Thousands of children sexually exploited: ILO

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 06/11/2009 8:13 PM  |  National

The global economic crisis has given a rise to child labor, particularly girls who have been exploited for commercial sex, the International Labor Organization (ILO) says in its report.

“Actually, the recent global estimates indicate that the number of child labor has been falling. But the financial crisis starting from the late 2008 threatens to erode this progress,” Chief Technical Adviser of ILO Jakarta Office, Arum Ratnawati, told a press conference Thursday.

ILO focuses on girl labors for this year's World Day against Child Labor, which falls on June 12.

“The ratio of girl to boy labors has increased significantly during the past few years,” Arum said. “For example, the ratio of girls to boys in the streets in Indonesia ups from 20 percent in 1999 to 50 percent in 2009.”

ILO found in 2007 that 1.1 million children under 14 years old, 40 percent of them or 440,000 are girls, fell into forced labor. An estimate of between 40,000 and 70,000 girls were victims of sexual exploitation.

“Approximately, 21,000 of the prostituted children are located in Java island,” she said.

Child prostitutes can be found easily both in public places like the streets and the parks or in some “hidden” prostitution places like beauty and massage parlors, discotheques, cafes, hotels, as well as karaoke lounges, Arum said. She underlined that a child victim of prostitution was susceptible to HIV/AIDS and drug addiction.

Director general of manpower improvement and supervision at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, I Gusti Made Arka, acknowledged that eradicating child labors remained very difficult. “It may be impossible to eliminate all underage workers,” he told The Jakarta Post.

The ministry aims to cut child labors by 10,000 this year. (bbs)

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