The last commodity: child prostitution in the developing world.Once considered a universal crime, the trade in children's bodies is increasingly regarded simply as a business--with plenty of support from tour agencies, affluent travelers, and even governments. During the spring of 1992, government officials in Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, city, Brazil Rio de Janeiro (rē`ō də zhänā`rō, Port. rē`  thĭ zhənĕē`r made a concerted effort to clean up their city. As hosts of the upcoming
Earth Summit, known officially as the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or Earth Summit, an 11-day meeting held in June, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to discuss the global conflict between economic development and environmental protection. (UNCED UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, June 1992) ), the Brazilians were intent on
displaying Rio's best side. Besides picking up garbage and
beautifying the local waterways, public officers also tried their best
to wipe clean the most obvious signs of the port city's thriving
sex industry--as is the custom before most large-scale international
gatherings. But everyone knew that arresting a few hundred prostitutes
would hardly erase Rio's racy rac·y adj. rac·i·er, rac·i·est 1. Having a distinctive and characteristic quality or taste. 2. Strong and sharp in flavor or odor; piquant or pungent. 3. Risqué; ribald. 4. reputation. What Brazil really did not want the world to see was that the city's red-light districts A list of world red-light districts. Africa Kenya
Morocco
had recently begun to overflow with young girls and boys.Children are the most powerless members of the human community. Those who end up in the sex industry, a majority of whom are girls from remote villages, are perhaps the most unlucky. As poverty pushes rural families toward ruin, children often find themselves growing up in a hurry, on their way to the urban underworld, whether they left independently in search of some sort of opportunity, or were stolen or sold into slavery, or were simply turned out of their homes. In Northern Thailand Northern Thailand, one of the 5 regional groups of Thailand, usually describes the area covered by 17 provinces.
2. of Bangkok and Ranong, locked in tiny cement cubicles, servicing 10 to 15 disease-ridden clients every day. Some have ended up in Rio, bought by wealthy ranchers who gang rape gang rape n. Rape of a victim by several attackers in rapid succession. gang  -rape them to death in a
regular Saturday night Saturday Night may refer to: Music
Child prostitution is not new. But sex has become a multibillion-dollar industry, and today children are being bought, sold, and traded like any other mass-produced good. In the ever-expanding free market, child prostitutes are among the hottest commodities. Brazil alone has between 250,000 and 500,000 children involved in the sex trade, and a recent study conducted by the Bogota Chamber of Commerce concluded that the number of child prostitutes in the Colombian capital had nearly trebled over the past three years. Similar increases have occurred in countries as geographically and culturally disparate as Russia and Benin. But the center of the child sex industry is in Asia: children's advocacy groups assert that there are about 60,000 child prostitutes in the Philippines, about 400,000 in India, and about 800,000 in Thailand. Most of the children are under 16, and most are girls, though there are a few parts of the world where the local child sex industry caters to pedophiles seeking young males. Almost all of Sri Lanka's 20,000 to 30,000 child prostitutes, for instance, are boys. As troubling as it may sound, the explosion of the child sex trade comes down to two basic market forces: supply and demand. A global society destabilized by the HIV/AIDS HIV/AIDS Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome pandemic pandemic /pan·dem·ic/ (pan-dem´ik) 1. a widespread epidemic of a disease. 2. widely epidemic. pan·dem·ic adj. Epidemic over a wide geographic area. n. , environmental stress, and the rapidly widening gap between rich and poor, is producing both more potential victims and more potential exploiters of the sex industry. And the criminal sex traffickers, just like any other opportunistic middlemen, have stepped in to take advantage of the situation--while society has simply looked the other way. Massive efforts to cover up child prostitution, as in Rio, merely delay our inevitable confrontation with its root causes. In the 1990s, the child sex industry is no longer just a shameful reminder of the criminal element lurking beneath the surface of every civilization. The recent boom in child prostitution points to a fundamental injustice in the current materialist world order--a global willingness to sacrifice society's most vulnerable members for the sake of others' economic and sexual gratification. We are quite literally mortgaging our future. No story is more wrenching than that of a child prostitute who has been deceived or forced by violence into her trade. But it is perhaps even more tragic, and more significant for society, when parents who have no other criminal dealings knowingly offer up their children to sex traffickers. Such decisions signal a raw desperation in the countryside. Without extra land, without faith in potential economic opportunities, especially for girls, parents see no point in training their children, either at home or at school. Hope dies before their babies even learn to walk. Many parents can hardly feed themselves, and find it nearly impossible to refuse a cash payment in exchange for one of their daughters, whom they often expect to come back a few years later in full health and with substantial savings. In Thailand, even poor, uneducated villagers often realize that a woman in the sex industry, as a study sponsored by the International Labor Organization International Labor Organization (ILO), specialized agency of the United Nations, with headquarters in Geneva. It was created in 1919 by the Versailles Treaty and affiliated with the League of Nations until 1945, when it voted to sever ties with the League. has shown, can make about 25 times as much as she could in any other occupation open to her. The causes of rural poverty, the forces behind this desperation, are even more distressing. In the region formerly known as The Golden Triangle Golden Triangle can refer to:
By now, a few wealthy proprietors have bought up all the viable agricultural land in the Golden Triangle, and many of the villagers have become opium-addicted landless land·less adj. Owning or having no land. land less·ness n.Adj. 1. peasants. They are generally able to scrape by as agricultural laborers or tenant farmers in the growing season growing season, period during which plant growth takes place. In temperate climates the growing season is limited by seasonal changes in temperature and is defined as the period between the last killing frost of spring and the first killing frost of autumn, at which , but they no longer have alternative sources of income during the rest of the year. With little help forthcoming from national governments, peasant families often have to turn to the private sector--or, in the case of sex traders, the private sector swoops down on them. Even when parents manage to stave off the pimps and traffickers in the provinces, they sometimes find they can do nothing for their children except suggest that they seek their fortune in the city, where more pimps and traffickers await. These days, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. United Nations estimates, girls aged 10 to 14 have the developing world's highest rates of rural-urban migration Rural-urban migration is the moving of people from rural areas into cities. When cities grow rapidly, as in Chicago in the late 19th century or Shanghai a century later, the movement of people from rural communities into cities is considered to be the main cause. . While these socio-economic conditions have served to expand the potential supply of child prostitutes by a vast margin, the demand for them has perhaps increased even more. And it is the demand for child prostitutes that turns vulnerable children into victims. A mythicization of virginity has fueled the demand for underage sex partners for centuries, but in the era of HIV/AIDS that mythicization has intensified dramatically. Customers at brothels have been asking for younger and younger girls, believing that they are more likely to be free of disease. If the girls come from particularly remote rural areas, so much the better. HIV/AIDS is passed mostly heterosexually in the developing world, and it is already crippling entire communities there, because its victims are generally in their most productive years and because most developing countries have very little funding for health services health services Managed care The benefits covered under a health contract . Sadly, the involvement of children in prostitution is merely facilitating the spread of HIV/AIDS--and is rapidly killing the children. Younger people are actually more likely to contract HIV HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), either of two closely related retroviruses that invade T-helper lymphocytes and are responsible for AIDS. There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is responsible for the vast majority of AIDS in the United States. during intercourse, because their tissues are more easily torn. According to Saphasit Koompraphant, director of the Children's Rights The opportunity for children to participate in political and legal decisions that affect them; in a broad sense, the rights of children to live free from hunger, abuse, neglect, and other inhumane conditions. Protection Center in Thailand, the HIV infection rate among Thai child prostitutes is now approaching 50 percent. And when pimps and brothel-owners discover that one of their girls has the deadly virus--often by testing her without her knowledge--they usually send her straight back to her home village. Once there, she will likely be cut off from medical care, and, because such communities have little experience with HIV, the virus may end up spreading even further. Child prostitution is one of the most important forces driving HIV/AIDS from its urban epicenters out to rural areas, which are still home to about 65 percent of the developing world's population. Three years ago, the Japanese Foundation for AIDS Prevention, an organization affiliated with the Japanese government, launched a high-profile poster campaign. Their central image was of a middle-aged man wearing a business suit, grinning, and displaying his passport. The caption read: "Have a nice trip! But be careful of AIDS." The assumptions implicit in Adj. 1. implicit in - in the nature of something though not readily apparent; "shortcomings inherent in our approach"; "an underlying meaning" underlying, inherent this poster point to the other major factor behind the recent increase in the demand for child prostitutes: sex tourism. When challenged, the Foundation justified its campaign as a reality check, citing the statistic that 60 percent of the Japanese men who contracted HIV through heterosexual sex did so overseas. But the language of their caption, in the name of AIDS prevention, could be interpreted as endorsing exploitative sexual behavior sexual behavior A person's sexual practices–ie, whether he/she engages in heterosexual or homosexual activity. See Sex life, Sexual life. and giving sanction to those businesses and travel agencies that arrange sex tours in poorer countries like Thailand, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (srē läng`kə) [Sinhalese,=resplendent land], formerly Ceylon, ancient Taprobane, officially Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, island republic (2005 est. pop. . One could even read the poster campaign as endorsing child prostitution, since seeking out younger prostitutes is seen by many men as a way of "being careful of AIDS." Asia is at the center of child prostitution because of sex tourism. In 1967, when the U.S. government, entrenched en·trench also in·trench v. en·trenched, en·trench·ing, en·trench·es v.tr. 1. To provide with a trench, especially for the purpose of fortifying or defending. 2. in the Vietnam War Vietnam War, conflict in Southeast Asia, primarily fought in South Vietnam between government forces aided by the United States and guerrilla forces aided by North Vietnam. , signed a treaty with Thailand enabling U.S. soldiers to come ashore for "R&R" (Rest and Relaxation), and giving the sex tourism industry what amounted to official sanction, a new era dawned. Less than a decade later, Thailand could claim more than 20,000 brothels and other sex-industry establishments; and the hyped mythology of the young, submissive, sexy girls waiting for wealthy tourists in sultry Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, region of Asia (1990 est. pop. 442,500,000), c.1,740,000 sq mi (4,506,600 sq km), bounded roughly by the Indian subcontinent on the west, China on the north, and the Pacific Ocean on the east. was making its way around the world. Of course, child prostitution in Asia is not completely governed by the politics and economics of sex tourism--it is also deeply embedded in many local and national cultures. In Thailand, for instance, according to Harvard researcher Hnin Hnin Pyne, 75 percent of all men have had sex with a prostitute. And in the southwestern Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, believers in the Hinduist Devadasi Devadasis (Sanskrit: देवदासी, translation: "Servant of God") are cult prostitutes in the service of the Yellamma, the Hindu goddess of fertility. system, who today number in the hundreds of thousands, have been dedicating their daughters to a religiously sanctioned life of prostitution for well over a millennium. The explosive overlap of growth in the tourism and sex industries, though, is certainly one of the main forces behind the recent child prostitution boom in Asia. In 1980, only 1.8 million tourists visited Thailand, but by 1988 that number had jumped to 4.3 million--of whom, according to Steven Schlosstein, author of Asia's New Little Dragons, about three-quarters were unaccompanied un·ac·com·pa·nied adj. 1. Going or acting without companions or a companion: unaccompanied children on a flight. 2. Music Performed or scored without accompaniment. men. And as more sex tourists arrive, opportunistic sex traffickers cast their nets even wider, snatching up ever-younger girls. Meanwhile, travel agencies in richer countries, also seeking to cash in, are doing their own recruiting. Kanita Karmha, a Dutch tour company, recently circulated a brochure that described prostitutes in Thailand as "little slaves who give real Thai warmth." Two years ago in August, the Austrian airline Lauda Air
Lauda Air is an airline based in Vienna, Austria. ran a mock postcard in its in-flight magazine that featured a picture of a young, shirtless girl with a caption saying "From Thailand with Love." The back of the postcard explained that the writers didn't have time to say much because "the tarts in the Bangkok Baby Club are waiting for us." Rich tourists, according to Ellis Shenk, the director of the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of branch of the international Campaign to End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT ECPAT End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (global network/organization) ), "have realized that human life is cheaper in the Third World." First-World pedophiles are willing to do things in poorer countries that they would never do in Japan, or Austria, or the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . The First World even went so far as to encourage countries like Thailand to develop their sex tourism industries--if not explicitly, then in a highly suggestive manner. In 1971, Robert McNamara, the president of the World Bank, without specifically mentioning the sex industry, urged Thailand to supplement its export activities with an all-out effort to attract rich foreigners to the country's various tourist facilities. After all, spending by U.S. military personnel on R&R in Thailand had quadrupled between 1967 and 1970, from about $5 billion to about $20 billion. McNamara was probably well aware of that trend, because he just happened to have been Secretary of Defense under President Lyndon B. Johnson at the time of the infamous R&R treaty. And he would have had to be unimaginably naive not to know that R&R usually meant sex. By 1975, Thailand, with the help of World Bank economists, had instituted a National Plan of Tourist Development, which specifically under-wrote the sex industry. The new plan basically just buttressed the 1966 Entertainment Places Act, the national law that had made possible the international R&R treaty. Without directly subsidizing prostitution, the Entertainment Places Act, referring repeatedly to the "personal services personal services n. in contract law, the talents of a person which are unusual, special or unique and cannot be performed exactly the same by another. These can include the talents of an artist, an actor, a writer, or professional services. " sector, gave encouragement to pimps and brothel-owners by suggesting creative ways in which to develop their industry. In the words of Thai feminist Sukyana Hantrakul, the law "was enacted to pave the way for whorehouses to be legalized in the guise of massage parlors, bars, nightclubs, tea houses, etc." The Act also made it clear that the proprietors of entertainment establishments could feel free to hire whomever whom·ev·er pron. The objective case of whoever. See Usage Note at who. whomever pron the objective form of whoever: they wanted: the maximum fine for employing a "hostess" or "masseuse masseuse /mas·seuse/ (-sldbomacz´) [Fr.] a woman who performs massage. " under the age of 18 was 2000 baht--or about $100. The seemingly official sanction on child prostitution, of course, makes it an even more attractive profession to all the criminal sex traffickers, the middlemen who bring supply and demand together. Often traffickers have to go to great lengths to procure victims, even crossing national borders. Agents from Bangkok and Bombay go deep into Burma and Nepal looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. the most unsuspecting families, whose daughters have never been out of their villages and don't speak the language of the cities to which they will be brought. Usually traffickers tell the families that their girls will become domestic servants for rich families, or waitresses at posh restaurants. The money exchanged is generally considered a loan, which the child must repay through her work. Bringing the girls back to urban havens of prostitution often involves bribery and politicking in two countries, and yet the system rarely fails: sex-industry criminals simply do not get arrested. Last year, the regional army commander in Ranong, Thailand, made a public statement welcoming the trafficking of illegal aliens into his community, explaining that Ranong "needed the cheap labor to sustain its growth." Examples of blatant complicity on the part of government officials are all too common. In 1989, 3,000 young girls became part of the Devadasi prostitution system at a massive festival in southern India; the local police force directed traffic. In both Brazil and Thailand, police officers are often prime customers of child prostitutes, threatening the children with arrest if they do not perform certain services. Sixty percent of the Sao Paulo street children interviewed in a recent three-year study reported that the local police had engaged them in sex acts. Bangkok is notorious for its clusters of brothels around almost every police station, and child prostitutes in the Thai capital often say that it is fear of the police, even more than fear of their pimps, that prevents them from trying to run away. To this day, according to Human Rights Watch, "despite clear evidence of direct official involvement in every stage of the trafficking process, not a single Thai officer . . . has been investigated or prosecuted." Whenever government officials crack down on child prostitution, it is almost always the children who suffer, who get arrested and perhaps deported. Somehow, powerless, uneducated children become solely responsible for the sex industry. In late 1992, Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai announced a new campaign to stop child prostitution for good, at the crux of which was an exhortation to his countrymen to do a better job of "instilling self-respect" in their daughters. One Thai police chief, when asked why officers never arrested the customers of child prostitutes, explained: "That would violate their human rights." Ultimately, child prostitution exists because men have used their positions of power to elevate the status of their sexual gratification, to make the debasement Debasement 1. To lower the value, quality or status of something or someone. 2. To lower the value (of a coin) by adding metal of inferior value. Notes: In other words, debasement is the degrading of the value of something or character of someone. of young girls socially acceptable. Underlying all of the social and economic forces driving child prostitution, then, are obscene cycles of gender bias. One Indian girl, forced into marriage at an early age, first failed to get pregnant and was turned out of her house by her husband, then was rejected by her parents, and finally sought help from another close relative, who promised to find her a good job and promptly sold her to a brothel. Most young girls who end up as prostitutes experience a world that alternately uses and rejects them. Passed from parents to cold and often abusive traffickers, to intimidating brothel owners and police officers, and finally to frustrated and power-hungry customers, many child prostitutes are not empowered enough even to feel wronged by society. Their predominant feelings are fear of being abused yet again by the next stranger who comes into their life, and shame at being a financial burden and at being involved in a "dirty" profession. Yet the men who control their worlds have convinced them that they aren't good enough to make any other contribution to society. Most relief workers say that the full rehabilitation of child prostitutes is virtually impossible. All too often, official attempts at rehabilitating child prostitutes consist of one-year sentences at prison-like reform schools. In accordance with the Thai Prime Minister's pronouncement on girls' lack of self-respect, it is the victims who continue to get the blame. As long as child prostitution is presumed to be caused by nothing more than the children's own promiscuity Promiscuity See also Profligacy. Anatol constantly flits from one girl to another. [Aust. Drama: Schnitzler Anatol in Benét, 33] Aphrodite promiscuous goddess of sensual love. [Gk. Myth. , men in power never have to take responsibility for the socio-economic systems that underwrite discrimination against women, poverty, environmental degradation, and criminal exploitation. Society owes its children a genuine, global proclamation that child prostitution is simply no longer acceptable. Of course, such a proclamation would mean that government officials could no longer institute the types of development programs--from all-out logging for the sake of export agriculture to the indirect subsidizing of the sex tourist industry--that make certain people expendable. Instead, both governments and multilateral lending organizations would have to come up with smaller-scale projects more appropriate to existing natural resources and local livelihoods. Most importantly, though, to end child prostitution, national governments will have to develop the political will to eradicate the corruption in their own ranks, to crack down on the people who in turn are supposed to be cracking down on the child sex trade. In the past two years, as child prostitution has become more visible, there has been at least a little progress. On the international level, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), specialized agency of the United Nations, with headquarters in Paris. Its counterpart in the League of Nations was the International Committee for Intellectual Cooperation. (UNESCO UNESCO: see United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. UNESCO in full United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ) has joined up with the recently formed Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) was founded 1988 as the outcome of a conference titled "Trafficking in Women" organized by several American feminist groups including Women Against Pornography and WHISPER. to draft a new Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Sexual Exploitation. In Thailand, the Prime Minister's Office The Prime Minister's Office is a small department which provides advice to a Prime Minister in some countries:
 `nĭsĕf'), the United Nations Children's Fund, an affiliated agency of the United Nations. ), has set up both a Center to Prevent and Suppress Child
Prostitution and Labor Abuses and a hotline for the anonymous reporting
of child prostitution cases. And a few of the world's richer
countries, including Germany and the United States, have begun to
address sex tourism by initiating laws that will punish citizens for
committing sex acts with minors on foreign soil.
The organizers of overseas sex tours, however, have already proven their ability to circumvent laws. And their operations, in particular, reveal the extent to which child prostitution has embedded itself in world culture. Right now, the phenomenon of sex tourism involving child prostitutes seems almost to be a natural outgrowth of the global economy--which, after all, is driven by the consumptive con·sump·tive adj. Of, relating to, or afflicted with consumption. lust of the wealthiest countries, and which offers huge incentives to exploit the natural resources on which everyone's future depends. At the Earth Summit in Rio, delegates discussed at length the inequity of a global economy that permitted First World colonial empires to engage in institutionalized in·sti·tu·tion·al·ize tr.v. in·sti·tu·tion·al·ized, in·sti·tu·tion·al·iz·ing, in·sti·tu·tion·al·iz·es 1. a. To make into, treat as, or give the character of an institution to. b. rape--of the Third World's lush forests, its mineral-rich mountains, and its fragile wetlands. But nobody mentioned the Third World's children. Aaron Sachs is a staff researcher at the Worldwatch Institute. His article "Men, Sex, and Parenthood in an Overpopulating World" appeared in the March/April issue. KEY SOURCES Human Rights Watch, A Modern Form of Slavery: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels in Thailand (New York, 1993). Ron O'Grady, The Child and the Tourist: The Story Behind the Escalation of Child Prostitution in Asia (Bangkok, 1992). Thanh-Dam Truong, Sex, Money, and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in Southeast Asia (London, 1990). |
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