Assignment on NGOs in Bangladesh working for Children of Sex-workers

One of the most horrendous violations of child rights is sexual exploitation. While several categories of children are in the grip of physical and social disadvantages, the children of commercial sex workers fall easy prey to those who surround them and abuse them. They are not only marginalized but receive scant attention of society (Anandraj, Hannah. 1999).

Child sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking remain largely taboo in Bangladesh society. Often disabled children and girls are more vulnerable. Human trafficking in Bangladesh is believed to be extensive both within the country and to India, Pakistan and the Middle East.  Reintegration into mainstream society is a huge issue for trafficked children, especially for girls with the stigma and taboo associated with it.

 

A major underlying issue behind child sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking is that there is a massive lacking of knowledge about legal rights of children among the mass people. People even don’t know the application or exercise of child rights. In Bangladesh there is no proper use of child right that’s why children are often unaware of their legal rights, or they are made to feel they cannot exercise those rights.

 

Child sexual abuse permeates all levels of Bangladeshi society.  Most children know their abuser, who is usually someone close to them. Isolated or impoverished regions are also more attractive to gangs of traffickers because it is both harder for parents to seek law enforcement but also easier to sell the idea of "lucrative jobs" to impoverished parents.

Commercial child sexual exploitation

 

Child sexual exploitation can start when children are as young as 10 in Bangladesh's registered brothels, its hotels and its parks, streets and stations. Children of women who work in a brothel often end up working there too. Most often female or male children of sex-workers are at the risk of massive exploitation. In brothels, many children have to work as bonded sex workers. They must pay all their earnings to the brothel's madam for their first few years in return for food, clothes and essentials. Child victims of commercial sexual exploitation can also end up in brothels or on the streets through trafficking, family break-downs or poverty. On the streets, many children are beaten and robbed. Many boys are drawn into crime through their pimps. Men having sex with men (MSM) is a growing and hidden issue but often not acknowledged due to the stigma or shame attached to it.

 

UNICEF AND CSW(Children of Sex Workers)

 UNICEF Bangladesh is working to create a culture of respect for children's protection rights through development of child rights based and gender appropriate policies, advocacy, a change of societal attitudes, strengthened capacity in government and civil society responses to protection issues and the establishment of protective mechanisms against abuse exploitation and violence(source:UNICEF).

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UNICEF works to enhance the life skills of children at risk. Thus they are empowering children. It has undertaken an action research project to address the rights violations of the slum children, especially girls, and to empower them to fight for their rights (source:UNICEF).

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Research, networking and advocacy take on an important role when viewed through the cultural taboos associated with child sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking. Thus they make links among various protection tools and they goes through reintegration process tracing the children’s families. It’s another attention is to remove violence against children working group (source:UNICEF).

 

UNICEF is supporting the development and strengthening of practical mechanisms to rescue, recover, repatriate and reintegrate (RRRR) child victims of trafficking from Bangladesh to India. A Rapid Assessment of existing practices and mechanisms of RRRR have been conducted in both countries which highlighted the gaps and challenges of the whole process. The first inter- ministerial bilateral meeting was held in 2006, with technical support from UNICEF country offices and the regional office, to develop a common understanding between the countries and agree upon a way forward. As a follow up a draft action plan on RRRR in both countries is being developed (source: UNICEF)...MORE