Description of Need

The biggest problem in Madagascar is sex slavery. Sex tourism in Madagascar increased dramatically during the last year. An estimated 6,000 Malagasy women are currently employed as sexual workers. Teenage girls between the ages of 12-18 are targeted most often. Children mostly from rural areas, are subject to conditions of domestic servitude and commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficking victims returning from Lebanon, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia reported rape, psychological abuse, physical torture, violence, and sexual harassment. Child trafficking occurs with the involvement of family members, but friends, transport operators, tour guides, and hotel workers also facilitate the enslavement of children. Some young girls are fraudulently recruited for work in the capital as waitresses, maids, and masseuses before being coerced into prostitution. The main clients of prostituted boys and girls in madagascar are malagasy men.

Children are bought, sold, traded, and bartered or see no alternative but to sell themselves. Police in Madagascar rescued 11 babies between the ages of three weeks and nine months who were in the process of being sent abroad in April 16, 2000. At the official launch of a national campaign to end child sexual exploitation in Madagascar, UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) and ILO (International Labour Organization) presented the resumes of three studies that highlighted the sexual exploitation of children in Madagascar. According to the UNICEF-sponsored study, between 30 % to 50 % of all sex workers in two of country's main cities, Nosy Be and Tamatave, were children under the age of 18.



“ The Government of Madagascar does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so.” -United States Mission to Madagascar Poverty makes their parents turn to selling their children for money. Parents force their children into various forms of prostitution to earn money to support their families; in some cases, parents have directly negotiated prices with clients when prostituting their children.” -United States Mission to Madagascar