HIV positive children at Maiti Nepal Hospice Of the more than one million women and girls who are sold, transported and forced into sexual slavery each year, 50,000 are in the United States. In Bombay alone, 90 new cases of HIV infection are reported every hour. Girls who work in the brothels are powerless to insist that men wear condoms, and suffer an 80 percent HIV/AIDS infection rate. Many of the girls and women who return to Nepal with AIDS find that they are shunned by their families and friends. Those who do not have the disease are still presumed to be infected, and are treated as outcasts. In Nepal, an average of nearly 20 children a day are trafficked to India and the Middle East. There are 300,000 Nepalese child prostitutes in India and 650,000 child prostitutes in Asia under the age of 16. Once oriented into the sex trade, a girl might be forced to have sex with up to 20 clients a day. In 2003, an estimated 4.8 million people worldwide became newly infected with HIV, more than any year before. Today, some 37.8 million people are living with HIV, which has killed more than 20 million since 1981. Young people between the ages of 15 and 24 account for half of all new cases of HIV, and for 10 million of those living with AIDS. Sources UNAIDS: 2004 Report on the global AIDS epidemic Witness.org: The Price of Youth Population Services International Bombay Salvation Army Bombay U.S. Department of State

Is child sex slavery an isolated problem, or a global epidemic? Why are the children involved getting younger—and what can done to help them? Find out more about this often misunderstood worldwide human rights violation and get the facts.

Child sex slavery is a result of numerous factors, including poverty and organized crime syndicates that profit highly from trafficking. The complicity of politicians and police officers make trafficking even more systematic, as well as more difficult to eradicate. As USAID health technical advisor Matthew Friedman says, “the amount of crime associated with [the child sex trade] is probably equal, if not exceeding, the drug trade…. It’s very, very systematic.”

Children who come from the lowest rung of the economic ladder are at the most risk for sex trafficking. Girls, who hold a lower social status than boys, are especially vulnerable and accessible to traffickers. There are three ways in which a girl is trafficked: she is sold by a family member, friend or neighbor; she is tricked into going to another country with the promise of a job or a marriage proposal; or she is kidnapped and forcefully taken away. Once in the hands of brothel owners and pimps, the girls are subjected to a tortuous "break in period" that often includes multiple gang rapes, beatings, deprivation of food and being burned by acid or cigarettes. The abuse can continue for weeks or until the girl complies with the wishes of the brothel owners.

Brothel owners will go to any extreme to protect their lucrative "property,” employing guards and enforcers to keep the girls from leaving. Those who do escape are beaten or murdered then used as examples for the others. Girls are disoriented and psychologically tortured until they lose the will to run away.

In some cases, girls are told that they can work to buy their way out of servitude: they must work for the brothel until they earn the price for which they were purchased. But the girls are charged for shelter, food, clothing and medical expenses. Their debt continually escalates and in reality, they have no hope of ever earning their freedom.

There has been an alarming increase in the number of young girls who are trafficked to work in the sex industry. Two decades ago, most women in India’s brothels were in their twenties or thirties. Today, the average age is 14, with some victims as young as seven years old.

Virginity and youth have long been commodities, but as Friedman says: “There is a myth that says if you have sex with a young girl, it will revitalize you. It will make you youthful. It was also a sense that because she’s young, she’s got to be healthy. I can’t get a disease from her, or if I have a disease, she will take my disease away from me.”

Sex trafficking is a highly sophisticated industry that is present in almost every country, including the United States. The United Nations estimates that approximately one million girls and women are forced into the commercial sex industry each year. In Nepal, an average of nearly 20 children a day are trafficked to India and the Middle East.

Yet the number of girls trafficked from Nepal is relatively small compared to other countries around the world. Trafficking is an endemic problem worldwide. The human rights violations associated with the trafficking of persons are staggering, resulting in a form of modern day slavery. Likewise, the public health implications are also significant. In Nepal, girls who manage to escape from the sex trade and return to their villages are often not accepted into their communities: they are considered "spoiled." In order to survive, they are forced to go underground, where they continue selling sex.

Find out what you can do to help in the fight against child sex slavery >>