Virginity for Sale: The Dark World of Forced Teen Prostitution

By Kamala Sarup and Lys Anzia, Women News Network. Posted December 17, 2008.

WNN Nepal -- "In recent years, millions of women and girls have been trafficked across borders and within countries. The global trafficking industry generates an estimated 5 (billion) to 7 billion U.S. dollars each year, more than the profits generated by the arms and narcotics trades," a February 2001 Asia Foundation and Horizons Project Population Council report said.

In the late 17th century, the brothel area of Kamathipura was established to service British troops in what was then called Bombay, India. In 2004, the cost to buy a trafficked girl from Nepal in what is now called Mumbai is 100,000 to 120,000 rupees ($2,004 to $2,405). Girls trafficked from Nepal are known as a tsukris. They have been "indentured" (forced) to work under a never-ending contract commonly found with human trafficking.

The industry in the trafficking of Nepali girls is a lucrative business, and it can include forced labor, domestic and factory work. Teenage girls are often used in the sex industries, though, because of the extreme profit for traffickers and the very low incidence of law enforcement against sex-industry racketeers.

Arresting the traffickers can be very tricky. In rural Nepal, this is a constant challenge because adequate police enforcement is often nonexistent. Seen only as an investment to brothel owners, trafficked girls, in addition to the daily sex-servicing of clients, are used by the brothel owners as "virgins" -- owners attempt to sell a girl’s virginity over and over again. This insidious crime can be found throughout the back alleys of Mumbai.

So, why are most brothel owners interested much more in owning girls from Nepal versus girls from India?

Villages like Ichowk, Mahankal and Talmarang in the Sindhupalchok district in north-central Nepal are full of girls who are more than eager for a better life. The rural districts of Makwanpur, Dhading and Khavre are also very involved in the trafficking of girls.

Besides this, rural Nepalese girls are cheaper to buy, easier to control and enslave; they are known to be much more obedient and are considered more attractive for brothel owners who may want to resell them. Because of their naïveté, these girls are easier to cheat and to force into debt bondage because they have very little, if any, education, and they usually do not speak any of the native languages of India.

"Annually, according to U.S. government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50 percent are minors," the U.S. Department of State reports in a 2008 study.

(On April 21, 2008, WNN correspondent Kamala Sarup organized a program on HIV/AIDS and trafficking in the district of Sindhupalchowk, Nepal. At the bottom of this article, she shares a firsthand story about the sex trafficking in Nepal.)

Easily Exploited Demographic

According to the Asia Foundation, a human rights advocacy group, many Nepali communities "recognize the role of social and economic hardships in vulnerability to trafficking. They also blame the immoral character of the trafficked girl herself. Girls who seek independence want exposure to the world outside."

While girls are faced with desperate prospects in trying to "improve" their lives, they are many times "tempted by the prospect of gaining material benefits and are perceived as bad and more likely to be trafficked," the Asia Foundation said.

Data from 2005 case records documented by six rehabilitation centers in Nepal of sex-trafficked women show that most (72.7 percent) rural girls who are trafficked are Hindu, 59.9 percent are unmarried, 46.5 percent are 16 to 18 years old and 77.2 percent have little to no education.

In many rural areas, some girls leave home because of domestic violence and other personal problems. But there also are many cases of girls who leave home purely in an attempt to better their lives, or to provide for family obligations. Many sex traffickers take advantage of these conditions as they falsely encourage girls to leave home.

Most sex trafficking (59.4 percent) in Nepal is carried out through dalals, or brokers, who falsely guarantee good work to girl-children who are willing to travel to other countries. Often these girls are persuaded by people who offer marriage and a better life, jobs or money. Many times, they and their parents are also promised education in the large cities of neighboring India. While this is not often the case, some parents who are suffering under severe economic hardship are also known to deceive their daughters as they sell them to traffickers.

See more stories tagged with: violence, women, rape, sex trafficking, india, hiv, nepal

Lys Anzia is the director of Women News Network, an award-winning playwright, (2007) Pushcart Prize nominee and humanitarian journalist.

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