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‘My own close relatives brought me here.’
‘If my family and the community come to know
what I am doing, they will not treat me well.’
‘I was studying and my mother called me to
work in this profession.’
Quotes from minors working in massage parlours of Thamel,
October 2009
their debt by providing girls from their home villages.
The entertainment industry in Nepal is also the source of both
trafficked persons and migratory sex workers for other
countries, particularly the Gulf states and Hong Kong. Dance
bars and cabin restaurants are sites of recruitment for local
manpower agents as well as international traffickers seeking
girls and women for overseas employment. 67 In some cases
the women are offered overseas jobs as restaurant workers
or domestic servants, and in other cases are directly offered
jobs in sex work.
COMMERCIAL SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF
CHILDREN
Researchers estimate that one fifth to one third of all female
workers in Nepal’s entertainment and sex industry are children
– that is, persons under 18 years of age. 68 As many as one in
10 are between the ages of 12 and 15 years. 69 Significantly,
nearly one half of all entertainment workers entered the
industry before the age of 18. 70 Informal reports and interviews
indicate that children as young as 12 and 13 are found in the
entertainment sector, primarily in massage parlours. Domestic
law is silent on the issue of commercial sexual exploitation of
children. However, according to international and national
law anyone who assists a child to enter prostitution is a
trafficker.
Although much attention has been placed on the use of prepubescent
and pubescent girls (those under 14 years
approximately) in the entertainment sector, it appears that
their numbers are not great. This likely is not a matter of
criminal prudence, but more a matter of lack of demand by
consumers. No study on the sexual preferences of Nepali
clients has been conducted. However, research on clients of
Nepali sex workers in India showed that while men considered
girls 15 to 18 to be ‘mature’ and more desirable than women
over 18, the vast majority of clients considered sex with a
pre-pubescent or pubescent girl to be unnatural and
reprehensible, and thought that men who did such should be
severely punished. 71 In Nepal it is clear from all evidence that
the demand for girls under the age of 18 is high, and children
– particularly those of 15, 16 and 17 years – are poorly
protected by Nepali law.
2010 Terre des hommes www.tdh.ch 46