18/03/2013 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Strasbourg, 15.03.2013 – Council of Europe member states should enact laws enabling them to prosecute “child sex tourists” for acts committed abroad, PACE’s Social Affairs Committee has said, approving a report on the topic today at its meeting in Berlin.
In a draft resolution based on a report by Valeriu Ghiletchi (Republic of Moldova, EPP/CD), the committee called for child sex tourism to be made an “extra-territorial” offence, and for states to abolish the “dual criminality rule” which requires an act to be an offence in both countries before prosecution can proceed.
In 1993 Germany was the first European country to introduce a mechanism for pursuing offenders abroad, the rapporteur points out in his explanatory memorandum, followed by France in 1994 and the UK in 1997. However by 2008, only 22 of the Council of Europe’s member states had followed suit.
The committee also called for ethical codes of conduct in the tourism industry, measures to encourage the reporting of travelling sex offenders, centralised databases of national records on child sex offenders and other measures to increase international co-operation on this issue.
The report is due to be discussed by the Parliamentary Assembly at its forthcoming spring session (22-26 April).