Child Prostitution In Venezuela

The exploitation of one human being by another is one of the basest of crimes yet human trafficking, especially among females is still a global problem which must soon be dealt with. Last year, the United Nations office of drugs and crime (UNODC) released their annual report on human trafficking and it stated that “…we have continued to see an increase in the number of detected child victims.” More than 90% of countries have laws criminalizing trafficking but the implementation of these laws always fall short which has cause trafficking to go undetected.

From 2010-2012, some 33 per cent of detected victims are children, which is a 5 per cent increase compared to the 2007-2010 period. In most regions, the victims were used for forced labour

It has been ranked as tier 2 country by the US departments report on human trafficking. Children have also been forced to work in prostitution rings where the promises of money is never delivered to them. One non-governmental organization estimated in 2003 that there were some 40,000 to 50,000 child prostitutes in Venezuela. The parents of these children are persuaded by traffickers to believe that their children are better off with them when in reality the traffickers are ruining these children’s lives. They are treated as slaves and are not given the necessities to live. Children are as young as four years old when they begin to be exploited sexually and more often than not they are permanently damaged mentally. Traffickers tend to use children in all forms of trafficking because they are the easiest to control and are less likely to get caught. Another reason for this rampant trafficking is that the laws prohibiting trafficking do not cover all forms of trafficking, nor do they impose heavy punishments. Many people blame the government’s lack of effort into these laws. For example, the Child Protection Act and various articles of Venezuela’s penal code can be used to prosecute internal trafficking of minors, but many of these statutes carry extremely low penalties, mostly fines. Instituting more stringent penalties would improve deterrence of trafficking crimes against children,

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), “about 12 million Pakistani children are forced into child labor, especially in Punjab and the Northwest Frontier Province, in conditions of real slavery.” But why is trafficking such a large problem for my country? Well first you must know that around 25% of the population is below the poverty. This, combined with the high illiteracy rate, causes the parents to take some extreme and irrational measures. They are unable to support their children and traffickers are fully aware of this fact. The traffickers promise work for the children in rich families but after a specific sum of money has been paid, the traffickers exploit the children and treat them like slaves. I would like to shed light upon the true event of Shazia Mashi who, like many other Pakistani children, was a victim of human trafficking. In 2010, she was handed over by her mother to a man in Lahore, who promised that the child would be working as a domestic servant in a rich family home. The child was then sold to a lawyer after which, she was raped and beaten. The lawyer offered her family 20,000 rupees for the funeral and silence. Upon seeing her lifeless body, her mother began to wail uncontrollably. And this is far from the only case. Thousands of children are snatched from their parents who are too poor to do anything about it. Maybe the main reason that so many trafficking networks