LatAm - Sexual Slavery in Latin America

Latin American Women, Children at Risk

Sexual Slavery Within Latin America

THE EXPOSURE OF WOMEN & GIRLS TO ORGANIZED SEXUAL SLAVERY IN LATIN AMERICA

October 13, 2003 - 43 Articles Added to this Section

United States Agency for International Development -


Young Indigenous girl child from Paraguay, South America, freed from sexual slavery by police in Argentina.


Young Latina girl child enslaved in a Colombian brothel - ElTiempo.com, Bogotá: "Child Prostitution Continues to Increase"

Office of Women in Development

The number of victims in Latin American and Caribbean is growing. An estimated 100,000 women and children are trafficked for sexual exploitation annually.⁷ Interpol has set the number trafficked out of Colombia each year at 35,000.⁸ Other estimates are considerably higher.

In response, USAID recently provided support to the Organization of American States (OAS) in partnership with the International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University College of Law, to conduct a study on the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation in the Americas. The sixteen countries included in the study are: Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Argentina, Chile, Suriname, and Paraguay."

Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Between Venezuela and Ecuador.

Over half of all women in Latin America have suffered some form of violent act.¹ 33% of these women have been victims of sexual exploitation between the ages of 16 and 49.² 45% of these women have been insulted and harassed.³ Some examples of the sexual exploitation women in Latin America suffer are rape and prostitution. Both rape and prostitution occur in trafficking networks between Ecuador and Venezuela.

Women and children are... trafficked into Venezuela. Women from countries like Colombia are trafficked into Venezuela through prostitution trade networks originating in Colombia.⁷ Children from Ecuador are trafficked into Venezuela to serve as prostitutes and work as street vendors and housemaids.⁸ The victims are usually children who are kidnapped, sold by their parents, or deceived by false employment opportunities.⁹ These children are first exploited through prostitution at the average age of 12.¹⁰ Children as young as 7 years old have been found to be sexually exploited.¹¹ Of the 40,000 sexually exploited children in Venezuela, 78% are girls between the ages of 8 and 17.¹²

See Also:

About Sex Slavery in the United States

Worst U.S. Case to Date: Child Sex Slavery in San Diego

Casa Alianza Report on the commercial sexual exploitation of children in Central America and Mexico

EXCERPT:

Central America and Mexico -- 2001 -- Casa Alianza - the Latin American branch of the New York-based child-advocacy organization Covenant House - reported an escalation of violations of the rights of children and adolescents in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico, as documented by experts who infiltrated regional crime rings. ''Children in Mexico and Central America are being exploited, and neither society nor local authorities are doing enough to combat the problem,'' Casa Alianza director Bruce Harris, a British activist, told IPS.

Harris said it took a multi-disciplinary team of 56 experts 10 months to prepare the organization's first ''region-wide investigation of child trafficking, prostitution, pornography and sex tourism in Mexico and Central America.'' The probe was carried out in high-risk conditions in which the experts infiltrated rings of traffickers in minors, pedophiles and producers of child pornography, he underlined.

Psychologist Viviana Retana, [a] member of the team of investigators, told IPS that the trafficking of children as sexual merchandise was a constant phenomenon in Central America and Mexico, as well as other countries in Latin America. ''The rings of pedophiles and procurers are very well organized, operate with advanced technology and handle large amounts of money,'' she explained. The authors reported that procurers in Mexico buy 12 to 15-year- old girls from Central America - mainly Salvadorans and Hondurans - for 100 to 200 dollars.

Related Article: CENTRAL AMERICA: Activists Infiltrate Child Sex Rings - April 5, 2002, Inter Press Service

The Trafficking of Women and Children for Sexual Exploitation in Latin America - Factsheet - 2001 (PDF File)

From: Inter-American Counsil for Women - (Organization of American States) and the Women, Health & Development Program (Pan American Health Organization)

Globally, an estimated 2 million women and children are enslaved by criminal traffickers in sexual slavery.

Dr. Cherif Bassiouni, president of the International Human Rights Law Institute, DePaul Law School, is the author of "A Study of the Trafficking of Women and Children for Sexual Exploitation in the Americas" funded by U.S. AID and the OAS. Dr. Bassiouni estimates that globally, 30,000 women and children die annually from AIDS, torture and neglect related to being enslaved human trafficking victims. This fact qualifies trafficking as the World's number one human rights issue according to Dr. Bassiouni, a legal scholar in Nuremberg, the Yugoslav war & other aspects of crimes against humanity law.

Sexual slavery is a death sentence for women & children!

Over 100,000 Latin American women and girls are

trafficked into sexual slavery each year. They are kidnapped or entrapped (offered so-called "legitimate" jobs overseas), and then they are trafficked & sold to brothels around the World. Latina women and girl children are literally enslaved by the thousands in Japan, Holland, Spain, across Latin America and within the U.S.

Over 35,000 women are trafficked from Colombia each year, bringing annual criminal profits of $500 million. Over 5,000 Colombian women are enslaved in Holland alone.

An in-depth CIA study from 1999 reports that 50,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. annually as slaves. At least 1/3rd of those victims are Latina women and girls.

An estimated 15,000 young Mexican girls are trafficked into the United States each year, most are forced into sex slavery. Some of them are as young as 8 years old.

A ten month study by Covenant House-Latin America, announced in April, 2002, used 56 researchers to go undercover to document the fact that thousands of Central America's children are enslaved by well financed & highly organized pedophile sex trafficking gangs. 12 year old Central American girls are sold for $100-$200 each.

"Child prostitution rings working in sex shops throughout Colombia were raided in September 1998, freeing 370 minors aged 12-16. Twenty-nine adults were arrested. The children where being held in slavery-like conditions, were abused and forced into prostitution. At least 145 of the children where found in [the major city of] Cartegena, a busy sex-tourist destination."

- Reuters, September 26, 1998

Mexico -- 2002 -- Child Kidnappings - "While the recent kidnappings of children in California have horrified Americans, an extraordinarily high rate of child disappearances in Mexico has alarmed authorities and citizens there. Child advocacy groups say as many as 135,000 children have been kidnapped in the past three years. It is feared that many of the children are being sold into the sex and pornography industries. NPR's Gerry Hadden reports from Mexico City. (4:00)" Listen

From All Things Considered, National Public Radio. (Get Real Player)

Mexico - 2002 -- 20,000 Children Disappear Each Year More than 20,000 Mexican families a year suffer the disappearance of a young son or daughter, many of whom are adopted illegally by families abroad or are victims of sexual exploitation or even trafficking of human organs, reports the National Disappeared Children Confederation. The number of children who have gone issing in the last six years, says the Confederation, could reach 130,000, a number considered credible by Oscar Moreno, the Attorney General Office's Special Prosecutor against Trafficking in Minors, a post created last year.