The Philippines: 40% of male foreign tourists on sex tours

From the Phil Star:

At least 40 percent of male foreign tourists in the country, including Americans, come for sexual tourism, US Ambassador Harry Thomas Jr. said yesterday.

“I estimate that maybe up to 40 percent of foreign men who come here come for sexual tourism and that is unacceptable.

And any of them engaged in things that violate the law whether they are American or other foreigner should be prosecuted. That is against human values,” Thomas said during a roundtable discussion on human trafficking organized by the Supreme Court, Philippine Judicial Academy in partnership with the Court of Appeals and US Department of Justice Criminal Division.

Thomas said the US wants the Philippines to refine and strengthen its anti-trafficking law to ensure the conviction of foreigners involved in the crime.

He said he also told President Aquino and Justice Secretary Leila de Lima that the US government is resolved to prosecute any American involved in cybersex and human trafficking.

Thomas said the US provided over $6.6 million to the Philippines for its anti-trafficking program and training.

Read more

What Happens to Thailand's Sex Tourism During the Riots?

By Jessica Olien for Slate Magazine.

Downtown Bangkok has finally stopped smoldering, but a curfew is still in effect after anti-government protesters looted and burned downtown for over two months. The shaky calm has both Thai officials and millions of men all over the world asking: Is it safe enough for sex tourism yet?

Thailand's sex trade, which pumps millions of dollars into the Thai economy, has taken a big hit since the protests began this spring. Thailand was once paradise for these men—among them fetishists and pedophiles—but the spell has since been broken. No one really wants their exotic intercourse interrupted by machine-gun fire or beer runs inconvenienced by police checkpoints, although some are, of course, willing to live with it if that's what it takes. Frustrated sex tourists are now being forced to cancel their vacations or wait it out in their cheap rented rooms until the party starts up again. . .

Thailand "sexpat" forums are full of speculation on what will become of the country and how it will affect their lives of debauchery. Many of them are living on pensions and retirement. They don't want to move, but the violence seen over the past weeks and the unpredictability of the situation have left them uneasy and looking for alternative locations. Finding another place in Southeast Asia where sex is so easy and the locale for it so accessible is a tricky task. Thailand is a perfect blend of cheap, nonthreatening, and permissive. Thai people are extremely accommodating. As the men like to tell me, they will make your food "not too spicy," and they will giggle at your jokes even if they have no idea what you are saying. By comparison with surrounding countries, Thailand is more developed and has until recently always been considered quite safe. . .

I met a man named Terry who has been retired in Thailand for two years but isn't sure that he wants to hang around much longer. It's become kind of a pain in the ass, he explains. "You never know when the situation may make a turn for the worse, and then what? Go to Laos?" He gestures at the direction of the Mekong River. At about midnight, an adorable little girl who looks like she might be about 6 years old comes into the bar selling flowers. "Where else in the world," says Terry, "could I give that girl 1,000 baht, take her outside and do whatever I wanted to her?"

Click here to read the full article.

I have written in the past about the relationship between human trafficking, the environment, and natural disasters. As the devastation in Haiti demonstrated earlier this year, human traffickers can easily exploit situations of unrest. While the situation in Thailand is human made, many of the same dynamics are at work. This article demonstrates the complex relationship between unrest and human trafficking. Whenever there is a natural or human made disaster, we should consider the ways it is impacting human trafficking.

California State College Professor Promotes Sex Tourism in Thailand

L.A. Daily News April, 20th, 2010

As a California State University Northridge associate professor, Kenneth Ng spends his days teaching students the principles of economics: markets, monetary policy, interest rates.

But in his free time, Ng focuses on a very different kind of market: sex tourism in Thailand.

For the past year, Ng has been running a website that offers insights into the Thai bar scene, such as where to meet beautiful women and how to negotiate fees for their services.

Ng, who has worked at Cal State Northridge, for nearly half of his 50 years, never actively advertised his moonlighting gig to his students or academic colleagues.

But he was outed by a group of foreign businessmen who were outraged by what they considered a disrespectful internet posting. They contact his employer and colleagues, hoping Ng would be pressured into taking down his site.

University officials say they will not intervene or discipline Ng as long as his extracurricular activities do not involve public resources.

And Ng, himself, is defiant in his refusal.

"I am not going to let anyone make take it down." Ng said in a recent interview. "That's just a personality thing."

Full Article

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Since the L.A. Daily News published this article early last week, the debate has been heated among the American public over his website content. People were outraged by his website promoting sex tourism in Thailand. The former U.S. Justice Department official and the founder of the organization PornHarms, Patrick Truman says that if Ng's website content is "enticing and inducing" a person to travel internationally in pursuit of prostitution, he is in violation of federal law, U.S. Code 18;2422(a)-(b). As of last week, Change.org reports that the professor's sex tourism website was voluntarily taken down by Ng because of the petition and complaints submitted by the American public. Amanda Kloer at Change.org suggests that "A reduction in websites pushing sex tourists to Thailand can really have an impact on the sex industry there. Since sex trafficking is a demand-drive industry, few buyers looking for women or children means fewer traffickers willing to supply them. And that means, of course, fewer victims."

"The Road of Lost Innocence"

"In 1986, when I was sold to a brothel as a prostitute, I was about sixteen years old. Today there are many far younger prostitutes in Cambodia. There are virgins for sale in every large town, and to ensure their virginity, the girls are sometimes as young as five or six," writes Somaly Mam on the dedication page for her book The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine. In the book, originally published in French in 2005, Mam recounts her experiences as a sex trafficking victim, survivor, and eventually as a rescuer for others in the same situation.

Mam was born in 1970 or 1971 during a time of great upheaval in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge political party came into power and ruled from 1975-1979; due to executions, starvation, and forced labor, 2 million Cambodians died during this time. As Mam notes, this time of incredible hardship and violence shaped and continues to shape life in Cambodia. People are especially vulnerable to exploitation, and Mam suggests that there is a legacy of extreme violence, particularly towards women and girls. Throughout the book, Mam contextualizes her experiences and the sex-trade in general in the larger socio-political context of Cambodia.

Mam was left as an orphan when she was a young girl. After living on her own and scrambling for food and shelter, a man calling himself her grandfather took her to a city, where he abused her and sold her out as a domestic slave. Eventually he sold her to a brothel as a sex slave. After experiencing years of abuse, she gained her freedom after the death of her "grandfather." Because she lacked job skills, education, and any support network, she stayed in the commercial sex industry until she eventually married a Frenchman who was working on foreign aid projects in Cambodia. Eventually they moved to France for a few years, where Mam gained work experience and learned French.

Upon her return to Cambodia, she started working on behalf of other girls and young women who were forced into commercial sex work, either by their parents who sold them to pay a debt or because they were kidnapped from their families for use as sex slaves. At first she mainly provided condoms and other services to the girls and women. Later, she started working to rescue them from the situations, and she opened a shelter. Eventually, Mam opened several shelters, ranging from emergency shelters to more permanent educational facilities for survivors.

In the book, Mam details the many challenges she has faced in her work, particularly relating to lack of consistent funding and police corruption. Despite these many difficulties, Mam's work has helped countless girls and women, many who had no other chance of getting out of their situations. Mam has received numerous honors for her heroic efforts, including being named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine in 2009, which the Human Trafficking Project reported on earlier this year.

During her childhood and young-adult years, Mam endured horrific physical and sexual violence, which she graphically describes in the book. Mam notes, however, that the situation in Cambodia has only worsened. According to Mam "the brothels have grown larger and more violent. We find women chained to sewers. Girls come to us beaten half to death. They are so young. Increasingly we see that the meebons have addicted them to drugs so they won't even try to escape. When I was young we were terrorized with snakes and heavy fists, but these girls suffer a more brutal sort of torture. They have marks that are worse than anything I have ever endured" (166).

Looking back on her work, Mam writes, "I don't feel like I can change the world. I don't even try. I only want to change this small life that I see standing in front of me, which is suffering. I want to change this small real thing that is the destiny of one little girl. And then another, and another, because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to live with myself or sleep at night" (129). Mam's words are especially powerful in light of the prevalence of sex trafficking in Cambodia. The Future Group, a Canadian NGO, reported in 2005 that at least 1 in 40 girls born in Cambodia will be sold into sex slavery.

Throughout the book, Mam emphasizes the need for people to get involved to work to end modern-day slavery. The Somaly Mam Foundation website lists a number of ways to support her work in Cambodia, including volunteering, interning, volunteering in Cambodia, donating, selling bracelets made by survivors, and hosting an awareness fundraiser. While the entire book is a pressing call to action, one passage in particular highlights the urgency of anti-trafficking work: "It's still happening, today, tonight. Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book. My story doesn't matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don't sleep at night. They haunt me" (61).

International Megan's Law Proposed

From the Catholic New Agency:

‘Megan’s Law’ proposed to complement human trafficking laws

Washington D.C., Mar 22, 2009 / 07:57 pm- A proposed Congressional bill, the International Megan’s Law, is being introduced to complement existing human trafficking laws by notifying foreign governments when a known sex offender in the United States intends to travel to their country. The bill also aims to prohibit foreign nationals who are sex offenders from entering the U.S.

The proposed legislation will encourage and provide assistance to foreign governments which do not have a system to identify and track child sex offenders. It will strongly encourage foreign governments to notify the U.S. government when a U.S. citizen is arrested, convicted or imprisoned overseas for a sex offense against a minor in that country and will include strict penalties for sex offenders’ non-compliance with their travel reporting requirements.

The bill is named for Megan Nicole Kanka. In July 1994, the seven-year-old Megan was kidnapped, raped and murdered. The assailant was a repeated sex offender who unbeknownst to neighbors was living across the street from her Hamilton Township, New Jersey home. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) recently introduced the bill into the House.

Smith also authored the nation’s first anti-trafficking law, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, to combat trafficking whose victims are primarily women and young girls.

“The International Megan’s Law builds upon the original state and federal Megan’s Law concept of notification and brings the program worldwide when a high risk sex offender decides to travel,” said Smith, whose district includes Hamilton Township.

“I know firsthand the positive impact the U.S. can have in persuading other countries to take action to protect vulnerable populations within their own borders,” Smith continued, speaking in a Friday statement. “Since the passage of my first Trafficking Victims Protection Act (PL 106-386), over 100 countries have implemented their own anti-trafficking laws and regulations to protect women and children within their own borders. The International Megan's Law is a continuation of the United States’ leadership in promoting and implementing global programs that make it more difficult for sex offenders to seek out and prey on new victims.”

He reported that informal communications between international law enforcement officials have resulted in child sex offenders being prohibited from entering the U.S., while countries suffering rampant child “sex tourism” have refused entry to convicted sex offenders after receiving prior notification.

Praising these efforts, Rep. Smith said a more systematic effort was needed.

“We simply cannot leave notification of travel of child sex offenders to random spot checks or ad hoc reviews,” he said.

Protect children from exploitation in tourism, a new campaign

From the Dominican Today:

MADRID, 7 November -- As tourism and international travel across the globe reaches unprecedented levels, so does the need to combat child labor and sexual exploitation in the global travel industry -- that is why the United Nations body for tourism is taking action now.

A new awareness campaign from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the International Task Force for the Protection of Children in Tourism will look to raise the profile of children who are being exploited.

A total of 218 million children are estimated to be engaged in labor world wide, while millions are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, according to the International Labor Organization.

The UNWTO strongly believes that the tourism industry has a moral obligation and a special responsibility to combat child labor, sexual exploitation and trafficking of children.

“The tourism industry is an economic sector that creates job opportunities and enriches the lives of many people across the globe. We, in the UNWTO, stand for responsible and sustainable tourism, one that is respectful of the people and their local culture, and committed to help generate income and decent employment for local communities. But most of all, we stand for an industry that is respectful of human rights. Our industry has, therefore, a strong obligation to be at the forefront of this campaign” says Taleb Rifai, Deputy Secretary-General of the UNWTO. “We must act now. Children are our future. Don’t let child abuse travel!”

"There are few human rights violations more disturbing than the exploitation of children either for labor or sexual acts. All of us who work in the field of tourism should fight against these abuses and contribute to their eradication," says Dawid de Villiers, Chairman of the International Task Force.

For the rest of the article, click here.

UNWTO's website outlines opportunities for people to get involved in the campaign:

• Using the campaign’s logo wherever possible
• Distributing the logo, sticker and other print materials.
• Linking your website to www.unwto.org/protectchildren
• Organizing your campaign in your community using the tools
• Planning an event for 20 November - Universal Children’s Day
• Distributing the video (available on November 10)
• Informing your media contacts about the campaign
• Sending us information on your activities for our campaign

This topic was the focus of several sessions at the 2008 UNGIFT Vienna Forum. As outlined on the campaign's action list, this effort will require extensive public-private cooperation as well as the active involvement of individual people to become informed and responsible travelers. Get involved today.

Ukraine Students Protest Prostitution & Sex Tourism

Black Men & Sex Tourism in Brazil

From NPR:

Ed Gordon interviews William Jelani Cobb, professor of history at Atlanta's Spelman College, about a growing number of African-American men who are traveling to Brazil and seeking out prostitutes. Cobb wrote an article in the September issue of Essence magazine titled "Blame it on Rio" on this subject.

Read Professor Cobb's article Blame it on Rio

Prostitution Inc.: Brazil

Part I:



Part II:



Part III:



Learn more

Negril, Jamaica: Trafficking Hotbed for Teenage Prostitutes

From the Jamaica Gleaner:

A report on human trafficking in Jamaica, commissioned by the National Task Force against Trafficking in Persons within the Ministry of National Security, reveals a connection between sexual exploitation, forced labour and tourism.

Completed late last year, the report: 'Human trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced labour in Jamaica', was prepared by Sybil Ricketts and Dr Leith Dunn of Kingston-based Searchcon Resource Consultants. The study was conducted in Kingston and St Andrew, Negril in Westmoreland and Montego Bay, St James.

The findings indicate that the tourist industry, more specifically, the informal sex industry, is a significant contributor to the exploitation of individuals. The findings showed that several children in the western resort town of Negril were victims of human trafficking, which was directly related to increased advertising for escort services. Eleven victims from the area were singled out in the study.

"Girls as young as 13 are full-fledged prostitutes," the report noted, stating that some of them live on their own, while others are taken to holding areas in the communities and used as dancers in the more popular nightclubs.

The study also showed consistent poor school attendance by minors in Negril. It says "many (young girls) were observed loitering on a daily basis in the town".

A non-random sampling method was used to select persons for interviews, and a snowballing method employed to reach a sample size of 29 victims. Snowballing involves identifying key informants who then referred researchers to other respondents.

Read the full article

Sex Tourism Turning Northern Marianas into Human Trafficking Hotspot

From Radio New Zealand International:

Sex tourism and US troops in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas may be fueling a demand for human trafficking there.

An organisation helping victims of human trafficking says it has seen a rise in the numbers of victims seeking help from 36 last year to 54 this year.

The Karidat Social Services says most women come from China and the Phillippines with many forced into prostitution or work as exotic dancers.

The manager of the Guma Esperansa Shelter for Battered Women, Laurie Okomoro, says the Marianas is a hotspot for human trafficking because of its proximity to many Asian countries as well as the ongoing demand for sex workers. “There’s a sex tourism industry here that no-one really wants to admit, there’s also businesses gear up for the US military ships to arrive and so they have lots of karioke and dance shows involving nude dancers and that feeds the trafficking industry.”

Kenya Conference AddressesTrafficking

A Somali refugee camp in Kenya

By Daniel Nyassy

From the Daily Nation:

Kenya- Underage girls are being trafficked in Malindi for sex, a seminar heard Sunday.

Most of the girls are from upcountry villages in Kenya. Somali women and girls are also targeted.

A two-day seminar at Eden Roc Hotel heard that a vibrant tourism sector was a major attraction for human trafficking. The seminar was sponsored by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

IOM project officer Ms Lara Quarterman said the driving force for girl trafficking in Malindi was sexual exploitation. Participants testified that many underage girls were ferried to Malindi, especially during tourist high seasons, for sexual exploitation.

A document presented at the seminar indicated that Kenya was also a transit country for trafficked women and children from South Asia, Somalia and Ethiopia to the Middle East and South Africa.
“Kenya is a source, transit and destination country for men, women and children trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation,” said the document titled Basic Concept and Terminology of Trafficking in Persons by Ms Quarterman.

Kenyans are trafficked to European countries for domestic labour and sexual exploitation, said the document. The document says refugees and asylum seekers are vulnerable, especially women and children.

Read the full article

Children for Sale: Cambodia

*This is an old report but it shows the grim reality of child brothels in Cambodia and those who frequent them and presents what some NGOs, the International Justice Mission in particular, are doing to stop child trafficking.

From MSNBC:

It's an exotic vacation destination, with ancient cities, bold colors, legendary temples, remarkable beauty — and horrendous crimes that go on behind closed doors. Children, some as young as 5 years old, are being sold as slaves for sex. It's a shameful secret that's now capturing the attention of the world and the White House, a secret that has been exposed by Dateline's hidden cameras. Dateline ventured into this dark place, where sexual predators can gain access to terrified children for a handful of cash. How could this be happening? And how can it be stopped?

Inside the world of child sex trafficking, each year, by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are bought, sold or kidnapped and then forced to have sex with grown men. Dateline’s investigation leads to the troubled and distant land of Cambodia. We reveal what “tourists,” like one American doctor, may be up to, and we'll take you inside a dramatic operation to rescue the children.

The night clubs of Bangkok and the windows of Amsterdam are among the most well-known destinations in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry: sex tourism. But the business is not all about adult prostitution. There are some places you might never have heard about, notorious places, the kind of places a sexual predator would be willing to travel halfway around the world to reach — destinations like a dusty village in Southeast Asia, where the prey is plentiful and easy to stalk.

A pimp gives a tour of Cambodian brothels



They are children born into poverty and sold for sex. And while the thousands of men who flock here each year — many of them Americans — may think that they're involved in nothing more than prostitution, by any definition it is rape.

The small Buddhist country of Cambodia has a rich cultural heritage, but it has become a magnet for people who prey on the young and innocent. To follow their trail, we'll have to infiltrate their perverted world and pretend we're predators ourselves. It’s the only way we'll be able to see first-hand how serious the problem really is — so serious that President Bush told the United Nations it has become a top priority for his administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell is leading the administration's efforts and has a special office dedicated to the problem.

No More Pedophile Tourists

Source: Corbis

From the Washington Post:

One sexual predator, when interviewed by the FBI, described his experience with foreign child prostitutes this way: "It's like being a star. They want to try my food. They want to see what clothes I wear. They want to watch my television." Such "stars" are the global consumers of innocence, exercising a particularly brutal form of power over the poorest, most vulnerable children on Earth.

About 25 percent of sex tourists targeting children are from the United States, traveling to Latin America, Asia and Africa in search of abomination on the modified American plan.

Another predator told the FBI that he shouldn't be prosecuted because the girls he used were professionals.

In his case, they ranged from 13 to 15 years old.

Read the full article here