Child Prostitution in Asia: Perspectives of the Actors Involved

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Child Prostitution in Asia: Perspectives of the Actors Involved Bachelor thesis International Development Studies Child prostitution in Asia: perspectives of the actors involved By Laura Broekman Supervisor: Gerard Verschoor August 2014 Wageningen University 2 Contents 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4 2. Who are all the actors involved, and what role do they play?........................................................ 8 2.1 The children ............................................................................................................................. 8 2.2 The role of family and community ........................................................................................ 10 2.3 Media, NGO’s, and governments .......................................................................................... 11 2.4 Clients of the children and those profiting from prostitution and sex tourism .................... 13 3. What are the perspectives of the different actors involved in child prostitution? ....................... 17 3.1 Perspectives of the children .................................................................................................. 17 3.2 Perspective of family and community ................................................................................... 21 3.3 Perspectives of governments, media, and NGOs .................................................................. 23 3.4 Perspective of clients............................................................................................................. 24 4. How can one understand these different perspectives? .............................................................. 27 4.1 How can child prostitution be understood? .......................................................................... 27 4.2 Coexisting perspectives in practice ....................................................................................... 28 5. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 30 References ......................................................................................................................................... 32 3 1. Introduction This thesis addresses and discusses the topic of child prostitution. Precise numbers are unknown but it is estimated that worldwide up to 10 million children engage themselves in prostitution. Because these children are to be found in different settings that vary from ‘simply on the street’ to brothels, bars and hotels, it can be hard to locate them as often they are hidden. Existing data is fragmentary as it is primarily based on voluntary organisations and local research projects that have been conducted (Walker, 2002). These children, both boys and girls, are subject to a high risk of diseases, drug abuse, mental illness, violence, and other dangers (Willis & Levy, 2002). The existence of prostitution dates back thousands of years, but the use of young children has been a more recent trend (Miles, 2000). The abuse of children on the other hand has been present throughout history; from the earliest account of time children have been killed, deserted, beaten and sexually harassed and abused. In ancient Rome and Greece the sexual abuse of children by adult men in brothels took place (Silbert & Pines, 1981). Over the last few decades the sexual exploitation of children has become a serious and complicated issue that has to be considered internationally rather than nationally (Broughton, 2009). In this literature research I would like to focus on the Asian continent as there the scale of child prostitution has increased sharply in the last decades. Throughout this thesis I will make use of case studies conducted in Asian countries to get a hold of the practices of child prostitution there. Thailand will play a prominent role as there the problem is most prolific. Varying statistics estimate that between 30.000 and 75.000 Thai children under age 16 are working in bars, nightclubs and brothels (Blackburn, Taylor, & Davis, 2010). Prostitution in general has turned into a large business and as a consequence the commercial sex sector of several countries keeps growing in scale. Every year the sex industry which does not include just children is believed to add 22 billion dollar to Thailand´s gross domestic product (Blackburn et al., 2010). Prostitution as a commercial sex sector is now integrated into the economic, social and political of life of many countries (Lim, 1998). Children can enter the prostitution industry for a variety of reasons and always there are several actors involved in this process. With the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 children are to be safeguarded under article 34 which states that ‘State parties will undertake to protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse’; moreover, article 12 asserts that children have a right to be involved in decisions made on their behalf (Miles, 2000). However it has been shown that tackling child prostitution is hard. Although national and international action has been initiated against this form of child exploitation, the enforcement of laws remains a difficult issue. Young boys and girls are desired for multiple reasons; together with other factors this is contributing to the growing sex tourism industry in Asia. The image of Western men travelling to the continent having sex as their main purpose of the trip is not uncommon. 4 These men are often considered as the perpetuators whereas the young child is being severely victimized. A prostitute is often stereotyped and characterized as a vulnerable woman being forced into prostitution and exploited by the pimp. Most research regarding prostitution is conducted on women, less on children and only a small amount of research has been done on male prostitutes. There is little comprehensive data about the extent, mechanisms or root causes of child prostitution (Children, 2014). More research has to be carried out in order to generate greater knowledge on the nature and magnitude of child prostitution. A better understanding of the social, economic and cultural contexts in which prostitution among children takes place can help identifying the problem, its conditions and effects that it entails. Moreover, this knowledge can generate conceptual frameworks and methods of research and can furthermore be useful in the formulation of policy (Children, 2014). In short, child prostitution has become a global and increasing problem, comprehensive data is lacking and therefore there is a need for new and more comprehensive research. Another issue at stake is the stereotype image that prevails of the actors involved. The media portrays a male perpetuator and a vulnerable woman as his client, however there might be more to prostitution than just this image. In particular children are seen as the most victimized, pitiful and suffering kind of sex worker. According to the media they are the ones who did not have a choice and whose childhood is being deprived, forever damaged by their experiences. As a result of this, aspects of life other than the abuse and sexual degradation of the child are concealed, whereas familial and social relationships are often more important than the intermittent sex work they perform (H. Montgomery, 2010). Thus, data regarding the context of the problem has often been overlooked. This paper is a literature study as I did not do fieldwork in Asia myself. The methodology of this paper consists of primarily information obtained from scientific articles and books, yet occasionally I have used Internet sources, too. After I formulated my topic, I started searching for information by means of search engines such as Google Scholar, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, and WUR online library. The first articles I read were written by Heather Montgomery and were about her fieldwork on child prostitution in Thailand. My first supervisor recommended me this author and I was happy to read her articles as they gave me a great first insight into the subject. In my search for useful sources I tried to be efficient by making use of different key words for having the best results. Search engines like ScienceDirect are very convenient as they are presenting a list of related and recommended articles, in this way lots of information can be obtained without putting much effort. After I succeeded in searching sufficient information I could start reading the articles and organizing the information in order to eventually start writing. Prostitution can be studied from several conceptual frameworks. Victim perspectives like I just have described can be found in traditional feminist theory (Zigman, 1999). According to this theory prostitution entails domination of men over women and gender inequality. Within this theory there are several forms of feminism therefore feminist beliefs vary widely (Scoular, 2008). Radical feminists see prostitution as a practice in which women are being degraded and oppressed by men. Liberal feminists, however, consider prostitution a private business transaction in which the woman is free to enter the business; they view prostitution 5 as a civil right to any individual. A second theory is the labelling theory which is based on the idea that behaviour is being influenced or even determined by the terms used to describe the behaviour. Behaviours, then, are only deviant when society
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