Pakistan: Boys Trafficked for Sex, Too

As daylight fades, boys aged 8 to 18 begin to gather
in and around the Old City of Lahore.

LAHORE, PAKISTAN -- Sexual exploitation of girls is well documented but boys are often overlooked. In Pakistan, child rights workers fear rural poverty is pushing greater numbers of boys into selling their bodies for food and shelter.

As daylight fades, boys aged 8 to 18 begin to gather in and around the Old City of Lahore. To the unassuming eye they are just enjoying a leisurely night out. But those frequenting the same haunts know by their signals and mannerisms that many of them are waiting at specific spots to be picked up by men for sex.

Resting against the grille encircling a merry-go-round in Karim Park, by the Minar-i-Pakistan, a 60 metre-high monument to independence, a teenage boy looks around. He is dressed in traditional shalwar-kameez, loose trousers and a long shirt, with a thick shawl thrown casually around his shoulders. Despite a drop in temperature the park is crowded and people are sitting on benches sipping hot tea, munching peanuts or eating nan halim.

The boy against the grille speaks to no one until a smartly dressed man in tightly fitting blue jeans and a black pullover approaches him. Within seconds another older man appears from nowhere and places his arm around the boy. He says something to the young man in blue jeans who turns to leave.

Salman Malik, Community Project Officer for the government of the Punjab and also for Pehchaan, a Lahore-based non-governmental organisation, confirms that the young boy comes here regularly to pick up clients and had been approached for sex. "His 'protector' runs a tea stall behind the Lahore Fort, where the boy also works as an errand boy," says Malik. "At night the boy is taken to the Minar-i-Pakistan to attract men. His protector probably didn't trust the man in jeans."

Malik has been working with abused and sexually exploited boys for nearly two years and is currently involved in a project for the government of the Punjab to monitor child sex workers for HIV infection. "In my experience nearly every child you see working on the streets of Lahore is sexually abused, with the majority involved in sex work," he says...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT KenyaNewsNetwork.com