United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and Save The Children India (STCI), an independent child right organisation, have together started working on bringing a Code of Conduct for the travel and tourism fraternity to bring awareness about the dangers of various unethical practices related with tourism. The initiative had its first meeting with the stakeholders of the tourism industry earlier this month in Delhi.
The code, which will be known as Code of Conduct for Safe and Honourable Tourism, which is on the drafting stage, will be circulated among the members for their views and opinions, informed Neelam Matai, Programme Manager, STCI. “We want the final draft to be signed by everyone well before the 2010 Commonwealth Games,” stated Matai. When asked about the response from the tourism fraternity, she said that they were “excited” about it and keen to be part of the code.
While taking part in a panel discussion on ‘Safe & Honourable Tourism (Malevolence of Child Sex Tourism)’ at IHM Pusa, Matai opined that tourism was not the cause of sex exploitation, but exploiters always make use of the facilities tourism offer for their network. |