The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child forcefully requires countries that are parties to take appropriate national, bilateral, and multilateral actions to prevent the sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children. This commitment to ending the sexual maltreatment of children has been reaffirmed by several world conferences on human rights. International law now aims to halt practices that are more clearly domestic. These practices include western conceptions of child sexual abuse such as incest and child rape. More controversially, prohibited practices also include those that large segments of certain societies may regard as normal and even necessary to proper socialization; these include child marriages and gender-related rituals. However, many factors and mechanisms resist change; individual countries largely remain reactive, and practices with strong cultural moorings still remain difficult to abolish. Nevertheless, the emerging consensus that children should be protected from sexual maltreatment offers the opportunity to make progress against rights violations that previously have been considerably hindered by thin research, dogmatism, and the lack of clarity concerning what represents appropriate action to protect children's rights. Finally, it is crucial to proceed with caution toward implementation and to consider evidence that conceptions of rights, family, childhood, privacy, sex, and harm are intimately tied to cultural values and outlooks of particular societies. 115 references