THE SEX INDUSTRY IN THAILAND
CHILD PROSTITUTION & HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Sex workers are not aff orded the rights of other workers: there is no
minimum wage; no required vacation, sick leave or break time; no de-
ductions for social security or employee-sponsored health insurance and
no legal redress.
Bars can set their own punitive rules that fi ne a worker if she doesn’t
smile enough, arrives late or doesn’t meet the drink quota. EMPOWER
reported that many sex workers will owe money to the bar at the end of
the month through these deductions. In eff ect, these women have to pay
to be prostitutes and the fi nes disguise a pimp relationship.
Through lobbying eff orts pro-sex worker groups, such as EMPOWER,
hope that lawmakers will recognise all workers at entertainment places
(including dish washers and cooks as well as ‘working girls’) as employ-
ees subject to labour and safety protections.
Other commentators (such as the Coalition Against Traffi cking in
Women; CATW) argue that legalising prostitution is not the answer, be-
cause such a move would legitimise a practice that is always going to
be dangerous and exploitative for the women involved. Instead, these
groups focus on how to enable the women to leave prostitution and
make their way into diff erent types of work.Child Prostitution & Human Traffi cking
According to ECPAT (End Child Prostitution & Traffi cking), there are
currently 30,000 to 40,000 children involved in prostitution, though
estimates are unreliable. According to Chulalongkorn University, the
number of children may be as as high as 800,000.
In 1996 Thailand passed a reform law to address the issue of child
prostitution (defi ned into two-tiers: 15 to 18 years old and under 15).
Fines and jail time are assigned to customers, establishment owners and
even parents involved in child prostitution (under the old law only pros-
titutes were culpable.) Many countries also have extraterritorial legisla-
tion that allows nationals to be prosecuted in their own country for such
crimes committed in Thailand.
Urban job centres such as Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Pattaya and bor-
der towns such as Mae Sai and Mae Sot have large populations of dis-
placed and marginalised people (Burmese immigrants, ethnic hill-tribe
members and impoverished rural Thais). Children of these fractured
families often turn to street begging, which is often an entryway into
prostitution usually through low-level criminal gangs.
Thailand is also a conduit and destination for people traffi cking (in-
cluding children) from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and China. According
to the United Nations, human traffi cking is a crime against humanity
and involves recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring and re-
ceiving a person through force, fraud or coercion for purposes of exploi-
tation. In 2007 the US State Department labelled Thailand as not meet-
ing the minimum standards of prevention of human traffi cking.
It is diffi cult to obtain reliable data about traffi cked people, including
minors, but a 1997 report on foreign child labour, by Kritaya Archwan-
itkul, 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 fi gures do not determine the
type of work being done.
Responsible travellers can help to stop child-sex tourism by reporting
suspicious behaviour on a dedicated hotline (% 1300 ) or reporting the
individual directly to the embassy of the off ender’s nationality.Organisations
working across
borders to stop
child prostitu-
tion include
ECPAT (End Child
Prostitution &
Trafficking; http://www.
ecpat.net) and its
Australian affiliate
Child Wise (www.
childwise.net).The Coalition
Against Traffick-
ing in Women
(CATW; http://www.
catwinternational.
org) is a non-
governmental
organization
that works
internationally to
combat prostitu-
tion and traffick-
ing in women and
children.