Gambia: Sex Tourists Exploiting Children

By United Nations

Child protection experts say sexual exploitation of children by tourists is on the increase in The Gambia, despite national laws against it.
"More and more children are working in the sex industry with tourists," said Bakary Badjie, programme officer with the non-profit coalition the Child Protection Alliance (CPA). "Sexual relations between children and tourists are shifting from hotels, deeper into communities, where it is harder to track."

Though the latest comprehensive report on the problem - by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) - is from 2003, anecdotal evidence shows the practice has grown since then, said Badjie.

A sex worker, 23, who asked not to be named, told IRIN many of her fellow sex workers are under 18, and most of her clients are Western male tourists. They work in Bakau, a suburb of Banjul popular with tourists. At least half of the female Gambian sex-workers UNICEF talked to for its 2003 report said they started as a sex worker before the age of 18, some as early as age 12.

Many of the girls involved come from deprived socio-economic backgrounds, have dropped out of school, or have been uprooted from rural areas and lost the protection of their extended families, according to Badjie.
The girls can earn up to 2,000 Dalasi (US$83) a day through this work, he said, versus the $1 a day majority of working Gambians earn, according to World Bank figures.

They may receive presents such as watches or mobile phones, and some consider themselves the 'girlfriends' of return tourists, according to Ousman Kebbeh, tourism resource officer for GTA.

He told IRIN many of the girls are also "duped" into getting involved in the sex industry, through offers of payment of school or medical fees. "Tourists...take advantage of poor girls...they approach them and say 'I will sponsor your education'. They do not just stop at the girls...they even approach the parents," he said.

According to UNICEF's research, some of the girls' families do not view the work as exploitative child labour, and many of the girls involved no longer consider themselves children.

Many of the mainly European tourists involved come to Gambia specifically looking for "cheap sex" with young girls, and some tour operators even promote these services to their clients as a lure, said Badjie. Tourists meet girls in clubs, on the beaches, in the streets, through "bumsters" - local men who act as intermediaries - and even at school gates, according to the non-profit group End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking.

UNICEF representative in The Gambia, Min Whee Kang, told IRIN the government is reluctant to emphasise child sex tourism as a problem because the country relies so heavily on tourist dollars. This is particularly the case for the upcoming 2008-09 season, she said, given concerns that the global financial crisis could force many tourists to cancel holidays.

With an average of 100,000 travelers per year, according to the Gambia Tourism Authority (GTA), tourism brings in approximately 16 percent of The Gambia's national income, and 30 percent of its export earnings, according to the World Bank. One in five private sector jobs in The Gambia is in the tourism sector, according to a 2008 Overseas Development Institute report.

Kang and other child rights experts say the government has made some positive steps. The Gambia in 2005 passed the Children's act, which harmonises Gambian laws relating to children with the UN Child Rights Convention, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and other international conventions, according to UNICEF. "The [2005] act is quite strong," said Badjie. UNICEF's Kang calls it "a good start...it provides the framework for a protective environment."

The government also passed the Tourism Offences Act in 2003 to regulate tourists' behavior and outline how hotel owners should act when tourists break the law, Kang said. The government has also set up an army-led tourism security unit to protect tourists and Gambians.

The GTA now has a code of conduct for tourists outlining punishments for child protection abuses, which UNICEF and the CPA helped develop. Under current law, tourists who sexually abuse a child, whether or not they believed the child to be over 18, could face up to 14 years in prison if convicted.

"These [laws] have done a lot to curb the situation," Kebbeh told IRIN, citing the case of a Norwegian teacher who was recently tried in Norway for having sexual relations with a child in The Gambia.
A child pornography case involving tourists is currently being reviewed by a court in the capital Banjul.