Abstract:
Tourism has a big contribution in Thailand's GDP. However, the problem of
Child Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism (CSETT) has emerge alongside
the benefit of tourism. This problem is also occur in its neighboring countries.
Since 2010-2014, Mekong sub-region has been developing a cooperation project
called Project Childhood to eradicate CSETT. This cooperation involved state and
non-state actors, such as Thailand, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Cambodia, the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), INTERPOL and World Vision.
Thailand will be the focus of discussion in this thesis as it known as common
destination for travelling child sex offenders. The thesis will analyze how the
implementation of Project Childhood in Thailand can influence the relations
between Thailand and involving actors which may also influence their effort in
combating CSETT. Transnational Relations theory will be used to explains the
consequences of increase interactions of the actors involve in the Project
Childhood. Moreover, the qualitative method is used to explain the findings.
Using the qualitative method on secondary data analysis, the results shows that
there are four consequences happened in the implementation of Project Childhood
which influence the relations between Thailand and involving actors. These
consequences are results from the increase transnational interactions and
organizations. These four consequences are; promoting attitude change; 2)
promotion of international pluralism; 3) creating dependency and interdependence
and; 4) the emergence of transnational organizations with a private foreign policy
that can actively contradict or intervene with state policies. Furthermore, the
increase relations between Thailand and other involving actors have helped
Thailand Government to strengthen Thai legal framework and enforcement,
promoting national and regional cooperation, and addressing the child victims as
the main focus of case investigation regarding CSEC in general and CSETT in
particular.
