Child sex tourism is the commercial sexual exploitation of children by men or women who travel from one place to another. This is usually from a richer country to one that is less developed. These tourists engage in sexual acts with children, defined as anyone younger than eighteen years old. Child sex tourism is a crime and can be punished in the country of destination and in many countries of origin!

A traveller may not intend to engage in sex with children while he is away from home, but he does so because a child is made easily available to him. Travellers may rationalise their sexual exploitation of children by adopting an assumption that sex with a child is culturally acceptable in the place that they are visiting. Some sex tourists consciously look for sexual contact with children. People who visit bars and hotels where children are openly exploited but do not have sex with them, help keeping the child sex tourism in score.

Roughly perpetrators can be classified into three categories:

The situational child sex offender abuses children by way of experimentation or through the anonymity and impunity afforded by being a tourist. He or she does not have an exclusive sexual inclination for children. Often, the situational offender is an indiscriminate sex tourist who is presented with the opportunity to interact sexually with a person under 18 and takes it. The majority of child sex tourists are situational offenders.

The preferential child sex tourist displays an active sexual preference for children. He or she may still have the capacity to experience sexual attraction for adults but will actively seek out minors for sexual contact. The preferential child sex tourist will generally search for pubescent or adolescent children. It is important to distinguish the preferential child sex tourist from the paedophile (see below).

The paedophile manifests an exclusive sexual inclination for pre-pubescent children. Usually considered as someone suffering from a clinical disorder, the paedophile may not show any preference for the gender of children and may not view sexual contact with children as harmful. Paedophiles, as well as the 'preferential' abusers described above, are a minority of child sex tourists.

Very few child sex tourists are arrested, tried and sentenced. Child sex tourism is not given high priority by both sending -and destination countries. In many sending countries it is possible to prosecute offenders who carry out abuse in another country, under extraterritorial laws. This is rarely used because these cases are very time consuming and costly. Different countries have to collaborate in cases concerning extraterritorial legislation and deal with a difference in language and culture and a large travel distance. Destination countries do not have the finances, men and/ or will to gather sufficient evidence. And in cases with adolescents, offenders may benefit from a social tolerance in both sending and destination countries, because it is seen as less of a crime (sometimes not seen as a crime at all) than abusing young children. When suspects are arrested, some manage to flee the country and avoid detention or bribe the victims in order to withdraw their complaint. For these reasons, it is relatively easy for child sex offenders to abuse children all over the world.

No agency can fight the sexual exploitation of children by itself. Police, Public Prosecution Service, the government, Interpol, Europol, special investigating services, Royal Military Police (responsible for border control), tourism industry, NGO’s, Youth Care, Council for Child Protection and other stakeholders must work together on prevention, identification, care, investigation and prosecution. Only then children get the protection they are entitled to.