06470
September 15, 2006

Traffic stop

Ending child prostitution and trafficking aim of talks between MRTI and tourism moguls

by Toya Richards Hill

CHICAGO – The Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) committee is taking the lead in engaging two corporations in the leisure and hotel industry in order to halt child prostitution and trafficking facilitated through the tourism trade.

Through its work with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), MRTI will dialogue with Hilton Hotels and Carnival cruise line during the next year. The talks are part of a comprehensive engagement ICCR members are undertaking with several hotel chains, travel agencies and cruise lines.

The goal is to get the companies to comply with guidelines set up by the ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) network.

“This will be a major new focus in ICCR next year,” said the Rev. Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) staff person assigned to MRTI. “It’s an industry that really needs to get up to speed.”

MRTI, which met here Sept. 6-8, consented to the work during review and approval of its 2006-2007 Priority Issues Work Plan. The work plan covers nine key categories, and the action involving the leisure and hotel industry falls under the category of Media Standards and Family Issues.

Somplatsky-Jarman told the committee of the pervasive nature of child prostitution and trafficking often facilitated through the tourism industry, and MRTI chair Carol Hylkema gave a first-hand account of seeing young women prostituted in Thailand, where the market is completely open to foreign travelers looking for young girls.

“It’s insidious. It’s everywhere,” Somplatsky-Jarman said.

ECPAT seeks, among other things, “to have the industry adopt basic principles against child prostitution and trafficking, educate their employees and adopt policies and practices to prevent their properties or services from being involved in any way with child prostitution and trafficking,” MRTI explains in its work plan.

The PC(USA) owns stock in both Hilton Hotels and Carnival, Somplatsky-Jarman said. The stock is owned either through the Presbyterian Foundation or the Board of Pensions, or both.

In other news from MRTI, the committee will continue its engagement of five multinational corporations in order to get them to change their business practices in Israel and Palestine.

That’s the committee’s plan based on its understanding of new orders it received from the 217th General Assembly (GA) which met in June in Birmingham, AL.

The 217th assembly changed the wording of MRTI’s previous assignment from the 216th GA to initiate a process of “phased, selective divestment,” and replaced it with a new charge urging that financial investments of the PC(USA) go only toward “peaceful pursuits” (Item 11-01), and that MRTI’s “customary corporate engagement process” be used to achieve that goal.

“The process that we were involved in … is the one that we will be continuing,” Somplatsky-Jarman said. “It affirms the corporate engagement process which we were in the middle of.”

MRTI selected Caterpillar, Citigroup, ITT Industries, Motorola and United Technologies to engage while under its previous mandate from the 216th GA, and so far meetings have been held with Citigroup, Motorola and ITT Industries.

At the same time, some MRTI members who were present at the GA meeting in Birmingham acknowledged there was confusion about whether or not the new Israel-Palestine action halts the phased, selective divestment process now that the controversial wording is gone.

“The majority of commissioners to the General Assembly really don’t know what they did,” said Hylkema. “Some of them think we stopped it, some of them think that it continues.”

She criticized the way the item was handled on the floor of the assembly, saying not enough time was taken to talk about it. “All of this took, if it was 15 minutes I’d be surprised,” Hylkema said.

“I think people were so happy … that World War III didn’t erupt on the floor,” said Judith Freyer, the Board of Pensions staff representative to MRTI. The fact that there was no clear direction “didn’t seem to bother them.”