Women
What Does the Future Hold for Them?

Girl Prostitutes—Who Is to Blame?

Each year about a million young girls are forced into prostitution

Every year an estimated one million children—mostly girls—are forced or sold into prostitution. Araya,* who comes from Southeast Asia, recalls what happened to some of her classmates. "Kulvadee became a prostitute when she was only 13. She was a nice girl, but her mother often got drunk and used to play poker, so she had no time to care for her daughter. Kulvadee's mother encouraged her to earn money by going out with men, and before long, she was working as a prostitute.

"Sivun, another pupil in my class, came from the north of the country. She was just 12 when her parents sent her to the capital to work as a prostitute. She had to work for two years to pay off the contract signed by her parents. Sivun and Kulvadee are not unusual—5 out of the 15 girls in my class became prostitutes."

There are millions of youngsters like Sivun and Kulvadee. "The sex industry is a huge market with its own momentum," laments Wassyla Tamzali, of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). "Selling a 14-year-old girl has become so commonplace, it is banal." And once these girls are sold into sexual slavery, paying off their purchase price may prove almost impossible. Manju, whose father sold her when she was 12, still owed $300 (U.S.) after seven years of prostitution. "There was nothing I could do—I was trapped," she explains.

Escaping AIDS may be nearly as difficult for the girls as escaping the pimps who enslave them. A survey conducted in Southeast Asia indicated that 33 percent of these child prostitutes were infected with the AIDS virus. As long as the five-billion-dollar prostitution industry flourishes, it is likely that these girls will continue to suffer.

Who is to blame for this horrendous practice? Obviously, those who buy or sell girls into prostitution bear a huge part of the blame. But also to be condemned are the despicable men who use the girls to satisfy sexual lusts. For without such practicers of immorality, the prostitution of these girls would not exist.

* Names have been changed.

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