Thirteen people have been arrested over child sexual exploitation charges in a month of cooperative investigations in Thailand between the Royal Thai Police (RTP) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Nine were Thai nationals and four were Americans.
Among the recorded cases were six involving possession of child pornography, four child trafficking cases, two sexual offence cases and one deportation case.
The joint effort was implemented as part of the FBI's annual transnational initiative to recover underage victims of prostitution and raise awareness of child sex trafficking, said FBI legal attache in Thailand John M Schachnovsky.
Called "Operation Cross-Country XI (OCC)," the effort was held for a second successive year in Thailand from Sep 7 to Oct 14. The OCC has been in operation for 11 years in several countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Cambodia and the Philippines.
According to Mr Schachnovsky, foreign institutions can obtain valuable data that would otherwise not be accessible to local authorities.
"Every year the Thai police's capacity for investigation into these issues gets better," he said. "While it is an unfortunate number to see, we are pleased with the number of arrests." He added 10 children have so far been rescued from sex abusers in Thailand under the OCC.
Domestic groundwork for the initiative was mostly conducted by the RTP, under the Thailand Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (Ticac).
Since it was set up in December 2015, Ticac has made 58 arrests in the country, with Thais, Americans, British and Australians among the offenders.
Weerawan Mosby, an adviser for Ticac and winner of this year's Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report award for Acting to End Modern Slavery, said the OCC is a step in the right direction for future investigations into child sexual exploitation cases.
"We are starting to see changes in terms of the way police and society at large view such cases. Police are starting to adopt a more child-centralised approach when investigating, reflecting increased concern among the public," she said.
