Sex industry goes global, says UN report

By Staff
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Bhopal, Sep 12 (UNI) Sex industry has gone global as globalisation has given additional migration channels for women following explosion in entertainment and sex industries, says a UN report.

The boundary between 'entertainment' (singers, dancers and hostesses) and sex work is often blurred especially for those women who have been coerced or abducted, says UNFPA's State of world population 2006 report released here last week.

In 2004, the report says, more than 1,000 Russian women were engaged in sex work in the Republic of Korea. Most had entered the country on entertainment or tourist visas but were then forced into prostitution by business owners and recruiters.

Sex work is a lucrative business as it accounted for more than 2 percent of GDP in four South East Asian countries throughout the 1990s, it said.

Sex workers circulate in Asia and Europe, and also move from Latin America to Europe and North America and from Eastern to Western Europe.

Given the largely unregulated and underground nature of these industries, actual numbers are hard to come by and are likely higher than available estimates. Many workers also remain in the host country once their visas have expired.

Some estimates pin the numbers of women working in the illegal sex trade in the European Union at 2 lakh and 5 lakh. Many have been trafficked, the report said.

In 2004, United Kingdom records revealed that the second largest category of work permit applications from foreign women were for ''entertainment and leisure'' at 5,908 with another 4,627 applying for ''hospitality, catering''' and ''other'' occupations.

In Canada, over 1,000 temporary work permits a year were granted to exotic dancers in the mid-1990s. In 2004, Japan admitted nearly 65,000 women on entertainment visas, the majority of whom were from the Philippines. These high numbers, coupled with concerns over trafficking, have prompted the government to review requirements for entertainers, the report said.

UNI SP 1414

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