Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Child Prostitution & Human Trafficking
According to Ecpat (End Child Prostitution & Trafficking), there are currently 30,000 to
40,000 children involved in prostitution in Thailand, though estimates are unreliable. Ac-
cording to Chulalongkorn University, the number of children is as high as 800,000.
In 1996, Thailand passed a reform law to address the issue of child prostitution (defined
into two tiers: 15 to 18 years old and under 15). Fines and jail time are assigned to custom-
ers, establishment owners and even parents involved in child prostitution (under the old law
only prostitutes were culpable). Many countries also have extraterritorial legislation that al-
lows nationals to be prosecuted in their own country for such crimes committed in Thail-
and.
Urban job centres such as Bangkok have large populations of displaced and marginalised
people (immigrants from Myanmar, ethnic hill-tribe members and impoverished rural
Thais). Children of these fractured families often turn to street begging, which is an entry-
way into prostitution usually through low-level criminal gangs.
Thailand is also a conduit and destination for people trafficking (including children)
from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and China. According to the UN, human trafficking is a
crime against humanity and involves recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring and
receiving a person through force, fraud or coercion for purposes of exploitation. In 2007,
the US State Department labelled Thailand as not meeting the minimum standards for pre-
vention of human trafficking.
It is difficult to obtain reliable data about trafficked people, including minors, but a 1997
report on foreign child labour, by Kritaya Archavanitkul, found that there were 16,423 non-
Thai prostitutes working in the country and that 30% were children under the age of 18 (a
total of 4900). Other studies estimated that there were 100,000 to 200,000 foreign-born
children in the Thai workforce but these figures do not determine the type of work being
done.
This chapter was written by China Williams, Lonely Planet author
