Human Trafficking in  [Bangladesh]  [other countries]
Street Children in  [Bangladesh]  [other countries]
Child Prostitution in  [Bangladesh]  [other countries]
 

Child Prostitution

The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

People’s Republic of Bangladesh                                   [ Country-by-Country Reports ]

The People's Republic of Bangladesh [map] is located in S Asia.  It borders on the Bay of Bengal (S); on the Indian states of West Bengal (W & N), Assam and Meghalaya (NE), and Tripura and Mizoram (E); and on Myanmar (SE).  Dhaka is its capital and largest city.  Despite sustained domestic and international efforts to improve economic and demographic prospects, Bangladesh remains a poor, overpopulated, and ill-governed nation. Although half of GDP is generated through the service sector, nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the single-most-important product. Major impediments to growth include frequent cyclones and floods, inefficient state-owned enterprises, inadequate port facilities, a rapidly growing labor force that cannot be absorbed by agriculture, delays in exploiting energy resources (natural gas), insufficient power supplies, and slow implementation of economic reforms.

 

CAUTION:  The following links and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Bangladesh.  Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated, misleading or even false.   No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

ECPAT – On-line form for reporting child prostitution and other sexual offences against children

National Plan of Action

Quick Search for Missing Children - Select Gender, Country (Bangladesh), and Years Missing

U.S. Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs

INCIDENCE AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - In urban areas many children work as domestic servants, porters, and street vendors, and are vulnerable to sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation.  The legal definitions of prostitution and trafficking do not account for males, so the government provides few services for boy victims of child prostitution.

Bur of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005

WOMEN – Prostitution is legal and remained a problem during the year. The minimum age of 18 for legal prostitution was commonly ignored by authorities and circumvented by false statements of age. Procurers of minors were rarely prosecuted, and large numbers of child prostitutes worked in brothels. The UN Children's Fund estimated in 2004 that there were 10 thousand child prostitutes working in the country, but other estimates placed the figure as high as 29 thousand.

CHILDREN - Child labor remained a problem and frequently resulted in the abuse of children, mainly through mistreatment by employers during domestic service and occasionally included servitude and prostitution.

Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2003

[71] While welcoming the National Plan of Action against sexual abuse and exploitation, the Committee is deeply concerned at the prevalence of sexual exploitation of children and the social stigmatization of the victims of such exploitation, as well as at the lack of social and psychological recovery programs and the very limited possibilities for victims to be reintegrated into society.  The Committee is also concerned about the widespread practice of forcing children into prostitution.

NGOs Work To Eradicate Human Trafficking, Help Victims

U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations around the world are working to prevent human trafficking, provide resources to victims and arrest and prosecute child-sex offenders. From Africa to Europe to Asia, initiatives are raising worldwide awareness of the illegal practice of human trafficking.

PREVENTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING - The NGO INCIDIN, a prominent advocate of children’s rights in Bangladesh, works to prevent underage male prostitution in the country. INCIDIN has worked to shed light on this phenomenon and to remove the stigma of discussing it. INCIDIN opened a night shelter for street children in Dhaka and worked with the government of Bangladesh to expand the program to other parts of the country.

Child Rape and Coercion of Girls into Sex Work [DOC]

Bangladesh acknowledges the problem of child prostitution in its Second Periodic Report to the Committee.  The report states that the most prevalent form of sexual exploitation affecting children in Bangladesh is child prostitution.  In December 2002, Human Rights Watch spoke to numerous women who had been forced into prostitution as girls.

Child Labor or Child Prostitution?

[scroll down] Yet proposed U.S. legislation against the importation of textiles produced by child labor -- to "protect" children from exploitation and promote their education -- has had a devastating effect in Bangladesh, especially on the lives of those for whom it was designed to protect.  As a result of pressure from the United States, the children were fired by the garment industry and many went back to prostitution and other dangerous behavior.

Bangladesh's Child Sex Workers: No Place To Go

Boys tend to become pimps once they grow up and girls continue in their mothers’ profession. Most girls enter the profession before the age of 12.  Societal indifference and apathy towards children of sex workers is one of the primary reasons for growing numbers of child sex workers.

Street Children Suffer Sexual Abuse

These men can easily lure the children with food, money and kind words and eventually abuse them sexually. This happens to boys and girls equally," he says.  Homosexual practices, too, are very high among the boys.

When Police act as Pimps - Glimpses into Child Prostitution in India

A TYPICAL RECRUITING GROUND - Women dalaals, mostly original inhabitants of Bangladesh subsequently settled in India after their marriage, go scouting for minor girls deeper into the impoverished villages of the bordering districts of Bangladesh.  Acting as a ghatak (female match maker) as a cover up, she negotiates with the parents of a minor girl and settles a sham marriage with a male dalaal.  Then she informs the male dalaal in India.

Pakistan Needs a National Plan of Action against Child Sexual Exploitation & Abuse

The workshop divulged that commercial sexual exploitation of children was a significant problem in Bangladesh; according to estimation several thousand Bangladeshi girls were trafficked out of the country each year. Child prostitution is also a notable problem in Bangladesh where researchers believed that around 29,000 children were in this business.

Child Prostitution on the rise in Bangla

Activists here warn that child prostitution among boys as well as girls is on the rise with at least 62,000 Bangladeshis employed in the sex trade in the Indian sub-continent.

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Human Trafficking in  [Bangladesh]  [other countries]
Street Children in  [Bangladesh]  [other countries]
Child Prostitution in  [Bangladesh]  [other countries]