Thailand Law Journal 2009 Spring Issue 1 Volume 12

Pressure on women and girls to find work outside the home to contribute to the family's survival becomes immense.  Due to the expansion of both unregulated domestic work and the sex industry, these women often find themselves in entirely unfamiliar situations, without the support of usual family or social structures.  Their inexperience exposes them to dangers that they are unprepared to navigate. [FN100]

Yet tragically, even those who know what to expect may find that options besides sex work are unavailable.  We work with one 17 year old young woman in Burma.  When she was 14 she was trafficked into sexual slavery in one of the worst brothels in Northern Thailand.  After she was rescued, she returned to Burma where there were virtually no job opportunities.  She married and with the lack of birth control in Burma, quickly had two children.  The only work available to her and her husband--selling goods or driving a motorcycle taxi-- pays little more than eighty Baht or $2 per day, that is, on the days they make a profit.  Once, in order to feed her hungry children, she sold a pair of her pants.  Another time she sought work in a massage parlor which she knew was a sex establishment.  While pregnant with her first child, she and her husband hired an agent to smuggle them into Thailand where they found themselves homeless, robbed and beaten before returning once again to Burma.  Most recently, she agreed to sell herself to an agent for 20,000 Baht or $500-- nearly a year's wages--to work in a Western country.  Although she knew the probable horror that such a bargain promised, she was willing to sacrifice her life to provide for her family.  She is not alone among those who find themselves re-trafficked or return to “voluntary” sex work because of the lack of viable employment options and the pressure to provide for one's family.

A final note is in order to refute the popular perception that “parents in Thailand and Burma sell their children into prostitution” . Both NGO workers on the ground, as well as researchers, express an opinion that this is an overly simplified and even inaccurate characterization of what really happens. Karen Smith, Director of the New Life Center (NLC), a Thai NGO working with tribal girls in and at risk of situations of exploitation, including labor and sex exploitation, states:

In over 15 years at the NLC, there have only been a few cases of tribal girls who were sold by their family, and that was because of abject poverty, not for wanting to purchase consumer goods. In those cases they were sold to be domestic workers, not for prostitution. In the case of one girl, she was resold by the original buyer family to a man who sexually exploited her. When a person is sold and lacks citizenship they are much more at risk of trafficking and sexual exploitation and abuse. Sexual exploitation and abuse takes the form of more than just prostitution. Instead of always talking about people in Thailand selling their children we should be asking: Why is there a demand for sex trafficking? [FN101]

Simon Baker's report [FN102] for ECPAT, a premier organization combating sexual exploitation of children, indicates that [r]eality is likely to be far more complex than parents simply forcing their children into this work.  Rather than the parents, it is the evil of poverty that is to be blamed.  If this is still taking place today it is the Thai government that should be blamed, as there is a lack of social security and policies alleviating poverty. [FN103] He states that in the course of his research,

I saw no evidence that [selling their children as a way children enter into prostitution] was happening.  None of the sex workers that I talked to indicated that they or any of their fellow workers had been sold.  For example asking a-go-go dancer about girls being sold by parents, she stated: “No, that doesn't exist. The women come by themselves to apply for the work that is how it is.” Asking her further if there would be cases of girls being sold in other establishments, she stated: “No, there isn't. I have never heard of this.”  [FN104] According to Baker, “the views of this worker is backed by a Thai Member of Parliament, who is the president of a NGO working for female teenagers in Northern Thailand, and who stated that she thought the selling of daughters probably does not exist anymore.”

Both Baker and Smith indicate that the practice of tok khiew no longer exists, if it ever did.  Baker describes the practice as “a down payment system where agents give loans to villagers with the farmers pledging their daughters in *844 exchange.”  [FN105] Although Baker concedes tok khiew has received great attention, “[n]evertheless, this system no longer exists. In none of the sites that I visited did anyone mention this system of recruiting girls into prostitution.” [FN106]

[FN100]. Shadow Report, supra note 48, at 36.

[FN101]. Personal Conversation with Karen Smith, Director of the New Life Center (2005).

[FN102]. Simon Baker, ECPAT Int'l, The Changing Situation of Child Prostitution in Northern Thailand: A Study of Changwat Chiang Rai (2000) (ECPAT is an acronym for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes), available at http:// www.ecpat.net/preventionproject/eng/publications/changing_situation_ changwat.pdf.

[FN103]. Id. at 29-30.

[FN104]. Id. at 30 (internal citations omitted).

[FN105]. Baker, supra note 102, at 43 (internal citations omitted).

[FN106]. Id. (internal citations omitted).

This article is published with the kind permission of Christa Foster Crawford. The article originally appeared in Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender, Summer 2006 issue.