 text has since been superseded; the obligations have not.

Source: Fakultativt protokoll till barnkonventionen om försäljning av barn, barnprostitution och barnpornografi, generalförsamlingens resolution 54/263 av 25 maj 2000, i kraft 18 januari 2002.

One more distinction the guidelines insist on. Victim is a legal status and survivor is a self-description. Neither is a synonym for the other, and neither should be applied to someone who has not chosen it. In our own writing we use victim when we mean the person's position in a case, and we use the person's own word for everything else.