Lawmakers Meet to Discuss Laws
Against Sexual Exploitation of Children

Costa Rican legislators will meet with lawmakers from other Central American countries and Mexico in Panama City today, the last day of a two-day attempt to coordinate each country's legal punishments for the abuse, sexual exploitation and trafficking of children.

The conference is part of the combined effort of the United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF), the International Labor Organization, the International Organization for Migration and ECPAT International, a children's rights defense organization, to homogenize the laws of the countries in the region.

The goal is to create a standard for every country's laws that define crimes that victimize children. Similar laws throughout the isthmus could prevent one country from imposing lighter sentences or giving criminals greater leeway, thereby causing an influx of international perpetrators and turning the country into a “paradise of exploitation and sex tourism,” UNICEF said in a statement.

UNICEF is pushing its Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by 192 countries in the United Nations, which stipulates that the sexual exploitation of minors under 18 should be illegal, and that laws punish the client (the adult) rather than the victim, even if the sex act was consensual.

Only two U.N. countries have not ratified the Convention – the United States and Somalia , both of which have expressed their intention to ratify by formally signing it.

UNICEF has attached several optional protocols to the Convention, one of which deals with the sale of children, child prostitution and the use of children in pornography, which all of the countries represented at the conference have ratified, except Nicaragua .

The Optional Protocol entered into force in January 2002, and has been signed by 110 nations and ratified by 87, according to UNICEF's Web site, www.unicef.org . Costa Rica ratified it in April 2002.

Country's Last Cellular
Phone Lines On Sale Now

Those wanting cellular phone service should run, not walk, to a service provider: as of yesterday, a limited number of GSM cellular phone lines are available for purchase, but when supplies run out there is no telling when more will become available.

According to a statement from the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), which has a monopoly on telecommunications service in Costa Rica , the GSM lines now available belonged to users who did not pay their bills for two consecutive months, causing ICE to cancel their service.

To purchase cellular service, you must take the following documents to any ICE agency: an original and copy of a Costa Rican identity card (cédula); the name and cédula number of a beneficiary who will receive the service in the case of the original owner's death; a GSM or TDMA cell phone; the original and two copies of the receipt from the purchase of the phone; a deposit of ¢12,000 ($27.75); and the original or copy of a water, telephone or electricity bill.

A maximum of two cellular lines per person will be assigned, according to a statement from ICE.

Non-Costa Rican citizens can own and pay bills on a cellular phone, but can only obtain cellular service if accompanied by a citizen, equipped with the documents listed above, who purchases the service in his or her own name. 

For more information or to find the locations of ICE agencies or ICE-authorized cell phone retailers, visit www.grupoice.com.