India - Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism

Child Prostitution and Sex TourismGOA

A research paper prepared for ECPATby Dr Julia O'Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylorof the Department of Sociology, University of Leicester, UK, September 1995.The studies in this series of papers were undertaken as preparation for theWorld Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children.Partial funding for these studies came from UNICEF

This series of research papers has been published by ECPAT as background documents for the World Congress Against theCommercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, August 1996. Case studies are based on authors' interviews. Names of thoseinterviewed have been changed in all cases.

Papers in this series:

1. Child Sexual Exploitation in Costa Rica2. Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism in Cuba3. Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic4. Child Sexual Exploitation in Goa5. Child Sexual Exploitation in Venezuela6. Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism in South Africa7. Sex Tourism in Pattaya, Thailand© Julia O'Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor, 1996Published by:ECPAT International326 Phaya Thai RoadBangkok 10400THAILANDTel: 662 215 33 88Fax: 662 215 82 72

INTRODUCTION

Child sexual exploitation is not a new phenomenon in Goa. In particular, the sexual exploitation of female child prostitutes has a long history. Goa's red light districts are by no means recently established and the children prostituted there have, in the past, served a clientele predominantly made up of local men, migrant workers andsailors. It also seems probable that a trickle of foreign demand for prostituted children has existed for a longtime.Under Portugese colonial rule, such children were no doubt sexually exploited by colonial officials andadministrators as well as by 'curious' foreign visitors. It also seems unlikely that the presence of foreign paedophiles in Goan society is entirely new.Colonial domination has invariably involved the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children and women as well asthe political subjection and economic exploitation of a people (see Gill, 1995).However, there is reason to believe that the numbers of sexual exploiters in Goa are now swelling as a result of both domestic and foreign tourism. The tourist industry in India has expanded rapidly since the 1980s and is nowthe country's largest single foreign exchange earner (de Souza, 1995).Investment in tourism has been explicitly promoted by the government which offers a series of incentives tonational and multinational capital (Suresh, 1995).Goa, with its great natural beauty, pleasant climate and distinctive history of Portugese colonial rule has been oneof the key foci of this national and international investment. As a foreign exchange earner, tourism is oftenassumed to yield significant benefits for 'third world' countries.Whether it actually does bring net economic benefits is a matter of dispute (see Ferguson, 1990, andPattullo,1996, on the effects of tourist development on local economies in the Caribbean, for example) but whatis certain is that tourist development has a number of extremely negative environmental and social consequencesin poor countries.In particular, many regions of the economically underdeveloped world which have had tourism foisted upon them by world financial institutions and international capital have found themselves fast becoming centres of variousforms of sexual tourism and child sexual exploitation.In some cases, tourism has served to maintain and develop the country's existing formal sex industry. In others,tourism has been more strongly associated with the emergence of new and more informal types of prostitution.Our aim in this report is threefold: to describe the various different contexts in which children are sexuallyexploited in Goa; to examine the identity and motivations of those who exploit them; and to discuss the risk of western package tourism turning into mass western sex tourism in Goa.We begin with a discussion of the methodological problems encountered during fieldwork in Goa and these are problems which readers must keep in mind throughout the remainder of the report.