Bali Island, Indonesia - South-East Asian nations must take stronger measures to curb sexual exploitation of children in the tourism industry, delegates at an international conference on child sex tourism said Friday.

A statement issued at the end of the conference on Indonesia's resort island of Bali warned that the current global financial crisis would increase children's vulnerability to child sex tourism.

"We urge all sectors of society, particularly the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, to immediately escalate action to protect children and prosecute offenders," the statement said.

"We commend many local, national and regional efforts to promote the rights of the child and to combat child sex tourism. However, we witness an increasing incidence of this crime against children," it said.

Child rights groups have told the conference, attended by officials, activists and academics from 17 countries, that child sex tourism is rampant in South-East Asia despite efforts to curb the crime.

The statement said regional and international cooperation to ensure offenders are brought to justice was important.

Poverty remains a root cause of child sex tourism but other factors include limited access to education, gender relations, and weak law enforcement also contributed to the problem, delegates concluded.

The pervasiveness of the internet and images showing child abuse, have also played a role in the sexual exploitation of children.

"Offenders are increasingly travelling to remote communities and using alternative accommodation such as home-stays," the declaration said. In Indonesia, child sex tourism is a major problem on Bali and Batam Island, according to the National Coalition against Sexual Exploitation of Children.

The coalition said Bali had become a haven for international paedophile rings with offenders travelling around the island looking for poor children as their targets.

Frans van Dijk, director of Terre des Hommes, a Geneva-based child rights group, said between 50,000 and 60,000 children were exploited as sex workers in South-East Asia.

A court in Bali last month sentenced an Australian man, Philip Robert Grandfield, to eight years in prison for having sex with boys.

He was one of several Australians to have been arrested in Indonesia in recent years for paedophilia. (dpa)