SEXUAL ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION OF BOYS IN SOUTH ASIA A ...

forced or voluntary. The prostitution of girls and women is not clearly admitted, and in law
and discourse it is conflated with running away, kidnapping or adultery (zina 104 ). 105 As laws
criminalize all sexual acts outside marriage, whether or not there have been consensual
relations, sexual abuse or sexual exploitation, official sources provide no separate statistics on
prostitution. Likewise boys do not admit prostitution, although man-boy sexual relationships
involving the exchange of money or other benefits are not uncommon. 106
Numerous boys are migrants or refugees outside the country, and they must also be
considered. Reports indicate that boy refugees living in camps in Pakistan are at risk of
entering prostitution. 107 It is likely that many boys, irregularly migrating or smuggled to Iran,
Pakistan, the Gulf states or Central Asia, end up in labour situations in which they also
conduct casual prostitution to supplement their incomes. After leaving that employment, they
may engage in prostitution as a profession.
In Afghanistan as elsewhere, the line between child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation in
prostitution is not always clear. For example ‘sexual abuse’ of a child by a teacher in the
school or an employer in the workplace may change to ‘sexual exploitation’, or prostitution,
if the teacher or the employer receive benefits from providing the child for sex to others, or if
the child himself or herself seeks to provide sexual favours for gratuities. This transition is
not black and white, and many situations, particularly for boys, do not clearly fall under either
term. For example, a boy in a labour situation may be sexually abused by workers and
employers, and he may or may not receive gratuities for the abuse. Many may be forced by
poverty and other factors to supplement their small incomes by seeking clients who will pay
for their sexual services. Thus, considering the high prevalence of sexual abuse of boys, it is
likely that there is also a concerning prevalence of child prostitution.
3.1.4.2 Exploitation in travel and tourism
There are no reports of sexual exploitation of adults or children in tourism in Afghanistan.
3.1.4.3 Trafficking for sexual exploitation
For Afghanistan, the extent and modalities of trafficking are difficult to assess, due to
conceptual confusion between trafficking, smuggling, kidnapping and irregular labour
migration. 108 The extent of trafficking as defined in the Palermo Protocol 109 is difficult to
104
Article 427 of the Afghan Penal Code makes sexual intercourse outside the marriage, zina or adultery
punishable by “long term” imprisonment.
105
International Organization for Migration, 2003, ‘Trafficking in persons: An analysis of Afghanistan’.
106
Save the Children Sweden-Denmark (Slugget, C.), 2003, ‘Mapping of psychosocial support for girls and boys
affected by child sexual abuse in four countries in South and Central Asia’.
107
‘Watchlist for children in armed conflict’, 2001, Afghanistan,
.
108
UNICEF Afghanistan, 2008, ‘A discussion paper on child trafficking in Afghanistan’ (internal document).
109
(a) ‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of
persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception,
of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to
achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation
shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation,
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