prostitution7

When they brought me here, it was in a taxi. I kept looking around, wondering what kind of
work was going on in this area of this big city. Everywhere I looked, I saw curtained
doorways and rooms. Men would go and come through these curtained entrances. People
on the street would be calling out, “Two rupees, two rupees.” I asked the other Nepali
women if these were offices; it seemed the logical explanation. In two days I knew
everything. I cried.
Tara N., a Nepali woman who was trafficked into India at sixteen.

Children around the world are sexually abused and exploited in ways that can cause
permanent physical and psychological harm. In some cases, police demand sexual services
from street children, threatening them with arrest if they do not comply. In detention and
correctional facilities children may be sexually abused by staff or are not protected from
sexual abuse by other inmates. In refugee camps many children are exploited by adults or
sometimes forced to sell their bodies for food. Children in orphanages may be abused by
staff members or other children. In conflict areas children are kidnaped to serve as child
soldiers and also as sexual servants for adult soldiers. Children working as domestics may
be assaulted or raped by employers.

This grim picture is compounded by the use of children as prostitutes in countries
throughout the world. An unknown but very large number of children are used for
commercial sexual purposes every year, often ending up with their health destroyed,
victims of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Younger and younger children
are sought with the expectation that clients will not be exposed to HIV. Prostituted children
can be raped, beaten, sodomized, emotionally abused, tortured, and even killed by pimps,
brothel owners, and customers. Some have been trafficked from one country to another;
both boys and girls are trafficked. Moreover, child prostitutes are frequently treated as
criminals by law enforcement and judicial authorities, rather than as children who are
victims of sexual exploitation.

Articles 34 and 35 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child forbid sexual exploitation or
trafficking of children, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child has devoted time and
efforts to the issue, urging governments to crack down on the practice. Other international
instruments in human rights, humanitarian law, refugee law, and labor standards protect
children against sexual exploitation. In addition, a U.N. special rapporteur on the sale of
children, child prostitution and child pornography investigates these issues.

A good deal of international attention has been focused on sexual exploitation and
trafficking, particularly on the practice of sex tourism, which is a relatively small part of the
problem. A World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was held in
Stockholm in 1996, attended by representatives of governments, U.N. bodies, and
nongovernmental organizations, from 125 countries. The congress issued a strong
declaration against commercial sexual exploitation of children and an agenda for action; an
international focal point on sexual exploitation of children was established in Geneva to
coordinate reform efforts. A number of governments and NGOs are continuing their efforts
to attack the problem. But vast numbers of children are still trapped in this life-threatening
sex trade.

Human Rights Watch has investigated the trafficking of women and girls from Burma to
Thailand and from Nepal to India. In 1993 we found that many girls were among the
thousands of Burmese trafficked into Thai brothels every year. They worked in conditions
tantamount to slavery. Subject to debt bondage, illegal confinement, various forms of
sexual and physical abuse, and exposure to HIV in brothels, they then faced arrest as
illegal immigrants if they tried to escape or if the brothels were raided by Thai police. Once
arrested, the girls were sometimes subjected to further sexual abuse in Thai detention
centers. They were then taken to the Thai-Burmese border where they were often lured
back into prostitution by brothel agents who played on their fear of arrest on return to
Burma. Thai police and border patrol officials were involved in both the trafficking and the
brothel operations, but they routinely escaped punishment as do, for the most part, brothel
agents, pimps and clients.

In 1995 we looked into the trafficking of Nepali women and girls to brothels in India. The
victims of this international trafficking network routinely suffered serious physical abuse,
including rape, beatings, arbitrary imprisonment and exposure to HIV/AIDS. Held in debt
bondage for years at a time, girls worked under constant surveillance. Escape was virtually
impossible. Both the Indian and Nepali governments were complicit in the abuses. Police
and officials in India protected brothel owners and traffickers in return for bribes; Nepali
border police accepted bribes to allow trafficking. Even when traffickers were identified, few
arrests and even fewer prosecutions resulted.

The international community, both governments and nongovernmental groups, must make
every effort to end these abuses. In some cases new laws are required; in others the
political will must be mobilized to implement existing legislation and prosecute those
involved in sexually abusing and exploiting these vulnerable children.