Barnsexturismen i Thailand – en svensk angelägenhet? Svenska aktörers agerande ur ett globalt rättviseperspektiv.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this essay was to analyze how the child sex tourism is looked upon and how Swedish actors on the global arena act against the child sex tourism in Thailand. The United Nations define child sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary purpose of effecting a commercial sexual relationship by the tourist with residents at the destination”. My interest is to look deeper into this problem in Thailand, since it is a country with interesting background and cultural differences compared to Sweden. The problem with the child sex industry and the exploitation of children for sexual purposes has been noticed by the Swedish film industry and authors, and frequently discussed in media over the last 15 years. Although child sex exploitation is worth noticing, it is commonly in our western culture considered a repelling crime, seemingly putting the topic under taboo. Besides the Swedish government, there are some NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) situated in Sweden working actively against the child sex tourism in Thailand. From a global theory of justice perspective, my aim is to analyze the problem with the child sex tourism in Thailand and what Swedish actors actually do to prevent it. Do the actors have a mutual opinion of what the cause of the problem is? Do they have a equivalent approach to what measures that should be taken? Do the Swedish actors work in the same direction, i e. do they have the same goal? Is Sweden taking responsibility as a nation when it comes to acting against the sexual exploitation of children in Thailand? In order to create a well-founded analysis, I combined two methods: interviewing the Swedish actors by mail (qualitative method) and questioning a Swedish target group consisting of 228 persons, using a web based survey with multiple questions (quantitative method). I also used reports and recent research as well as adequate literature to give the analysis a solid foundation. The essay is based on the perspective of global justice theory, which was intended to permeate the analysis. The comprehensive concluding summary is that the actors as well as the respondents of the survey all consider a higher level of global co-operation to be an absolute necessity in order to tackle the problem.