How to stop failing boys on issues of sexual abuse and exploitation: The call from ECPAT International Global Boys Initiative to provide gender-sensitive services to boy survivors

 

Breaking the Silence: Unmasking Boys’ Struggles and Transforming Harmful Gender Norms

 

Society places expectations on boys to be invulnerable, demonstrate strength, be self-sufficient, and when faced with adversity, to control their emotions and solve their problems alone. Deviating from these norms, for example, by seeking help, can be regarded as a form of a weakness. Gender norms can even prevent boys from recognising they have been victimised or impact the ways they demonstrate they need help. The culture of silence is further reinforced by a combination of additional individual, relational, community and institutional factors. In this sense, boys’ internalisation of gender norms is part of the problem. They often reflect guilt, shame, and internalised anger at themselves.

 

The topic of vulnerability or victimisation of boys is not addressed in capacity building and rarely discussed with frontline workers. This fuels a vicious cycle, in which limited disclosures and referrals mean that frontline workers have little experience on the issue, and that authorities are not made aware of the problem because boys hardly appear in statistics and reports. Currently, frontline workers are generally not equipped to identify and fulfil the rights of boys subjected to sexual exploitation and abuse to access adapted services and there is a pressing need to address gender norms and biases in the way that prevention and response services are designed and carried out.

 

While services for at-risk boys and survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse exist, they fall short in meeting their unique trajectories. Ensuring that services are adapted to boys and integrating a strong gender approach represent an important opportunity to challenge and transform harmful gender norms, stereotypes and relationships, ultimately contributing to the broader fight against gender-based violence.

 

Global Boys Summit 2023: Charting a Path Forward to Protect and Empower Boys

 

During the first ever Global Boys Summit, convened by ECPAT International in Morocco in June 2023, practitioners from approximately 30 countries discussed challenges and obstacles in service provision to boys and agreed on key action points to ensure that this issue is systematically integrated in the work of the child protection sector. Moving forward, the issue of the sexual exploitation and abuse of boys can be addressed through a mix of actions at different levels:

 

• Ensuring services adapted to boys and integrating a strong gender approach represent an important opportunity to challenge and transform harmful gender norms, stereotypes and relationship – finally contributing to the broader fight against gender-based violence;
• Identifying allies and who should be influenced to mobilise for the cause on how to support to boys includes galvanising people into participatory action for prevention, response and rehabilitation;
• Funding is missing, and donors must be identified from multiple levels (e.g., international, national, private sector) for key initiatives that support boys;
• As research on boys is underfunded and there is a lack of data, it makes it difficult to prioritise how to support boys within programmes. Research on sexual exploitation and abuse of children should include safe and ethical data collection to include gender dimensions and intersectionalities.

 

 

For more information on the work of the ECPAT International Global Boys Initiative and the opportunities for programming, campaigning and advocacy engagement on the issue please contact Francesco Cecon, Head of the Global Boys Initiative at: francescoc@ecpat.org and visit the website of the Initiative at: https://ecpat.org/global-boys-initiative/