The ECPAT Foundation began as a pilot project of ECPAT International that focused on the sexual exploitation of children situated in the North of Thailand. It was registered as a local non-governmental organisation in 1999. The vision of the ECPAT Foundation is the realisation of the rights of all children to live free from exploitation and abuse. ECPAT Foundation’s mission is to promote collaboration and engagement with key stakeholders from government, civil society organisations and the private sector to protect children.
The ECPAT Foundation advocates the implementation and monitoring of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its protocols and engages with networks of human rights and child protection agencies at a national and local level. The foundation supports children and young people who have survived exploitation or are still at risk by encouraging them to participate as key actors to protect themselves and other children in similar situations. The ECPAT Foundation also works to promote the “Child Safe Organisations” framework to local child NGOs and government-run shelters to aid in the development of child protection policy and procedures as well as “the Code of Conduct on Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism”.
Contact: Ms. Katesanee Chantrakul
Phone: +66 53 750167
Address: 426/22 Mooban Kokgalae, Tambon Rimkok, Chiang Rai
Email:
info@ecpatthailand.org
Website: http://www.ecpat-th.org/
Thailand is a source, transit and destination country for children subjected to trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
In December 2015, an amendment to the Penal Code of Thailand, approved in May 2015, entered into force. The current law defines and criminalises child sexual abuse material.
Although estimates vary, in the past Thailand was considered one of the main destination countries for travelling child sex offenders. According to recent reports, however, the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism (SECTT) has declined in Thailand in the last few years.
Year: 2023
Year: 2023
Year: 2022
Year: 2022
Year: 2021
Year: 2019
No
The age of sexual consent for both boys and girls is 15 years. The Thai Penal Code also provides for close-in age exemption in case a child below 18 has sexual intercourse with another child aged 13-15 years of age with the consent of the latter. However, there is no criterion to determine whether the consent is voluntary, well-informed and mutual.
DH Legal Analysis Thailand, 2020
No
Active and passive extraterritoriality is provided for in general terms although it is unclear which SEC related offences are covered by this general provision. Active and passive extraterritoriality is provided for OCSE offences for which the double criminality principle is required.
Extradition requires double criminality and a minimum gravity of one year of imprisonment. There is no specific provisions on extradition for SEC related offences.
DH Legal Analysis Thailand, 2020
No
The national legislation does not provide a definition of CSAM which is in line with international standards. The definition provided does not include depictions of the sexual parts of a child’s body for primarily sexual purposes. The definition covers visual as well as audio and written material. The use of words “drawings” and “illustrations” can be used to cover cases of computer/digitally generated CSAM.
This definition fails to explicitly cover materials that depict a person appearing to be a child engaged in sexually explicit conduct, unless such material is covered under computer/digitally generated CSAM.
DH Legal Analysis Thailand, 2020
No
There are no mandatory legal provisions for criminal background checks nor legislation prohibiting convicted sex offenders to hold positions involving or facilitating contact with children. However, a mandatory criminal background check was introduced in 2015 for foreign teachers.
SECTT Legal Checklist Thailand, 2020
Partial
Thailand has ratified the CRC, the OPSC, the Trafficking Protocol, the ILO Convention and the Optional Protocol on a Communications Procedure.
It has not ratified the WTO Framework Convention on Tourism Ethics and the two Council of Europe conventions (the Lanzarote and Budapest Conventions).
DH Legal Analysis Thailand, 2020
Not Yet Assessed
No information has been found.
Partial
The main police units including SEC in their mandate are the Thailand Internet Crimes against Children Taskforce which investigates OCSE related offences and the Anti Human Trafficking Division that deals with trafficking cases. It is unclear whether both offences under national and extra-territorial jurisdiction are able to be addressed by these units, and whether the units are fully functional.
DH Desk-based Research Thailand, 2020
No
There are no child protection standards for the travel and tourism industry in place.
SECTT Legal Checklist ASEAN, 2020
Partial
The Thailand Internet Crimes Against Children taskforce has been sharing data on the number of cases of online child sexual exploitation and abuse, trafficking and child sexual abuse since 2015. No information was found on whether this data is clearly disaggregated, made available periodically and whether it contains data on offenders and on compensation sought by child victims. It is unclear whether public SEC case data is available for other SEC-related offences.
DH Desk-based Research Thailand, 2020
