Definition of Child Prostitution: Child prostitution designates the use of children for sexual activities in
exchange for remuneration or another form of retribution (gifts, food, clothes, etc). This activity is
included under the umbrella term of sexual exploitation. These children work on the streets or in
establishments such as brothels, clubs, massage parlours, bars, hotels, or restaurants. Both boys as well
as girls are driven to prostitution. For example, in Pakistan, more than 95% of truckers engage in sexual
activities with young boys. This practice is justified by the face that these drivers live, on average, more
than 21 days away from home and see these activities as the principal distraction during their off time.
Causes of Child Prostitution:
Poverty: The principal cause of prostitution is poverty. Parents often feel obligated to sell their children
to pimps because their low salary does not allow them to meet the needs of their family. Poverty also
becomes a cause of abandonment. This rejection forces children to leave their family environment to
become street children. Vulnerable and in need of money, they are the main targets of operators who
promise them work and remuneration.
Money: Prostitution is a very lucrative activity compared to local salaries. In Kenya, for example, a sexual
encounter with a young girl under the age of 16 can cost around twenty euros. But the price can reach
sixty euros depending on the situation. In comparison, the average Kenyan only earns four euros a day.
Orphans: Each year, wars, natural catastrophes and the HIV/AIDS epidemic all contribute to the increase
in the number of orphans. Being so vulnerable, these children accept any kind of work. Prostitution
becomes a way to survive because the activity is extremely profitable compared to other forms of
degrading or dangerous work.
Child Trafficking: Numerous children are kidnapped each year across the world and are integrated into
prostitution networks against their will.
The Rise of the Sex Market: Over the past forty years, the sex industry has been industrialised and
diffused by new methods of communication. The rise and normalisation of pornography in particular has
contributed to the development of prostitution.
Impact of prostitution
No doubt, prostitution cause personal, family and social disorganization. The prostitutes suffer from
deterioration .The prostitute and the person who approaches her lead a sort of ‘double life’. They suffer
from moral collapse and loose their status and position which other respectable men and women enjoy
in society. Respectable people hate them, avoid their company and want to isolate them in society. As a
result, the pimp and the prostitute become ‘hated and isolated islands’. They lead a life with their own
definition of promiscuous sex conduct and a life with their own definitions of promiscuous sex conduct
and immoral principle. This will be quite different from the society’s conception of morality. The man
who approaches a prostitute may be contaminated with venereal diseases. If married he may
communicate the disease to his wife and children. The children born to the parents having venereal
diseases are likely to be maintained for life and many a time are born blind. The illegitimate and
adulterous sexual union, if known to the wives, brings tension in the family and ultimately to desertion
to divorce. There are clinical and psychoanalytic evidence to show that many young men who had pre-
martial sex –union with prostitutes suffer from ‘psychic – impotency’ in married life .The reasons for this
may be many and various depending upon the individual. One of the reason for the ‘psychic-impotency’
