JERICHO

Break the silence around child prostitution — inform and empower youth and the wider public.

Project period:February 2023 – January 2025
Coordinator: Pistes Solidaires (France)
Partners of the project: CESIE (Italy), KMOP (Greece), SCOP MEITIS (France)
Website: childrensafe.eu

The context:

An increasing number of young people aged 15 to 17 are victims of prostitution. It is estimated that between 7,000 and 20,000 minors are affected in France alone. “Everyone knows it exists, but it is an unknown subject and no one wants to publish figures,” says Jorge Fernandez del Valle, professor and researcher in psychosociology at the University of Oviedo (Spain).

Although largely invisible, this phenomenon is rapidly growing in France and across Europe. Difficult to detect, child prostitution remains so because of the lack of communication about the issue. It is therefore largely unaddressed by social work professionals, partly because some victims do not see themselves as such.

This makes the fight against this scourge—which affects all social groups—particularly challenging.

JERICHO aims to help raise awareness about this form of sexual exploitation of minors, make it visible and known to as many people as possible, and support those who suffer from it by developing prevention resources and guidance for victims and their families.

The objectives:

– Prevent and raise awareness among young people who are victims of this phenomenon;

– Support families in knowing how to (re)act;

– Help institutions and local authorities protect and respond to this issue.

JERICHO will focus on raising awareness among youth by developing a prevention and information campaign on social media. This original campaign will be delivered through animated videos designed to inform and prevent child prostitution. It will target young people and their families, as well as institutions.

The campaign will be based on an analysis of the phenomenon to better understand it, including the identification of situations and pre-prostitution behaviors.

The results:

In November 2024, an online campaign on social media helped spread the content widely—not only to young people, the main target, but also to a broader audience through other platforms.

The campaign ran in France, Italy, Greece, and across the EU, and was very successful, with results much better than expected. Thanks to the project, we were able to:

– Raise awareness about child sexual exploitation in prostitution

– Help parents and professionals recognize warning signs, and give young people tools to identify risky situations and seek help

– Change attitudes, improve skills for those protecting children, and encourage new, open ways to address this complex issue

Jericho was a unique and innovative project, the first to openly address the sexual exploitation of minors in prostitution with all target groups in an adapted way. It has produced strong and lasting results, reaching even high-level policymakers in countries like France.