Country reports

The country reports below give only a glimpse of what is really happening. The fact that mostly third–world countries are mentioned reflects only that ECPAT over the last few years has mainly been researching in these countries. However, it may not lead to the wrong assumption, that in the economically developed world the commercial sexual exploitation of children is non–existent.

It is extremely difficult to get exact data as the sex trade is a multi–billion dollar business with often highly criminal and covert structures. We can be sure, that we have not seen the whole iceberg yet. Nevertheless these reports may serve as a strong indicator for the scope of the problem.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CANADA

The supply of children to the sex trade is linked with homelessness and family breakdown. Teenage children, having been thrown out of home or having run away following physical, mental and/or sexual abuse, neglect, parental drug or alcohol addiction sell sex for survival.

In Canada, thousands of teenage girls are being prostituted by organised pimp rings. In Montreal alone there shall be several thousands juveniles involved in the sex trade.

ITALY

Children aged 5 to 14 years have been found prostituted in Sicily. They have been controlled by an organised sex ring and abused in the production of pornographic videotapes. Some of the children have been prostituted as a form of compensation because their parents could not pay off their debts. About 10 % of prostitution in Northern Italy involves girls between 10 – 15 years, 30 percent of them between 16 – 18 years.

SOUTH AFRICA

In Hillbrow, the central Johannesburg district, black underage street boys make their living occasionally with prostitution. There is visible prostitution of underage girls and boys, black and white. Black schoolchildren from the outskirts hitchhiking downtown are being abused and prostituted on their way to school. Women and young girls from Thailand,Taiwan and Russia work in brothels in the suburbs of Johannesburg. Estimations of the number of child prostitutes in the country range from several thousands to several ten thousands. Since there are about 400 street children missing in the country, there are suspicions that child trafficking is on the move as well.

AUSTRALIA

Children are trafficked into Australia from several Asian countries, local children are also involved. There is evidence of child prostitution.

VENEZUELA, COSTA RICA

Presently, in Venezuela it is prostituted women and children who are being prosecuted and harassed by the police, and not the customers. There is a considerable amount of domestic sex tourism and prostitute–use is an integral part of the leisure of many Venezoelan men.

In Costa Rica, the demand for both adult and child prostitutes comes from locals, sailors, tourists and expatriates. About more than 30,000 Americans and several thousand more Canadians have retired to Costa Rica. Many of them have chosen the country because of the easy access to underaged prostituted children there. They secure this access by placing advertisements, visiting bars or brothels or picking up child prostitutes. Some sexually abuse their housemaids.

CUBA

Young girls who prostitute themselves are vulnerable to a form of hyper–exploitation by sex tourists. A lack of "business" experience as prostitutes and a lack of language knowledge lead many of them into situations where they even cannot negotiate the terms and the nature of the transactions and have to accept everything being demanded by sex tourists.

THE PHILIPPINES

Child prostitution is relatively widespread in the Philippines, both as part of the general sex industry and for preferential child abusers. NGOs estimate that between 60,000 – 100,000 children are involved in the sex industry. Under Philippine law, a child is a person under 18 years of age. Child prostitution flourished during the 1970's and 1980's with US navy presence, mass scale tourism development, and increased sex tourism combined with increasing levels of poverty and dislocation. The child sex industry in the Philippines is patronised by tourists and locals. Child prostitution is available in bars, brothels, tourist hotels, streets and beaches. Underage girls work in bars and brothels with false age certificates. Street children, both boys and girls, and child hawkers sell sex on the streets and beaches to tourists and locals. There are anecdotal reports that girls are being kidnapped and forced to work in brothels. Hundreds of thousands of Filipina women and girls enter into the international sex trade as hostesses through legal and illegal agencies.

INDONESIA

Indonesia appears to be attracting an ever increasing number of sex tourists. In both Bali and Java, there is clear evidence of sex tourism and child prostitution. Indonesia's complex organised sex industry includes many young girls in brothels. A report on a hotel in Palembang that supplies prostitutes found the average age of girls was between 17 and 20. There were, however, a number between 14–16 and many of the older girls had been working there for several years (Suara Pembaruan, 2/10/94). Street children selling sex for survival is a recent development. Boys are mainly involved in selling sex to tourists, although teenage boys are among the transvestite groups servicing local men in major cities. In Lombok, 14 year old boys from Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, and Denpasar have been found working as 'gigolos' (Jawa Pos 2/9/94). More information is needed on the situation in Indonesia. An intensive study into child prostitution and tourism in Indonesia will be conducted in 1996 as a collaborative exercise between ECPAT Australia and an Indonesian NGO.

CHINA

Estimates range from 200,000 to 500,000 children. It is believed there is an increasing number of young girls entering the local sex industry and lured to surrounding countries. Girls from the pastoral villages of the minority tribes in Yunnan province in south western China are being tricked by phoney offers of jobs and then being sold into prostitution in Thailand. According to the Chinese police, since 1989 about 5,000 Chinese girls have been lured across the rugged Burmese mountains that separate the two countries and sold as prostitutes. The majority of kidnapped girls are members of the Tai or Akha tribes who inhabit the border region. The Akha are also known as Hani in China. In 1994 the Peking People's Daily reported that more than 10,000 women and children are abducted and sold each year in Sichuan alone. It went on to state that "more than one million prostitutes are serving affluent businessmen and visitors from Taiwan and Hong Kong".

VIETNAM

Child Workers In Asia estimated that up to 20 percent of Vietnam's growing commercial sex industry is comprised of children under 18 years of age. The sex industry in Vietnam is attracting more and more young people.

Quote: "The development of tourism is one of the main causes of increased child prostitution. Many foreigners who come to Vietnam think that besides the favourable conditions for business and tourism, Vietnam will also provide cheap and safe tours and will present little danger of AIDS and other venereal diseases, particularly in sexual intercourse with children. Many businessmen from Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan believe that buying a girl's virginity will help them succeed in business, increase their longevity and give them strength and youth. As a matter of fact, an organised network or system to supply virgin prostitutes to foreigners has come to light in a number of hotels and tourist venues." (Vietnam News)

Vietnamese women and children are being smuggled out of the country into the sex trade in Cambodia and Thailand. There is also an increasing trade in young wives to China from Vietnam.

CAMBODIA

Prostitution is not new to Cambodia. Prior to 1970, prostitution was prevalent and openly practiced. During the Khmer Rouge years the practice was completely banned and eliminated. Even extra–marital sex was outlawed under penalty of death. Following the ousting of the Khmer Rouge, prostitution appeared again but was strictly controlled. From 1980 to 1989 commercial sex workers were arrested and sent to the island of Koh Kor for rehabilitation and re-education. After the Vietnamese withdrew in 1989, the strict policies against prostitution were maintained by the government. The number of sex workers in Phnom Penh in 1991 was estimated to be about 6000. With the arrival of the UNTAC military detachment, prostitution grew dramatically in all provincial towns. By the end of 1992, the numbers of sex workers in Phnom Penh alone was more than 20,000. With UNTACs departure in 1993, the number of sex workers decreased. Coinciding with this was the apparent declining of age of sex work! ers. Surveys by the Cambodian Women's Development Association (CWDA) showed that the minimum age of sex workers in 1992 was 18 years of age. In February 1994, a CWDA survey found nearly 35 percent of sex workers in Phnom Penh were under 18 years of age. The Human Rights Vigilance of Cambodia found in a recent study (April 1995) of Phnom Penh and 11 provinces that minors (13–17) comprised about 31 percent of sex workers. The surveyed establishments would be largely patronised by locals. There are also reports of paedophile networks developing in Cambodia and an increase in demand for child prostitutes from visiting businessmen, developers and tourists, a child sex trade operating outside the local brothels. Women and children are also being smuggled out of the country by international sex traders particularly to Thailand and Vietnam.

LAOS

At present there is little information about the situation in Laos but the danger is that with the poverty stricken area opening up to tourism, the development of a child sex tourist industry will be encouraged. Already there are reports of the cross border prostitution trade between Laos and Thailand. Each year thousands of young Laotian women escape rural poverty by going to work in Thailand where most are recruited to work in brothels. In 1993 a court in Laos sentenced a man and a woman to prison for selling a young girl to a businessman in Thailand.

THAILAND

Statistics vary greatly as to the numbers of children involved in the Thai commercial sex industry. Figures range from 10,000 (Government) to 800,000 (Centre for the Protection of Children's Rights).

The commercial sexual exploitation of children in Thailand is not a new phenomenon. The large and well developed sex industry servicing both Thai and foreign men has developed over the twentieth century. The industry is fuelled by traditional practices, the introduction of large numbers of male migrant workers, the military presence during the Second World War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the mass scale tourist development and active sex tourism promotion since the 1970s.

While historically there has always been a demand for young girls in the local Thai sex industry, over recent years there has been an even greater demand from the growth of sex tourism and through the large numbers of businessmen and other visitors coming to the country. As a result of this demand, agents and criminal gangs conscript girls from the villages. By far the greatest number of child prostitutes working in the commercial sex industry are girls under 16 who would work in local brothels patronised by Thai men and visitors from neighbouring Asian countries. A girl is bought to work in a brothel from as young as ten with the family/guardian taking money for the girl and entering into a contract. Girls from the village have played a traditional role in financially supporting the family in Thailand. Therefore, entering prostitution is sometimes regarded as honourable and necessary to the family. In many cases entering prostitution is intergenerational and the girls will follow their mother's path.

The usual pattern: Debt bondage
The money involved in the transaction is dependent on the age, virginity and beauty of the girls. This arrangement is called debt bondage. This is the most usual form of entry into prostitution in Thailand. The girl must work to pay off the money given to the parents and guardians. Expenses such as rent, transport and food are added to the debt. The girl cannot leave prostitution until the debt is fully paid off. The girls under this arrangement usually work in closed brothels.

Debt bondage is also the usual arrangement under which girls enter prostitution in other Asian countries such as India, Burma, Nepal and Pakistan, or when they are trafficked internationally. It is considered by human rights activists to be sexual slavery as the girls live in bonded servitude with virtually no freedom.

The girl earns such little money in a brothel that it is extremely difficult to pay off the debt. They are often forced to take large numbers of clients, and not wear condoms to maximise their income. The girls have little power to ask the client to practice safe sex.

In Thailand, commercial child sex can be found in many areas: on the streets, in barber shops, tea houses, noodle shops, hotels, golf courses and throughout the service and tourist industry.

Boy prostitution and the growing paedophile and prepubescent child sex industry is largely considered to be an imported social problem. This section of the industry caters for foreign sex tourists and is associated with the child pornography industry.

Thailand : the trafficking hub of Asia
Thailand has also become the major importer, exporter and transit country in the international trafficking sex trade. This is a highly organised and lucrative trade involving millions of girls and women world wide. It is organised by international and Asian criminal groups where the girls often use false passports and documents and travel through Malaysia, Hong Kong and/or Singapore to reach their destinations. There have been recent reports that girls as young as 13 are being trafficked and sold into brothels in Australia and Japan.

TAIWAN

The estimated number of children in the sex industry has been estimated by ECPAT Taiwan to be in the order of 100,000. Most of the demand for child sex is from local Taiwanese and visiting Asian businessmen. Taiwan has been a sex tourist destination for Japanese for most of this century dating back to the Japanese military presence. Going to prostitutes is common among Taiwanese men. Many sexually exploited children are kept in low class brothels in very poor conditions. Rich men will pay heavily for young virgins (12–15 years old).

Taiwanese aboriginal children are disproportionately represented among sexually exploited children; they make up 20 percent of the total, although the aboriginal community constitutes only 2 percent of the overall population. A Taiwanese women's group suggests the economic and cultural marginalisation of this community as important factors.

Taiwan shares with Thailand the distinction of being represented in every aspect of the trafficking process: women and girls are brought from Thailand, Malaysia and other Asian countries into Taiwan where they face detention by Immigration if discovered. Taiwanese girls are recruited for Japan and girls from poorer areas are taken to brothels in other parts of Taiwan.

SRI LANKA

Child sexual exploitation in Sri Lanka is considered to be a recent phenomenon. It is linked with the rapid growth of tourism since the 1970s, although a local demand also exists. It does not appear to take place on the scale observed in the Philippines and Thailand. Although it is impossible to derive accurate statistics, PEACE, a non–government organisation working in this area, estimates that around 10,000 children aged 6–14 are virtually enslaved in brothels and a further 5,000 aged 10–18 are working independently in tourist resorts.

Sri Lanka has been targeted by Western sex tourists with an emphasis on boy prostitution, although it appears some girls are involved. Arrangements can be made from Europe allowing the paedophile to be met at the airport with a boy or boys and taken to a safe house. Boys may be driven by poverty or family breakdown to seek clients for themselves in the tourist areas.

A differing perspective on the growth of boy prostitution is that boys are entering the trade not necessarily out of poverty but because of peer pressure and to earn money to buy consumer goods. A 1993 study by the Sociology Department of The University of Colombo found in their sample of 55 boys and 32 girls involved in prostitution, that 80 percent had were still at school and that the majority of children involved in prostitution for tourists are not the product of an underclass or a subculture of poverty. Child pornography is also an issue in Sri Lanka. Most of the 300 hours of pornographic videos found in a raid in Stockholm have been filmed in Sri Lanka. (Daily News, 3/7/95)

INDIA

The majority of India's 400,000 child prostitutes service local clients or West Asian businessmen. The Human Rights Watch Report 1995 stated that 20 percent of the brothel population of Bombay, India's financial capital, is thought to be girls under 18, at least half of whom are HIV positive. Many of the girls are brought to India as virgins and return to Nepal with HIV. According to a recent report by the central advisory committee on prostitution, at least 15 percent of prostitutes in Bombay, New Delhi, Madras, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Bangalore are children. There are reports of visitors coming from Saudi Arabia to buy child brides and take advantage of child prostitutes. More recently cases of child prostitution and child abuse rackets have surfaced in Maduri and Goa, two of India's major beach holiday destinations.

Similar to Thailand, child sexual exploitation is culturally entrenched. There is an ancient history of temple prostitution (devadasi) and although outlawed, the practice still continues. A recent survey claimed that 50 percent of all prostitutes in Maharashtra State began as devadasi and in Karnataka the Hindustani Times (1994) stated that there are some 50,000 active devadasi in that state alone.

There are also Indian tribes which have lived on the earnings of child prostitutes for centuries — The Rajnat tribe of Rajasthan is one. The women of that tribe were the chief providers of prostitutes to the Rajput monarchs until the beginning of this century. As soon as the girl child reached puberty she entered prostitution. With the Raj departed the girls still grow up into prostitution to serve local farmers and merchants. Of 4,090 tribal workers in Rajput, 1,500 are aged between 11 and 16 years.

BANGLADESH

The child sex industry in Bangladesh is aimed primarily at the local population or is associated with trafficking in girls. Human rights lawyers in Pakistan have reported a considerable increase in the number of Bengali women being sold into prostitution in Pakistan. Bangladeshi women and girls are also auctioned for the sex industry or servile forms of marriage in India and the Middle East. In the last 10 years, an estimated 200,000 women have been trafficked, including girls as young as nine years of age.

NEPAL

Nepal is the fifth poorest country in the world and has a growing child sex trade. Prostitution is not new to Nepal. It blossomed under Nepal's elite royal Rana family, during their rule from 1850 to 1950. The tradition of the sale and migration of sex workers continues.

There are different types of prostitutes ranging from the street based Bhabu to the fashionable call girls in the big hotels. In many cases the girls are minors under 15 who work under pimps or in brothels. There are an estimated 200 brothels in Kathmandu alone.

Most girls however are from Sindhulpalchowk and cross the border to India where fair skinned girls with oriental features are in demand. An estimated 200,000 Nepali girls under 16 years of age are to be found in Indian brothels. About 5,000 to 7,000 new girls are trafficked each year. Approximately 40,000 girls are under 16 and are hired against their will, lured by the false promise of a well paying job or marriage to a rich man.

Often entire villages are involved in the trade. Young girls are abducted or persuaded to go with brokers by their parents, husbands, relatives and friends. They get a cut of whatever the broker makes when he sells the girls to a brothel, usually an amount of US$ 800, more than three times the average yearly income. The girls never see the money and have to work until the brothel owners has recouped the outlay wages, usually 30 rupees per day, so it takes three years to pay back the debt. If the brothel owner provides food they expect remuneration.

According to the Asia Watch Report (1995), about half of Bombay's 100,000 girl prostitutes are Nepalese girls who are routinely raped, beaten, exposed to AIDS and kept in brothels as virtual slaves. There are claims that certain districts in Nepal have come to rely on the money daughters earn in the brothels of India. Studies indicate that the demand for virgin girls is increasing and the age of girls being trafficked to India is decreasing. The average age in the last decade has fallen from 14–16 years to the present 10–14 years.

BURMA

The high levels of unemployment, the disintegrating economy in Burma and the brutal counter insurgency campaigns of the Burmese Army is leading to thousands of women crossing the borders into Thailand. Among those entering illegally are many young girls who are persuaded and forced by criminal gangs to work in brothels in Thailand. The human rights group Asia Watch estimates approximately 10,000 Burmese girls and women are trafficked into Thai brothels each year.

Based on thirty in–depth interviews with Burmese girls the Asia Watch report found that trafficked girls were being kept as virtual slaves in the brothels and forced to accept large numbers of clients without using condoms. Therefore the risk of the girls contracting STDs is extremely high. The report found that agents infiltrate remote areas of Burma seeking recruits, who are unsuspecting and easily deceived. Virgin girls bring higher prices, which has led to a greater demand for younger girls.

LATIN AMERICA

Latin America seems to be an increasingly attractive destination for sex tourists. An Australian tourist in Brazil commented that the Brazilian women are "full of sexual energy", he also stated that his friends were "on the sex world tour" (Marie Claire, UK, August 1995). As tourism and sex tourism expand, child sex tourism seems to be accompanying it. This commercial sexual exploitation of children in Latin America is mainly associated with street children.

Street kids in the tourist resort areas of Recife in Brazil are being exploited in massage parlours and clubs. Adult prostitutes emphasise that tourists favour young girls. Many of the girls are working solely to support their families (Dagens Nyheter, Sweden 19/6/94). Cebraios, a respected charity in Rio, has identified a cartel of powerful business and political interests controlling around 1000 girls aged 8–15. The girls are offered to tourists with the documents of adult women to avoid trouble with the police (Diaro de Natal, 4/3/94).

In Colombia a study by the Bogota Chamber of Commerce indicates that the number of children prostituted in the streets of the city has quintupled in the last 7 years. In 1995, police discovered 52 girls between the ages of 10 and 12 working as prostitutes in Bogota. While some went willingly, others reported they were forced. Most of the girls were under the influence of drugs (French Press Agency, 5/8/94).

In 1990, there were nearly 60,000 children aged between 7 and 18 living on the streets of the cities of the Dominican Republic. They are all targets for exploitation, sexual abuse, prostitution and pornography. A recent report for Defence for Children documented 'hot spots' (Sosua Beach, Boca Chica) and found companies operating that cater to older men seeking girls. Children can be 'delivered' to a condominium and can be 'part of the deal' of a vacation stay.

In Haiti, sex between adult male tourists from the US and Europe and local boys has been a feature of the tourist industry for many years.

AFRICA

Civil strife, poverty, homelessness and the refugee problems in parts of Africa are leading to child sexploitation. Quote:"In Africa many countries are faced with a rising child prostitution problem, partly due to poverty, migration, from rural to urban areas, and with the advent of tourism. The linkage with tourism is exemplified by the situation in Senegal. In Zimbabwe, the problem is related to the sex trade near the border. The Sudan, Kenya and Libya are all on the list of countries facing the challenge. Algeria has been reported as a place of transit for traffickers. In Mauritania, there are reports of foreign paedophiles at work and an increase in boy prostitutes. In Ghana, young girls are tricked into prostitution in the belief they will be housemaids. Visible increases of children in sexual exploitation are noted in Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso."(V. Muntarbhorn, Washington 1995)

In Mozambique, aid agencies have accused UN Peacekeeping troops of sexually exploiting children in the towns of Chimoio and Beira.

In Gambia middle aged European women seek sex with young Gambian men.

A report by the Child Welfare Society of Kenya noted the presence of commercial sexual exploitation of children in Nairobi, the coastal towns of Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu, and some game towns. The prevailing model is of street children, male and female, who use sex to supplement their income from other activities such as begging and scavenging.

Maryam, who left Somalia at the height of the civil war in 1992, is typical of many child prostitutes in Kenya. At age 12 she left the refugee camp in search of food and work. With little English and no Kenyan identification papers she drifted into prostitution. "I left the camp to eat better, to help my family... I got good work." (Reuters, October, 1994) She works in the tourist resort area of Mombasa where many of her 'customers' are European men. Certain brothels and bars are known for their sale of children's sexual services to tourists. Taxi drivers, tour guides and hotel workers are involved in procuring children for foreigners. There have also been reported cases of very poor families selling their children to tourists.

EASTERN EUROPE

There is increasing evidence of children being commercially sexually exploited in Eastern European countries. Reports are coming from Russia, Romania, Poland and Czech Republic of children entering prostitution, being sexually exploited by foreign visitors (and aid workers), trafficked to brothels in Western Europe, disappearances of children, and the production of child pornography.

ECPAT is continuing to research the nature and extent of commercial sexual exploitation of children in Eastern Europe. Research carried out by ECPAT found in that region:

Child pornography involving Eastern European children is being produced and distributed; foreign paedophiles are visiting these countries and developing local networks; there are a number of cases of paedophiles from Sweden, Germany and Britain working in orphanages and running street children shelters ; there have been cases where orphans have been fostered by paedophiles through inadequate screening. In most Eastern European countries the laws are inadequate to deal with the sexual exploitation of children; there is also poor law enforcement in matters dealing with sexual abuse; children, especially young girls, are being trafficked into the sex industries in other Eastern European countries and to the West; street children are sexually abused, victims of other forms of exploitation and at times work in commercial sex activities to survive.

ECPAT International. Copyright © 1996 ECPAT international