Human Trafficking in [Bangladesh] [other countries]Street Children in [Bangladesh] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Bangladesh |
Child Prostitution The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of
Children In the early years of the 21st
Century - 2000 to 2010 gvnet.com/childprostitution/Bangladesh.htm
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CAUTION: The following links and accompanying text have been culled
from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Inside the slave trade Johann Hari, The Independent, 15
March 2008 www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/inside-the-slave-trade-795307.html [accessed 21 January 2011] They are promised a better life.
But every year, countless boys and girls in Bangladesh are spirited away to
brothels where they have to prostitute themselves with no hope of
freedom. This is the story of the 21st
century’s trade in slave-children. My journey into their underworld took
place where its alleys and brothels are most dense - Asia, where the United
Nations calculates 1 million children are being traded every day. It took me
to places I did not think existed, today, now. To a dungeon in the lawless
Bangladeshi borderlands where children are padlocked and prison-barred in
transit to Indian brothels; to an iron whore-house where grown women have spent
their entire lives being raped; to a clinic that treat syphilitic
11-year-olds. She comes into the room swaddled
in a red sari, carrying big premature black bags under her eyes. She tells
her story in a slow, halting mumble. Sufia grew up
in a village near Khulna in the south-west of
Bangladesh. Her parents were farmers; she was one of eight children. “My
parents couldn’t afford to look after me,” she says. “We didn’t have enough
money for food.” And so came the lie. When Sufia was 14,
a female neighbour came to her parents and said she
could find her a good job in Calcutta as a housemaid. She would live well;
she would learn English; she would have a well-fed future. “I was so
excited,” Sufia says. “But as soon as we arrived in Calcutta I
knew something was wrong,” she says. “I didn’t know what a brothel was, but I
could see the house she took me to was a bad house,
where the women wore small clothes and lots of bad men were coming in and
out.” The neighbour was handed 50,000 takka – around £500 – for Sufia,
and then she told her to do what she was told and disappeared. - htcp ***
ARCHIVES *** ECPAT Global Monitoring Report on the status of action
against commercial exploitation of children - BANGLADESH [PDF] ECPAT 2005 www.ecpat.net/A4A_2005/PDF/South_Asia/Global_Monitoring_Report-BANGLADESH.pdf [accessed 3 April 2011] There are indications that in
recent years the incidence of the commercial sexual exploitation of children
in the country has changed. In addition to child marriage and
traditional/customary laws that contribute to the commercial sexual
exploitation of children, more incidences of child trafficking for sexual
purposes, child prostitution, and child pornography are evident. It appears
that the majority of Bangladeshi children forced into prostitution are based
in brothels, with a smaller number of children exploited in hotel rooms,
parks, railway and bus stations and rented flats. More than 20,000 children
live in the 18 registered red light districts in Bangladesh and many are
forced into or are expected to enter the same situation as that of their
mothers. In these contexts, younger children, for example, help their mothers
with household chores and provide refreshments for their mother’s clients.
Boys often become pimps when they get older and many girls enter prostitution
before the age of 12. A report published by Appropriate
Resources for Improving Street Children’s Environment (Arise) in 2002, put
the number of street children in Bangladesh at approximately two million and
indicated that sexual exploitation of children is rampant. Little has changed
to reduce these numbers and homeless children living on the streets continue
to be particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation as their strategies
for survival, usually as rag pickers, beggars or peddlers, renders them
vulnerable to all forms of exploitation and abuse. In the precarious and
dangerous conditions in which they exist, they are sometimes forced into
offering sexual favors to meet basic needs such as food, shelter and
clothing. A 2005 research study conducted by the NGO Aparajeyo-Bangladesh
(AB), cited several forms of sexual exploitation on the streets: it reported
that children are coerced into massaging adultsand
are forced to engage in sexual activities in market places, parks, railway
stations, and boat and bus terminals. Some pimps use city hotels or rented
private flats in certain parts of the city for sexual exploitation. Men
involved in small businesses such as operators/vendors (36%), beggars and day
labourers (17.2%), as well as the police and
security guards (9.6%), were among the largest groups of sexual exploiters of
street children. Others include relatives, transport workers, employers, and
strangers. The study noted that among the key contributing factors that drove
children into situations of exploitation were poverty, hunger, the need to
earn money, sexual abuse by employers, family members or other men and the threat
and force by pimps and others in their environment. The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on the Worst Forms
of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/bangladesh.htm [accessed 21 January 2011] 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. Human Rights Reports » 2005
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61705.htm [accessed
21 January 2011] 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) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 30 September
2003 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/bangladesh2003.html [accessed 21 January 2011] [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. Inside the slave trade Johann Hari, The Independent, 15
March 2008 www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/inside-the-slave-trade-795307.html [accessed 21 January 2011] They are promised a better life.
But every year, countless boys and girls in Bangladesh are spirited away to
brothels where they have to prostitute themselves with no hope of
freedom. This is the story of the 21st
century’s trade in slave-children. My journey into their underworld took
place where its alleys and brothels are most dense - Asia, where the United
Nations calculates 1 million children are being traded every day. It took me
to places I did not think existed, today, now. To a dungeon in the lawless
Bangladeshi borderlands where children are padlocked and prison-barred in
transit to Indian brothels; to an iron whore-house where grown women have
spent their entire lives being raped; to a clinic that treat syphilitic
11-year-olds. She comes into the room swaddled
in a red sari, carrying big premature black bags under her eyes. She tells
her story in a slow, halting mumble. Sufia grew up
in a village near Khulna in the south-west of
Bangladesh. Her parents were farmers; she was one of eight children. “My
parents couldn’t afford to look after me,” she says. “We didn’t have enough
money for food.” And so came the lie. When Sufia was 14,
a female neighbour came to her parents and said she
could find her a good job in Calcutta as a housemaid. She would live well;
she would learn English; she would have a well-fed future. “I was so
excited,” Sufia says. “But as soon as we arrived in Calcutta I
knew something was wrong,” she says. “I didn’t know what a brothel was, but I
could see the house she took me to was a bad house,
where the women wore small clothes and lots of bad men were coming in and
out.” The neighbour was handed 50,000 takka – around £500 – for Sufia,
and then she told her to do what she was told and disappeared. - htcp NGOs Work To Eradicate Human Trafficking, Help Victims presszoom.com/story_134115.html [accessed 4 April 2011] 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] Prepared for the Committee on the Rights of the Child by
Human Rights Watch www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/crc.34/bangladesh_HRW_ngo_report.doc [accessed 4 April 2011] Child Labor or Child Prostitution? Thomas DeGregori, cato.org,
October 8, 2002 www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3621 [accessed 4 April 2011] Yet proposed acr.hrschool.org/mainfile.php/0103/20/ [accessed 4 April 2011] 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 Qurratul Ain Tahmina, Inter Press Service News Agency IPS, www.aegis.com/news/ips/2001/IP011104.html [accessed 4 April 2011] 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 Manushi, Issue 105 -- Edited extracts from
an investigation conducted by Roma Debabrata for
the National Commission for Women in 1997 www.indiatogether.org/manushi/issue105/childpro.htm [accessed 4 April 2011] A TYPICAL
RECRUITING GROUND -
Women dalaals, mostly original inhabitants of Amir Murtaza,
Editor, Lawyers for Human Rights & Legal Aid LHRLA At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 13 September 2011] The workshop divulged that
commercial sexual exploitation of children was a significant problem in Child Prostitution on the rise in Bangla Asian Age Newspaper, 3rd February 1999 www.burmalibrary.org/reg.burma/archives/199902/msg00019.html [accessed 4 April 2011] 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. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES.
Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Child Prostitution - |
Human Trafficking in [Bangladesh] [other countries]Street Children in [Bangladesh] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Bangladesh