Ten years have passed since the exposure of Thailand’s rampant sex industry. The international community has progressed since the early 1990s, when the topic was of such high profile that research visas were not being released to persons studying child prostitution. Following a cover feature on the Thai sex industry in a 1993 issue of Time magazine, Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai announced tough new anti-prostitution laws, but in effect, the new laws silenced the cries of the enslaved children. While the world no longer hears their voices, the industry thrives more than ever.

The Extent of the Epidemic

Although all statistics related to the issue are much debated because of its underground nature, the International Labor Organization (ILO) claims that in 2003 the child sex industry in Thailand contributed between 14 and 16 percent of the national gross domestic product. The UN Office on Drugs and High Crime cites Europol’s estimate that the industry is worth several billion US dollars a year.

In 2001, Heather Montgomery, a lecturer in Childhood Studies at Open University and a well-known anthropologist, conducted an in-depth study of a small Thai slum. She found that every household had at least one child working as a prostitute. Their ages ranged from four to 15 years old. Montgomery spoke to many children who did not even have the vocabulary to describe their work and who had been introduced to the industry at even younger ages.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that more than several hundred thousand children are currently forced into prostitution in Thailand. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) states that more than 1 million new children worldwide enter the industry every year and are forced to serve between five and 10 clients a day. The problem is not limited to Thailand; the US Department of State reports that more than 2.3 million women and children are trafficked in India alone—a devastating contributor to the exponential growth of AIDS in East Asia. However, Thailand has remained the regional hub of the industry for decades.

A Deep-Rooted Infrastructure

Child prostitution developed as a term in Thailand in 1908, when it first became illegal for children under 10 years old to enter brothels. However, “the oldest profession in the world” has thrived as an industry since the Ayudhaya period, dating back to 1350. In fact, the prostitution of children over 14 years remained legal until 1930. By 1949, Bangkok had gained such a reputation that a guidebook was published specifically for tourists traveling to Thailand to indulge their sexual pleasures.

However, in his book From Peasant Girls to Bangkok Masseuses, ILO researcher Pasuk Phongpaichit recognized that tradition was not the only factor in the growth of the Thai sex industry. The structure of the Thai economy was also contributing to the development of the industry. Since the 1950s, Thailand has “rejected the idea of tight economic planning … to build up a manufacturing sector.” Rather, it “counted on private enterprise to achieve economic growth by pursuing the comparative advantage which Thailand enjoys.” As the Cold War-era global economy transformed, international trade declined, and low, cheap labor became a crutch for the declining economy. As Phongpaichit writes, Thailand continued to rely on “incentive to attract foreign and local investors to sink money into urban enterprise… not allowing any of the rural interests to develop any real political torque.” These phenomena created what have been recognized by many social scientists as the most optimal conditions for the growth of oppressive industry.

High urban wages and low rural incomes made prostitution cheap for city-earners while providing an astounding income for countryside families. Monetary inflation in the late 1960s and early 1970s decreased the real cost of the service, attracting foreigners to the industry. Phongpaichit explains, young girls “were engaging in an entrepreneurial move to sustain the family units of a rural economy which was coming under increasing pressure… girls felt they were making a perfectly rational decision within the context of their particular social and economic structure.” Today, as Montgomery found, in some cases child prostitutes provide the only income in families of six.

US Solidification

While many women began to flock to the sex trade during the 1960s as a conscious decision to support their families, it was not until the influx of US soldiers during the Vietnam War that the trafficking trade developed to meet the demand, and traffickers began to kidnap women and children and forced them into the industry. Despite the departure of most soldiers by 1975, the sex trade developed such a strong infrastructure that it solidified, and the suppression of prostitution by communist authorities in all surrounding countries left Thailand as the only country in Southeast Asia offering these services. According to Gary Haugen, President and CEO for the International Justice Mission (IJM), an organization currently working in Thailand to free young girls from sex trafficking, “There is no question that the US bears a significant measure of responsibility for the sex industry in Southeast Asia… American sex tourists are still a large part of that demand.” In fact, Western tourists are still the number one consumers of child prostitution in Thailand.

Efforts to Reconcile

On October 3, 2003, whether or not in repentance for the US contribution to the industry, the United States Department of Labor (DOL) awarded a US$703,000 grant to the IJM so that it may “eliminate the trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of girls in northern Thailand.” Although Haugen welcomes the grant, further investigation shows that it may be more mockery than altruism. In its decade of operation, the IJM has secured the rescue of more than 300 girls from brothels in Thailand working within a budget of more than US$4 million. Yet given DOL estimates that more than 300,000 women are still being trafficked into Thailand each year, this funding is obviously not sufficient to realize its goal.

When the sex industry was first exposed, UNICEF and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) founded the campaign End Child Prostitution (ECPAT), but the United States remains the lowest contributor of any western country to the project. ECPAT Asia Pacific Regional Officer Amalee McCoy states that “as a world leader, the United States needs to take a significant role in this.” McCoy continues that while the United States felt that it was making a large contribution when it issued the well-intentioned Trafficking in Persons Report in 2002, rating countries for their compliance with standards of child protection and threatening to repeal and deny trade privileges and foreign aid to those who did not comply, the report’s actual effects were disputes over numbers, animosity among accused countries, and the suppression of the industry in order to meet deadlines. Former ECPAT Asia Pacific Regional Officer Chitraporn Vansaponge believes that the US ratings “cause countries to constrain their actions towards the problem—and the report doesn’t really reflect the reality or the actions that have been done in the countries.”