UGANDA: Married men turn to child sex workers

Married men are among the top exploiters of children involved in commercial sex, a new report has revealed.

The report titled; Commercial Sex Exploitation of Children in Uganda, published in May, also finds that more teenage girls are engaging in commercial sex, with an estimated 6,000 new recruits in the last five years alone. The report says that the age at which children are engaged in the trade is becoming younger with many getting started at the age of 13 and the biggest conduit to the vice being child trafficking.

Married men account for 42.4 per cent of customers

Married men account for 42.4 per cent of customers, coming third just after visitors (60 per cent) in an area, single men (58 per cent) and students (44 per cent). Truck drivers and soldiers are also mentioned by child sex workers as some of their top customers.

The girls are usually lured into the business by friends or relatives at a tender age out of dire need for money to cater for their families, pay school fees, buy clothes and shoes, pay rent or buy alcohol.

Although recruitment of children is done by adults, the report makes a shocking revelation that some children, especially those working in bars and lodges are increasingly participating in recruitment of fellow children.

Majority of the children said that they find their own customers at bars and lodges and on the streets or through phone contacts. Other children are facilitated by a well-knit network of brothel owners, pimps, boda boda cyclist and taxi operators. The survey utilised both qualitative and quantitative methods of research. In total, 529 children and 60 key informants were interviewed in 10 districts.

Peanut pay

Frobisha, who owns a dance group in Kireka, a Kampala suburb, said her group has eight girls, with the oldest being 17 years. She pays the girls Shs15,000 whenever they perform and pay between Shs30,000 and Shs50,000 for older girls, normally aged between 19 and 26, who perform what she terms as, “different tasks”.

These children are sometimes made to live in squalid residences where they are congested. A Congolese dancing group owner in Kawempe Division, says a group can be up to 60 children and karaoke dance groups are made up of 10 girls and 10 boys and typically stay together in one room rented by their employer.He said the girls are free to go out with men after their night performance.

The men in this case will pay Shs5,000 to the employer and Shs20,000 to the girl for a full night. The girls, he said, are usually paid Shs3,000 per show, from which they are expected to buy food and go to the saloon. The report reveals that celebrity musicians sexually exploit children in their vehicles for pay.

Sexual activities take place in musicians’ vehicle with tinted glasses

“Sexual activities take place in musicians’ vehicle with tinted glasses, on club walls and in dark places,” it said. Children interviewed in the report said they are exploited by their managers who also curtail their movements except at work places such as bars, lodges, hotels and homes.

The children noted that their pay is often deducted or sometimes held by the exploiters.

“There is no future in prostitution, we feel helpless because prostitution is not taking us anywhere. In many cases, we end up with any man who approaches us because we are desperate to survive,” said a girl in a karaoke dancing group in Kawempe.

“Girls who dance in karaoke groups are forced to remove their knickers and to have sex with patrons and revellers. Some of these men do not pay or instead pay the manager who takes all the money. When you insist to be paid, they insult you, can beat you and force you out of their house,” she added.

The study, however, revealed that 57 per cent of the children interviewed had not thought of quitting commercial sex activities due to lack of alternative skills to seek employment elsewhere. Notwithstanding the high knowledge level of condom use and improved access, the report says that only 4.9 per cent of the children interviewed mentioned that they use condoms each time they engaged in a sexual activity.

Reports by the Uganda Aids Commission indicate that HIV/Aids prevalence rate among sex workers stands at 43 per cent and that commercial sex work is one of the drivers of new infections among the youth.

Children in prostitution: Working girls or sex slaves?

They are referred to as escort girls, ladies of the night, prostitutes, and locally, malayas. Sometimes derogatory terms likes sluts and harlots are used to mean females who endure the cold nights to offer their bodies to be used by men at a fee. But shocking is that the trend has taken greater heights.

Now, girls below 18 are streaming into the trade, some with multiple domestic problems, others with high thirst for a quick kill albeit the many problems involved. As Flavia Lanyero writes, the government has not done much to discourage new entrants from embracing the trade.

Polar Nagayi, 22, is a young woman with a charming smile and loves trendy dresses; she is your average girl, with an innocent look. She, however, has a recurring fear, a fear that one day; someone will get to know about her dark past.

Ms Nagayi is one of the 18,000 girls recruited into sex trade, according to a new report released by a non-governmental organisation, Acting for Life. Now a reformed sex worker, she was lured into this illegal business in 2005 at the age of 16, at the time living with her parents in Jinja.

“My father used to drink a lot and when he came back home, they would always fight with my mother. He was chased from his job at UEB in 2000 because of drinking too much and since then we did not have school fees and my siblings and I started staying home,” narrates Ms Nagayi, a first born in a family of seven children.

“My mother did all she could but it was not enough. We were many children, sometimes we could sleep without eating. We had torn clothes, the situation was so bad and I had looked for jobs but they wanted senior four, six or graduates,” she says.

It was at this point that she met an old school friend who told her that she could get her a job where she will earn Shs5,000 a day. “The friend took me to a lady in Nasanga bar (Jinja). The lady gave me a man to go with, she was so harsh and told me not to spoil her business. The man used me and the next day I was given Shs30,000. It was a lot of money and I needed it,” she says.

“I really did not like that work and my mother did not know what I was doing. I told her I was working on night shift, no one respects you in that work, the customers abuse you and even slap you, they expect you to be an expert in bed, you feel dirty and very low about yourself, it was just the money that I wanted,” Ms Nagayi says.

Like Ms Nagayi, most of the child sex workers interviewed in the report say they were lured into the business by friends at a tender age out of dire need for money to cater for their families.

Many of these girls are heads of households as a result of a chain of social problems like child neglect, death of parents, alcoholism and domestic violence. “In addition, lack of sustainable opportunities for education was identified as a key drive,” reads the report.

The study shows that children from poor families and rural areas, traffic into urban centres by adults are the most likely to be exploited. Although recruiting of children is done by adults, the report says some children, especially those working in bars and lodges are increasingly participating in recruitment of fellow children

The trade is well established in Kampala City. The Ministry of Health puts that sex trade is highest in Kawempe Division with an estimated 2,540 sex workers, followed by Rubaga with 1,687, and lowest in Nakawa division.

In Kawempe alone, it is estimated that more than 500 children below the age of 18, are engaged in ‘survival sex.’ The report titled Commercial Sex Exploitation of Children in Uganda, published in May, also finds that the age of entry into commercial sex work is increasingly lower to include children of 13 years, with clients of commercial sex workers demanding to have young girls as opposed to middle-age women because among other things; they charge lower prices and are presumed to carry less risk of HIV/Aids and STIs. The situation is worse in Jinja District, where the age when children engage in the trade is as low as eight years.

The study notes that commercial sexual exploitation of children is growing rapidly in Uganda though hidden and appears to be infiltrating schools. The number of young girls getting into the trade has increased from 12,000 in 2004 to 18,000 this year, with more girls affected than boys.

Pornography is also a new dimension of Commercial sexual exploitation of children mentioned in the report, especially in Kampala and this is growing faster than child sex worker. It said this involves well-coordinated network embracing music celebrities, bars, karaoke group owners with about 18,000 children exploited per week. “It is disguised in shooting films, photos, video and participating in strip dancing.” About 20 prostitutes are strung to one pimp whom these girls report to every night. Some of the popular spots with prostitutes in Jinja include Kachi Road, Mbiko Village, Gohkale Road and hang outs like Babes and Nasanga.

The girls we spoke to, however, say some of the ladies in the business do it out of their will while others even come from wealthy families although the younger ones like them are simply struggling to survive. The ones that accepted to be interviewed expressed disgust with the trade and felt ashamed of it. They even refused their photos to be taken lest someone could identify them.

Ms Nagayi stayed in the business for two years, did not reap much from it and with encounters like beatings from men’s wives, brushes with those that want to murder women and with fear that she might get discovered, she quit the business in December 2007.

She could earn between Shs5,000 - Shs30,000 while sometimes she was deprived of her wages. And now, after receiving counselling from The African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect, she feels happy about what she termed as ‘a new life of dignity’ but one thing, she still wants to go back to school.

The Programme Manager ANPPCAN Uganda Chapter, Mr Anslem Wandega, himself has done a study on CSEC, says that this act compromises a child’s right to enjoy their childhood and their ability to lead a productive, rewarding and dignified life.

It can result in serious, lifelong, even life-threatening consequences for the physical, psychological, spiritual, emotional and social development and well-being of a child and are at risk of acquiring HIV/Aids. “Children who have been sexually exploited typically report feelings of shame, guilt and low self-esteem. Some children do not believe they are worthy of rescue. To cope, some of them attempt suicide or turn to substance abuse. Many find it difficult to reintegrate successfully into society once they become adults,” Mr Wandega says.

Whereas there are a number of organisations that are trying to fight the vice, according to the February 2011 report commissioned by Acting for Life, interventions by both government and non-government orgisations have tended to target adult commercial sex workers with no programmes in place for the children. “There is virtually no commitment on the part of government to address the problem of CSEC and Networking among civil society organisations to deal with the issue is still weak, underfunded, with limited staffing, uncoordinated and limited capacity in many districts,” the report reads in part.

Indeed, even at ANPPCAN where these few former child prostitutes were met, the social workers confess that they had no plans at all to deal with child prostitutes but met them in due course as they look for cases of child labour, trafficking and the like but only offer psychological support.

The International Labour Organisation constitutes child prostitution, pornography and trafficking of children to CSEC are crimes against children. In the Child Labour Convention 1999 (No. 182), these are the worst forms of child labour and these types of work is supposed to be determined by national laws or regulations or by the competent authority.

The Acting Secretary General of the National Council for Children, Mr Martin Kizza, however says the government is trying to handle this issue and there are laws in place. He says they plan to increase advocacy about the issue which he admits is rather under the carpet.

Laws enacted

“At least we now have the Trafficking in Person’s Act operationalised and we are trying to disseminate laws and policies about the issue it is an issue we cannot rub off,” Mr Kizza says. He is of the view that government has put in place laws that tackle certain aspects of CSEC but there are no tailor-made programmes to stem or even mitigate the impacts of the CSEC problem.

“Of recent, the skyrocketing number of children in street situations has made most of the street children succumb to CSEC in order to survive. This looks to be one of the areas ignored by the government,” Mr Wandega says. And if Mr Wandega’s words are anything to go by, there is still a long way to go to mitigate sexual exploitation of children.

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