By Megan Elder
What are you doing right now? You might be sitting on a bus, or eating lunch, or at school. You are probably surrounded by friends, teachers and your possessions. Imagine for a minute a dark, dirty, cramped room with an equally dirty mattress sitting in a corner. Imagine being taken from your family by someone you trust, with the promise of a better life. Imagine being drugged, beaten and raped. Imagine having abortions performed by an unlicensed doctor. Imagine getting AIDs. Then imagine all this happening at age 10.
Child prostitution isn’t a myth. It isn’t a profession. It can be a death sentence. As spoken by Sita, a 15 year old girl sold into prostitution in Mumbai, “I would not wish that life on an enemy. It was pure hell.” And it isn’t just happening in faraway developing countries The UK, America and Russia are all thriving child prostitution destinations. Yes, destinations. As in, wealthy men from other countries, even from New Zealand, are not just travelling to Mumbai or Bangkok to find child prostitutes; they are going to Birmingham and Moscow. This is a HUGE problem on a global scale. In fact it is such a huge problem, involving so many people, that it is really hard to imagine how this affects the individuals.
Carol* from Zimbabwe.
Carol was orphaned and living with her grandparents, with her brothers and sisters. One day, when she was 16 years old she was on her way to school and was approached by two men who offered her a job. Carol was tempted by opportunity to help out her grandparents and support her siblings, so she accepted the offer. Carol left with the men and they took her to a place where they raped her, then she was drugged and placed in a coffin and crossed the Zimbabwean border. When she arrived in South Africa she was taken to a brothel and forced into prostitution. She was not allowed to go anywhere, she was threatened and abused, and was under constant lock and key. After a few months she was taken to Mozambique where the abuse continued. Here Carol contracted HIV.
Source| Oasis Zimbabwe (*not her real name)
Surrounded by all this abuse, disease, poverty, and even death, how do these young slaves cope? Fact is, sometimes they don’t. But many have spirit and faith, which keeps them alive. They know that one day they’ll escape from their captivity. Some girls with these unbreakable spirits arrive at the brothels and refuse to have sex with the clients. But the brothel owners use many techniques to break the girls’ spirits. Lighted cigarettes are pushed into their skin, they are beaten with wooden sticks, metal rods, branded, and they are threatened with death or being buried alive. You 
might ask, with these terrible conditions, why don’t they try to get away? Some do, like Jyoti, an Indian girl taken at age 7 and rescued age 16. But it’s incredibly difficult to run from the only life you’ve known since you were 7. Especially if you are in bad health and have no education, no family and no other job prospects.
However, there is hope. Organisations such as the Youth Partnership Project, ECPAT International and Stop the Traffik and inter-governmental agencies such as UNICEF are all dedicated to fighting child exploitation. Each play a part in trying to stop child trafficking, prostitution and slavery. From lobbying governments to strengthen the laws which protect children, to providing support to survivors of the sex industry, they are working with the children, for the children. And they’re making a difference.
Sokha* from Cambodia
Poipet in Cambodia is known as the ‘Wild West’ of South East Asia because of its roaring sex trade and gambling scene. People go there to buy or kidnap children and girls as young as five are trafficked from Cambodia over the border into Thailand. Sokha’s mother was ill with a liver complaint and the family needed money to pay for drugs to treat her and to buy land to build a home. Sokha and her friend Makara (who were 14 and 15) were sold to a trafficker who promised good jobs for them in Thailand. But reality turned out to be very different. Sokha explains how there were no ‘good’ jobs and she and Makara were used as slaves. They were given jobs selling fruit, but with their bosses taking most of the money for themselves, they were not able to survive or send any money home. Soon their bosses forced them into sleeping with men to pay their way.
The families contacted a group, Cambodian Hope Organisation (CHO), who rescues girls from prostitution. They gave them photos of the girls which were sent to Thailand. They were found and rescued and brought back to their families, where CHO then offered them counseling, support and training in sewing.
When asked what they hope for in the future, Sokha says she hopes to set up her own sewing business and employ and help girls in her situation. ‘We were scared all the time in Thailand,’ she says. ‘Now I’m happy, getting support, living with my family and free to work when I want.’
Source | Tearfund (*not her real name)
TAKE ACTION!
- Go to the Stop The Traffik website www.stopthetraffik.org. There is info on how to start a freedom wall, where to sign the declaration on stopping trafficking and how to buy a freedom key or a Freeset bag.
- Join the Stop The Traffik page on Bebo http://upload.bebo.com/unlockfreedom and Myspace www.myspace.com/stopthetraffik
- The ECPAT website suggests that if you or your family are going on holiday, find out if the travel/tourist company has signed the Code of Conduct. (The code of conduct relates to the protection of children from sexual exploitation in travel and tourism.) If it has not – then try another company and encourage others to do the same. The same with your hotel. Has it signed the code? Or does it take positive steps to ensure that children are not being abused on its premises. If not then book another hotel!
- Be informed and spread the word about child trafficking and the problems of child prostitution. Make your protests heard for your fellow children across the world.
LEARN MORE
To learn more about this subject useful tools and websites are:
www.ecpat.net
www.unicef.org
www.childtrafficking.org
www.stopthetraffik.org
www.stopdemand.org
www.yppsa.org
Born Into Brothels (DVD) available to hire for free from the Global Education Centre www.globaled.org.nz
Fact: The perception of the word “child” is different in different cultures, countries and religions. In Iran, a country with between 30,000-500,000 adult prostitutes, any girl over the age of 9 is considered an adult. This means that any number of those 500,000 prostitutes could be under the age of 18!
This article was originally published in the Global Focus pages of Tearaway Magazine.
An International Labour Organisation (ILO) report stated that many migrant workers “are not looking simply for better work. Propelled by poverty and insecurity, they are looking for any work.” Some travel great distances to find opportunities to earn enough money to make them and their families better off. However, while some find opportunity in their host countries many others find that they’re treated terribly by their bosses, paid low wages, are victims of racism and harassment by the police and immigration authorities, and are treated as invisible by their host country’s people.
Migrant workers have become extremely important to their home and host countries. According to the Financial Times migrant workers in the United States (US) last year sent home US$62.3 billion to their families in Latin America and the Caribbean, while in their host country, the US, they do unpopular jobs at a price few locals would work for. Worldwide, money sent home by migrant workers is worth about US$232 billion!
Rather than addressing the economic conditions creating large numbers of illegal migrants, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has launched Operation Return to Sender’, a huge campaign to round up, detain and deport migrant workers from Latin America. Laura Carlsen, an analyst for the International Relations Center, writes that the US state treats migrants as if they’re human junk mail’.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers CIW is a community-based workers organisation. Members are largely Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout Florida. They fight for, among other things, fair wages, more respect, better and cheaper housing, stronger laws and the right to be part of a union. In 2005 in the US, fast food chain, Taco Bell was forced to increase the pay of migrant tomato pickers working for the restaurant’s suppliers, after a four year long boycott campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The campaign was supported by university and high school students all over the country who set up blockades of Taco Bells on their campuses. Taco Bell’s parent company, Yum Brands, has recently announced that this pay agreement will be extended to ALL its fast food chains!
More Info
Where should we go after the last frontiers,
Palestinians
Sudanese
Afghanis
As part of the Government’s commitment to fulfilling its international humanitarian responsibilities, we take up to 750 refugees each year under the Refugee Quota Programme, which includes up to 300 places for family members of refugees already here. Hundreds of other refugees are also accepted who claim refugee status upon reaching New Zealand. It sounds like a pretty small number, but in proportion to our population it’s one of the highest rates of acceptance in the world!
Solving the crisis
Learn More & Take Action
