Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism
Child prostitution is not new. But today it has assumed the proportions of a multibillion-dollar industry, with children being bought, sold and traded like other mass-produced goods. Although child prostitution exists worldwide, the center of the child sex industry is Asia, where approximately 1 million children are prostitutes and the number is still growing.Child sex tourism is a significant component in the sexual exploitation of children and one that is expanding. It involves an individual traveling to a country with the inten-tion of seeking out sex with children. Glossy brochures as well as web sites on the Internet advertise packages for travelers complete with airfare, hotel, and directions to local brothels. This epidemic is spreading to other poverty-ridden areas of the world such as Latin America and Eastern Europe. As troubling as it may sound, the explosion of the child sex trade comes down to two
These no-tions are unfounded and false. First, these tourists experience freedom from the social constraints of their home countries. They may justify their behavior by believing that there are no social taboos in that coun-try regarding having sex with children. Many parents can hardly feed them-selves and find it nearly impossible to refuse cash payment in exchange for one of their daughters. They may believe the misconception that chil-dren are less likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV. And the sex traffickers have stepped in to take advantage of the situa-tion while society has simply looked the other way. Statistics In 1996, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution Child Pornography & Trafficking of Chil-dren for Sexual Purposes) estimated there were:"h 800,000 child sex workers in Thailand"h 100,000 in the Philippines"h 400,000 in India"h 100,000 in Taiwan"h 16,000 in Hanoi, Vietnam"h 20,000 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia"h 10,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh "h approximately 60% of 71,281 registered prostitutes in Indonesia are between ages of 15 and 20"h in Sri Lanka, an estimated 10,000 girls aged 6 to 14 are in brothels and another 5,000 aged 10 to 18 work independently in tourist resorts; an estimated 36,000 boys are exploited as prostitutes in Sri Lanka's coastal districts"h in Taiwan, between 40,000 and 60,000 children are sex workers "h in China, the estimates of child sex workers range from 200,000 to 500,000 "h in Brazil, the estimates of child sex workers range from 500,000 to 2 million "h in the Dominican Republic, there are an estimated 25,000-child sex workers "h in West Africa, an estimated 35,000 children are sex workers "h in the United States, estimates of the children being exploited through prostitution and pornography range from 100,000 to 2. Although it may seem incomprehensible to most of us, there is a need to help explain the distorted reasons that tourists travel abroad to have sex with children. Environmental stress and the rapidly widening gap between the rich and the poor are producing more potential exploiters of the sex industry. The web sites provide an interna-tional forum where individuals can promote and sell sex tours online. Lastly, poor countries are often under strict economic pressure to develop tourism as a source of income. Some children are lured away from broken homes by "recruiters" who promise poor children jobs in the city. Poverty often creates desperate measures for the necessities of life. Rural poverty and pressing socio-economic conditions have served to expand the potential supply of child prostitutes.
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