violence against children WORLD REPORT ON - CRIN

“I left home because my brother made me go out at two or three in the morning to do thingsI didn’t like doing. He offered me to his friends, to our uncles, to strangers.Then, the day my father tried to abuse me, I left.”Homeless adolescent girl, East Asia and the Pacific, 2005 VIII6tions, even having an abortion in the morningand receiving a customer in the afternoon. InMongolia, 33% of girls exploited in prostitutionindicated that they had been raped. 73 InJamaica, boys in prostitution reported thatthey were “at risk of violence from individualswho abhor homosexuals and think they shouldbe eradicated.” 74In recent years, unknown individuals in Hondurasmade a practice of abducting sexuallyexploited children, torturing and sometimesmurdering the victims. Surviving victimsdescribed how the perpetrators pretended tobe prospective ‘clients’ for sex, then took thevictims to lonely places where they were sexuallyassaulted, tortured, insulted and humiliated.The aggression had the characteristicsof ‘moral’ punishment or collective revengeagainst the bodies of children who weresocially abandoned and excluded – as if thegirls or boys represented the social evil to beeliminated. The abductors taunted their victims:“If you disappeared, nobody would askafter you.” 75Social condemnation is another critical aspectof the violence children in prostitution suffer.Even where deception has been practisedand the work awaiting the child falsely portrayed,the stigma of having been sexuallyactive makes it impossible for the child toreturn home. Young people exploited in thesex industry are often ashamed and are notaware that they are victims of abuse, believingthemselves to blame. An underlying sense ofguilt makes it difficult for them to talk abouttheir exploitation. 76,77Forced and bonded labourChildren in forced and bonded labour representtwo-thirds of children in the unconditionalworst forms of child labour, which by a conservativeestimate amount to 5.7 million childrenworld-wide according to ILO. 78,79 An unknownbut significant proportion are victims of trafficking;most cases are in Asia, but the practiceexists in all regions. Forced and bonded labourare classified as slavery according to the 1956Supplementary Convention on Slavery, andalthough they are universally regarded as criminal,these cases are very rarely prosecuted.The definition of forced labour comprises twobasic elements: work or service exacted underthe menace of a penalty, and work undertakeninvoluntarily. The menace or penalty can takemany forms; its most extreme form involvesphysical violence or restraint, or even deaththreats addressed to the victim or relatives.There can also be a subtler form of menace,for example, threats to denounce illegal workersto the police, or tell village elders aboutgirls forced to prostitute themselves in distantcities. 80Bonded servitudeA bonded child works in conditions of servitudeto pay off debts, which may have beenpassed down through generations. Normally, achild worker is bound to an employer or proprietorin return for a ‘loan’. In areas where thepractice is common, workers are from sociallyinferior groups or castes, have no say overterms of any employment, and their familiesare excruciatingly poor. In this situation the247Violence against children in places of work