A volatile country, if anything. A colorful country. And underneath it all, in the shadows of the cartels, the syndicates, the beauty and the wars, are more than 1 million girl-children earning a living by selling their bodies. Children become prostitutes for a variety of reasons. Poverty is often at the core: families prostitute out their girls in order to have enough income to survive; others sell their children to brothels and trade networks for the same reason.
Still others are kidnapped, or refugees from other regions. Prostitution takes on different guises here. Some children end up in local brothels; others are placed into regional and international prostitution trade networks. These networks are often run by bigger syndicates also involved in narcotics, weapons, and counterfeiting.
Children may be traded to neighboring countries like Venezuela, or to markets in countries as distant as Spain or Germany. Whether instigated by adverse conditions at home or involuntary actions, child prostitution in Colombia is insidious as it is widespread. Colombia is known as a human supply company for prostitution networks abroad, the country itself is a known sex tourism destination, and prostitution is firmly embedded into the economy as a means of making a decent living wage.
This is not only for their own well-being—child prostitution is correlated with illness, infertility, post-traumatic stress disorders, homelessness, and other afflictions—but for the good of the entire society. While the U. Senate has still not completely ratified the international treaty on the Rights of the Child because of ongoing contentions concerning sections of the Convention which prevent jurisprudence and sentencing against children under the age of Currently inside the United States, numerous separate states continue today to charge and sentence children under the age of 18, which clearly goes against tenants of the treaty itself, leaving the U.
The Colombian government, in contrast, seems publicly to realize a greater need for the guidelines provided by the CRC. National Police have rounded up child prostitutes on several occasions and brought them to the Renacer Institute, a nonprofit organization which offers child prostitutes room, board, and education in exchange for a promise to stop working. Established as a nonprofit in , the foundation has two houses that can support around 60 children.
