Child Sex
Workers in India
The sexual
exploitation of children by means of prostitution is an old and worldwide
problem. In many countries, prostitution is part of their history and
culture, existing for hundreds of years. However, child prostitution is a
direct violation of a child’s Human Rights.Millions of children are forced into prostitution because of
many different reasons, one being poverty and the need to survive. However, it is important to note that poverty
alone does not cause millions to suffer throughout their life. Gender discrimination also plays a large role in
causing such a problem, while poverty blatantly underscores the racial and sexual discrimination
going on in prostitution around the world. Discrimination, along with a general lack of
education and job opportunities, forces innocent children to give up their most
valuable assets: their childhood, their health and their future.
Renowned Indian News paper wrote in one of its Publication that:
“There are about 2.8 million prostitutes in India out of which 36 per cent are children,
the Rajya Sabha was informed.
The common factors for entry into prostitution have been
economic distress, growing consumerism, illiteracy, lack of vocational skills,
migration, ill-treatment by parents and desertion by spouse, according to a
study on girls and women in prostitution”.
In
India, children’s vulnerabilities and exposure to violations of their
protection rights remain spread and multiple in nature. The manifestations of
these violations are various, ranging from child labour, child trafficking, to
commercial sexual exploitation and many other forms of violence and
abuse. Although poverty is often cited as the cause underlying child
labour, other factors such as discrimination, social exclusion, as well as the
lack of quality education or existing parents’ attitudes and perceptions about
child labour and the role and value of education need also to be considered. In
states like Bihar, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, 60 per cent or more
girls dropped out before completing their five years primary education.
Underage
prostitution
Many prostitutes are said to be
underage, entering the sex trade as young as 12. Andhra Pradesh and West
Bengal states together account for 26% of the total number of prostitutes
in the country. Child prostitution is a major problem in India involving
around 1.2 million children with at-least 100 million people were involved in
human trafficking in India.
Research
Much new knowledge on sex work in
India came from the first major survey, in April 2011. This was performed
by the Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM), which is part
of SANGRAM, a major NGO that deals with sex workers.
According to a Human Rights
Watch report, Indian anti-trafficking laws are designed to combat
commercialized vice. The primary law dealing with the status of sex
workers is the 1956 law referred to as The Immoral Traffic (Suppression)
Act (SITA). According to this law, prostitutes can practice their trade
privately but cannot legally solicit or 'seduce' customers in public. Clients
can be punished for sexual activity in proximity to a public place. Organized
prostitution (brothels, prostitution rings, pimping, etc.) is illegal. As long
as it is done individually and voluntarily, a woman (male prostitution is
not recognized in the Indian constitution) can use her body's attributes in
exchange for material benefit. In particular, the law forbids a sex worker to
carry on her profession within 200 yards of a public place. Unlike as is the
case with other professions, sex workers are not protected under normal labour
laws, but they possess the right to rescue and rehabilitation if they desire
and possess all the rights of other citizens.
In practice SITA is not commonly
used. The Indian Penal Code (IPC) which predates the SITA is often
used to charge sex workers with vague crimes such as "public indecency"
or being a "public nuisance" without explicitly defining what these
consist of. Recently the old law has been amended as The Immoral Traffic
(Prevention) Act or PITA. Attempts to amend this to criminalize clients have
been opposed by the Health Ministry, and has encountered considerable
opposition. In an interesting and positive development in the improvement
of the lives of female sex workers in Calcutta, a state-owned insurance company
has provided life insurance to 250 individuals.
India's
944 580 000 inhabitants live in an area of 3 287 590 km², with an expectation
that the population will reach 1 billion in May. Almost a quarter of this total
are under 18 years of age. 25% of the population live in urban areas and this
is estimated to be growing annually at just over 1%. Over population and lack
of education in nutrition and health contribute to the deaths of around 11 000
children each day. In 1951, 164 million Indians were living in poverty compared
to 312 million in 1993-94.
There
are estimated to be over 900 000 sex workers in India. 30% are believed to be
children. Recent reports estimate that the number of children involved in
prostitution is increasing at 8 to10% per annum.
About 15% of the prostitutes in Mumbai (Bombay),
Delhi, Madras, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Bangalore are children. It is estimated
that 30%of the prostitutes in these six cities are under 20 years of age.
Nearly half of them became commercial sex workers when they were minors.
Conservative estimates state that around 300 000 children in India are
suffering commercial sexual abuse, which includes working in pornography.
_0526_-_Prostitute.jpg)
In one study of 456 sex workers in Mumbai who had been 'rescued' by police in
February 1996, a fifth were under 18 years and two-thirds were under 20. The
main obstacle in the cracking down on child prostitution for the police is the
issue of rehabilitation and where to place and reintegrate all the children
that they rescue.
ROOTS: The problem of child prostitution in India is more complicated than
in other Third World countries where it is directly related to sex tourism. In
India, sexual exploitation of children has its roots in traditional practices,
beliefs and gender discrimination. According to some research, child
prostitution is socially acceptable in some sections of Indian society through
the practice of Devdasi. Young girls are given to the 'gods' and they become a
religious prostitute. There are believed to be around 3 300 devdasis in Belguam
area alone. Devdasi is banned by the Prohibition of Dedication Act of 1982.
Parents or guardians dedicating their girls are liable to five years in jail
and a Rs5 000 (approximately £71) fine.
AGE: According to a madam in Kamatipura, the average age of girls supplied
to the brothels in the last two years has decreased from 14 and 16 years to 10
and 14 years. A girl between 10 and 12 years fetches the highest price.
AIDS: The fear of HIV/AIDS has increased the demand for virgins and
children. Clients mistakenly believe that children have fewer chances of
contracting the disease. Similarly there is the myth that a man can rid himself
of sexually transmitted diseases if he sleeps with a virgin. Recent Indian
Government statistics put the number of people infected with HIV at 3.5million,
indicating approximately three out of every 100 Indians are now infected with
the virus which leads to AIDS. Almost 9 out of 10 of those people are below 45
years old.
TRAFFICKING: About 7,000 sex workers cross over from Nepal into India every
year. 66% of the girls are from families where the annual income is about Rs5
000. They may be sold by their parents, deceived with promises of marriage or a
lucrative job or kidnapped and sold to brothel owners. Between 40 - 50% are
believed to be under 18, the age of consent in India, some are as young as 9 or
10 years old.
RURAL
ISSUE: Child sex workers are not confined to big cities. A survey in Bihar
revealed that roadside brothels for truck drivers in the Aurangabad and Sasaram
districts offered sex workers aged between 6 and 18 years.
CASE
EXAMPLES:
- Meena was married off at 12. Soon
after she was taken to Delhi by her husband, where she found out that he
was a pimp. In the last three years, she has serviced up to six clients a
night. The major part of her earnings goes to pay rent on the little room,
the rest goes to her husband.
- Rita was sold at 9 years old. She
washed and cooked for a madam in Delhi for a few months until a client
wanted a virgin. Two years later, she barely talks to anyone and spends
most of her spare time painting flowers.
- Maya, 10, was taken to Gorakhpur in
Uttar Pradesh by her aunt who was paid Rs 3 000. When she refused to have
sex with a client, she was locked in a room for two days, scared with
snakes and beaten unconscious. When she came around she was raped by the
client. Four years on, Maya lives in the red-light area of Mumbai. Her two
year old spends the night in a crèche run by a social service organization.
When he was only a few months old, she used to drug him and put him under
her working cot. JUBILEE ACTION RESPONSE Jubilee Action is supporting two
houses on the outskirts of Mumbai which are providing permanent homes for
orphaned and abandoned children of prostitutes working in its red light
district. The staff has rescued some of the 50 girls, others have been
brought by their parents in order to protect their children from the
streets' influence. Having received little education on the streets, the
girls are integrated into the local school system and extra tuition is
available at the home if required.
§
Case
Study:
Asha
was left to fend for herself on the streets of Bombay after her mother, a
prostitute in the red light district, died. Her father wanted to sell her to a
brothel owner but Jubilee House staff rescued her. Asha is now studying hard,
has passed her typing exam and is happy and safe from the dangers of the
streets. 111 million children of the 250 million child labour force are
Indian…
- Every 2nd
child has no access to primary education in India…
- Every 3rd
girl child does not live to see her teen years in India…
- There are
no estimates of the number of children who are subjected to
child-trafficking, debt-bondage, forced labour, pornography, prostitution
and drugs, in India…
Trafficking
of persons is the second largest illegal trade after arms sale. In 1997
according to U.N calculations, the procurers, smugglers, and corrupt public
officials involved in the international trade in human beings, extracted $ 7
billion in profits from their cargo. There are no accurate statistics of how many
people are involved, but it is estimated that in the last 30 years, trafficking
in women and children in Asia for sexual exploitation alone has victimized over
30 million people. Everyday about 200 girls and women in India enter
prostitution and 80% of them against their will. At the current rate of growth
by 2025 one out of every five Indian girl children will be a child prostitute.
Every hour, four women and girls in India enter prostitution, three of them
against their will.
13-year-old Mira of Nepal was
offered a job as a domestic worker in Mumbai, India. Instead she arrived at a
brothel on Mumbai's Falkland Road, where tens of thousands of young women are
displayed in row after row of zoo-like animal cages. Her father had been duped
into giving her to a trafficker. When she refused to have sex, she was dragged
into a torture chamber in a dark alley used for 'breaking-in' new girls. She
was locked in a narrow, windowless room without food or water. On the fourth
day, one of the madam's goondas (thug) wrestled her to the floor and banged her
head against the concrete until she passed out. When she awoke, she was naked;
a "rattan" cane smeared with pureed red chilli peppers shoved into
her vagina. Later she was raped by the goonda. Afterwards, she complied with
their demands. The madam told Mira that she had been sold to the brothel for
50,000 rupees (about US$ 1,700), that she had to work until she paid off her
debt. Mira was sold to a client who became her pimp.'
Over the years, India has seen a
growing mandate to legalize prostitution, to avoid exploitation of sex workers
and their children by middlemen and in the wake of a growing HIV/AIDS menace.
Trafficking
of children also continues to be a serious problem in India. The nature and
scope of trafficking range from industrial and domestic labour, to forced early
marriages and commercial sexual exploitation. Existing studies show that over
40 per cent of women sex workers enter into prostitution before the age of 18
years. Moreover, for children who have been trafficked and rescued,
opportunities for rehabilitation remains scarce and reintegration process
arduous.
While
systematic data and information on child protection issues are still not always
available, evidence suggests that children in need of special protection belong
to communities suffering disadvantage and social exclusion such as scheduled
casts and tribes, and the poor. The lack of available services, as well as the
gaps persisting in law enforcement and in rehabilitation schemes also
constitute a major cause of concern.
_0526_-_Prostitute.jpg)
