Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers from around the world which may be of interest to our readers:

Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on the sexual exploitation of children:

An international conference to combat the mushrooming problem of sexual exploitation of children was held on December 17-20 in Yokohama. ... Sexual abuse of children is a deep-rooted problem that defies any simple solution. Poverty, conflict, the collapse of the family, the profit-oriented culture of today and the proliferation of misinformation concerning sex have all complicated the task of wrestling with this problem. An effective approach to the problem requires deep insight into human nature.

That’s why it is so crucially important that governments, international organisations like UNICEF and non-governmental organisations work hand-in-hand in exploring the problems and seeking solutions. This battle against child exploitation demands steady, long-term efforts, including education to help children avoid becoming either victims or abusers.

The latest conference was also attended by some 100 children from around the world who discussed the problems with the awareness that they could be directly affected any time. Children should become more involved in this international campaign, as they have a lot to offer. Sexual crimes leave a deep, often permanent scar on the victims, condemning them to a lifetime of suffering. Damaging children amounts to damaging the future of humanity.

Berliner Zeitung, Berlin, on the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the US-led anti-terror campaign:

At the end of this year, there is no sign of a new world order emerging, as George Bush senior hoped it would after the Gulf War. For now, chaos rules. Whether the power of the United States is sufficient to bring this chaos back under control, remains uncertain after the overthrow of the Taliban.

If it can’t, 2001 could also mark the decline of American culture. Freeing the world permanently of terror is, because it’s unachievable, a delusion that could mean ever more war and new chaos ....

Even when Osama bin Laden is in the hands of the United States, dead or alive, that won’t mean the end of armed conflicts. The conflict in the Mideast threatens to escalate further because Washington is hesitating to put its foot down. ...

The New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the “Person of the Year”:

Is the ‘Time’ nuts? Opium in our latte would not have lulled us from the obvious. The one person who, in the words of ‘Time’ founder Henry Luce, ‘most affected the news of our lives for good or ill’, has got to be Osama bin Laden.

But the magazine editors were moved, or perhaps behoved, to name soon-to-retire New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as ‘Time’s’ Person of the Year. Of course, it is the editor’s prerogative and yes, deep inside we all yearn for heroes, but it must be asked: Why depart from the criteria?

What impact could the magazine editors possibly ask for? Going by the secret evidence of President George Bush and his supra-ambassador, Tony Blair, Osama’s rhetoric inflamed the damaged imaginations of young men, enough to produce an act of true evil that smashed decades in which America drifted languidly along waters untroubled by the riptides of history. A man whose impact did not stop at the steel-melting fires, the entombment of thousands of innocent lives, the visual hole in the Manhattan skyline and the hole in America’s psyche, but who inspired cowboy justice.