Human Trafficking in [Sri Lanka Street Children in [Sri Lanka] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Sri Lanka] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
early years of the 21st Century - 2000 to 2010 gvnet.com/humantrafficking/SriLanka.htm
Sri Lanka is primarily a source and,
to a much lesser extent, a destination for men and women trafficking for the
purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Sri Lankan men
and women migrate willingly to Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon,
the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, and Singapore to work as
construction workers, domestic servants, or garment factory workers. Some of
these workers find themselves in situations of involuntary servitude when
faced with restrictions on movement, withholding of passports, threats,
physical or sexual abuse, and debt bondage that is, in some instances,
facilitated by large pre-departure fees imposed by labor recruitment agencies
and their unlicensed sub-agents. Children are trafficked within the country
for commercial sexual exploitation and, very infrequently, for forced labor.
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in *** FEATURED
ARTICLES *** '100 kids abused daily' in Susannah Price, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/276054.stm [accessed 24 December 2010] The scale of the abuse has never
been widely investigated. The researchers into this first draft study on
sexually exploited and abused children concluded there were between
10,000-15,000 boys involved in the sex trade, not only in beach areas but
also in the hill country and near other tourst
sites. They found the boys were mostly
aged between eight and 15 and while most of them came from fishing hamlets
and coastal villages, about a third were lured from the inland rural areas by
promises of work. *** ARCHIVES
*** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on the Worst Forms
of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/sri-lanka.htm [accessed 24 December 2010] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Some children from rural areas are reportedly sent to work as
domestic servants in urban households where, due to debts owed by their
parents to traffickers, they may find themselves in situations that amount to
debt bondage. The government estimates
that more than 2,000 children are engaged in prostitution. The majority
of children engaged in prostitution are victimized by local citizens, though
there are reports of sex tourism as well.
Trafficking of children typically does not cross national borders;
children are trafficked within the country to work as domestic servants and
for the purposes of sexual exploitation, especially at tourist destinations. Human Rights Reports » 2005
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61711.htm [accessed 24 December 2010] TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – Internal
trafficking in male children was also a problem, especially from areas
bordering the northern and eastern provinces. Protecting Environment and Children Everywhere, a domestic NGO,
estimated that there were 6 thousand male children between the ages of 8 and
15 years engaged as sex workers at beach and mountain resorts. Some of these
children were forced into prostitution by their parents or by organized
crime. Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of
the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 6 June 2003 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/srilanka2003.html [accessed 24 December 2010] [49] The Committee welcomes the
State party’s ratification of ILO Conventions Nos. 138 and 182 in 2000
and 2001, respectively. Nevertheless,
it remains concerned at the high proportion of children, including very young
children, working as domestic servants, in the plantation sector, on the
street and in other parts of the informal sector. ColomboPage News At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 August 2011] Media Secretary to the Ministry of
Child Development and Woman's Empowerment Indrani Sugathadasa said that human trafficking is not a large
scale problem in How Human Traffickers Snare Poor Victims to Dominic Wabala, The Nation ( At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 11 September 2011] The story of the six young men
started in Each of them fell victim to a man
who passed himself as an employment agent. The man, only identified as Hilmy, was known for scouring the villages of eastern and
central Sri Lanka in search of gullible youth willing to risk everything they
owned for a chance to work in Europe. Karuna Group and LTTE Continue Abducting
and Recruiting Children Human Rights Watch, [accessed 24 December 2010] Despite promises to investigate
abductions of children by the pro-government Karuna
group, Sri Lankan authorities have taken no effective action and abductions
continue, Human Rights Watch said today. The armed opposition Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) also continue to
recruit children in Sri Lanka and use them as soldiers. Commentary: 'I am an orphan, not a child soldier. . . ' SiberNews Commentary, 13 November 2007 www.topix.com/forum/world/sri-lanka/TOAEI02J7IKC4DUMG [accessed 24 December 2010] You as a reader put your self in
one of these situations. How would you react? Would you not want to protect
your brothers and sisters from the same tortures that you faced? Or would you
be thinking about child rights and just watch others being put through the
same misery as you. If we had given these children's a good life and
education, they would follow international child rights standards. But what
the government did was take these away from them and teach them that those
rights are only in paper. What then stops them from picking up arms to
protect themselves and others? Joint Effort To Nab Lankan Tsunami Child Trafficking
Trawler Upali Rupasinghe
in Kolkata, Daily News, 20 January 2005 www.dailynews.lk/2005/01/20/new14.html [accessed 24 December 2010] The Indian Coast Guard along with
the Indian Navy and Police are trying to locate a fishing trawler said to be
packed with Sri Lankan tsunami orphans to be sold to Western couples by child
traffickers. Free Democracy February 23, 2006 freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2006/02/uae-horrendous-record-of-child-slavery.html [accessed 30 November 2010] UAE : HORRENDOUS RECORD OF CHILD
SLAVERY - WORK WORRIES
- Sri Lankan women are trafficked to Freedom House Country Report - Political Rights: 4 Civil Liberties: 4 Status: Partly Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2009&country=7707 [accessed 24 December 2010] Human Rights Overview Human Rights Watch [accessed 24 December 2010] Library of Congress Call Number DS489 .S68 1990 lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/lktoc.html [accessed 24 December 2010] Orphaned children face a new nightmare of abuse Farah Farouque
and Linda Morris, The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 January 2005 [accessed 24 December 2010] In Tamil Tigers Forcibly Recruit Child Soldiers Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org/en/news/2004/11/09/sri-lanka-tamil-tigers-forcibly-recruit-child-soldiers [accessed 24 December 2010] By abducting children or
threatening their families, the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have recruited thousands of child soldiers in The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or Tamil Tigers) use intimidation and
threats to pressure Tamil families in the north and east of Sri Lanka to
provide sons and daughters for military service. When families refuse, their
children are sometimes abducted from their homes at night or forcibly
recruited while walking to school. Parents who resist the recruitment of
their children face retribution from the Tamil Tigers, including violence or
detention. Living in Fear - Child Soldiers and the Tamil Tigers in Human Rights Watch Report, November
10, 2004 www.hrw.org/en/reports/2004/11/10/living-fear [accessed 24 December 2010] SUMMARY - LTTE RECRUITMENT AND USE OF CHILDREN BEFORE THE CEASE-FIRE - Second, children who witnessed
or suffered abuses by Sri Lankan security forces often felt driven to join
the LTTE. Government abuses prior to the cease-fire included unlawful
detention, interrogation, torture, execution, enforced disappearances, and
rape. A 1993 study of adolescents in Vaddukoddai in
the North found that one quarter of the children studied had witnessed
violence personally.3
In response, many children joined the LTTE, seeking to protect their families
or to avenge real or perceived abuses. Tamil Eelam News Services, 23
Jun 2004 www.tamileelamnews.com/cgi-bin/news/exec/view.cgi/3/2781 [accessed 24 December 2010] Of the 1643 cases reported last
year, 734 of them were related to sexual abuse and much to the alarm of
children’s rights advocates, only a meagre 30
foreign paedophiles have been arrested over the
past two years and few have been prosecuted. “Children are not only being
sexually abused here by pedophiles from other countries, but Sri Lanka also
serves as a transit point for smuggling children to and from other
countries,” said a children’s rights advocate. Concern over Sri Lanka being a transit
point mounted after seven Chinese orphans were detected at the Katunanayake airport while they were on their way to the
West. They were being accompanied by suspected traffickers whom authorities
believe may have been taking them for organ transplant or child sex. End Child Exploitation - Faces of Exploitation UNICEF, Faces of Exploitation, January 2003, ISBN: 1
871440 26 2 www.childtrafficking.com/Docs/unicef_2003__faces_of_explo.pdf [accessed 24 December 2010] [page 22] CHILDREN IN THE SEX INDUSTRY - Children may also work
independently, offering themselves for cash, as do many of the 10,000 to
15,000 boys selling themselves to sex tourists on the beaches of ECPAT Sri Lanka/PEACE [PDF] ECPAT International annual report - July 2002 - June 2003 At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 11 September 2011] [page 109] ECPAT Sri Lanka/PEACE - PEACE was launched in 1989
against the commercial sexual exploitation and abuse of children by both
local and foreign paedophiles. It has a 20 member Consultative
Committee, a 5 member Core Committee, a network of Children’s/Youth Clubs,
and a host of volunteers carrying out its aims and objectives. Its objectives
are to create awareness of the problem of sexual exploitation of children and
child labour in Sri Lanka; to influence National Policy related to the
protection of children; and to prevent children from being lured or forced
into prostitution and hazardous employment. What is Sex Tourism of Children? Friends of the Missing Child Center-Hawaii www.missingkidshawaii.org/get_help_exploitation_child_sex_toursim.html [accessed 25 December 2010] STATISTICS - Invitation to Sri Lanka Apparel Sourcing Fair 2002 At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 11 September 2011] COMPLIANCE - Poverty, Globalization, Social Customs & South Asian
Children in Prostitution [PDF] Zahid Shahab
Ahmed ( www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/AhmedAsianChildrenProstitution.pdf [accessed 25 December 2010] INTRODUCTION [page 5] Child prostitution is rampant in An Inconvenient Truth Samantha Catanese, ihscslnews.org/view_article.php?id=174 [accessed 25 December 2010] "I work in a house that has
five family members. I’m the only servant. I’m very busy all day working,
washing, cleaning and preparing food. The children in the family go to
school, but I don’t get to go. They can also watch television, but I’m not
allowed. I’m not allowed to play with the children. I’m always working. I sleep
on the floor in the dining room. I’ve never been home to visit since
beginning this work. My parents came to visit me twice, and collected some
money from the family, but I don’t know how much." -- Salani Radnayaka,
a ten-year-old girl working as a live-in domestic servant for a family in
Colombo, Sri Lanka The Walter Jayawardhana, LankaWeb, www.lankaweb.com/news/items02/110602-1.html [accessed 25 December 2010] In the second annual report
presented to the Congress for the year 2002, through which the United States
was seeking to bring international attention to "the horrific practice
of trafficking in persons" the US State Department said, "The
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) abduct and
hold children against their will for purposes of forced labor, military
conscription and in some cases, sexual exploitation. A ceasefire with the
LTTE has been in place since December 2001." Easy Targets - Violence Against Children Worldwide Human Rights Watch Report, September 2001 www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2001/children/7.htm#_ednref82 [accessed 25 December 2010] VII. VIOLENCE IN THE WORKPLACE - In Several of the Sri Lankan girls we
interviewed also experienced sexual abuse at the hands of their employer,
their employer’s children, or their employer’s friends. Such abuse is
frequently known to agents who arrange for the children’s employment. One
agent told us of how he had recruited over a thousand children for domestic
service when he knew that the primary purpose of the recruitment was sexual. Kyodo News International, At one time this article had been archived and may
possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 11 September 2011] The latest statistics reveal there
are more than 100,000 child vagrants in '100 kids abused daily' in Susannah Price, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/276054.stm [accessed 25 December 2010] The scale of the abuse has never
been widely investigated. The researchers into this first draft study on
sexually exploited and abused children concluded there were between
10,000-15,000 boys involved in the sex trade, not only in beach areas but
also in the hill country and near other tourst
sites. They found the boys were mostly
aged between eight and 15 and while most of them came from fishing hamlets
and coastal villages, about a third were lured from the inland rural areas by
promises of work. 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, "Human Trafficking
& Modern-day Slavery – |
Human Trafficking in [Sri Lanka Street Children in [Sri Lanka] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Sri Lanka] [other countries]