- GENEVA(Reuters) - The United Nations labour organisation on Wednesday
urged governments to officially recognise the booming sex industry and
treat it like any other business. The International Labour Organisation,
in a survey of Southeast Asia, said prostitution in the region had grown
so rapidly that the sex business was now worth between two to 14 percent
of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in regional economies. The ILO stopped
short of calling for prostitution to be legalised. But it spoke of the
advantages of recognising prostitution as an economic sector for ``extending
the taxation net to cover many of the lucrative activities associated with
it'' and to formulate labour policies needed to deal with an estimated
several million people working in the sex industry.'' The report may be
controversial to those governments and people that believe prosititution
must be considered a crime. The author of the report, Lin Lim, said the
ILO wanted governments to apply labour regulations and standards for social
protection ``where prostitution is recognised as legal work.'' ``The sex
sector is not recognised as an economic sector in official statistics,
development plans or government budgets. (But) the revenues it generates
are crucial to the livelihoods and earnings potential of millions of workers
beyond the prostitutes themselves,'' said the report. ``The ILO suggests
that the official recognition of the activity, including maintaining records
about it, would be extremely useful.'' The ILO reiterated its call for
the elimination of child prostitution. Estimates on the number of child
prostitutes, though not fully reliable, ranged from 50,000 to 70,000 in
the Philippines and as many as 800,000 in Thailand, it said. The ILO survey
of the sex business in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand found
that between 0.25 percent and 1.5 percent of all women in these nations
were prostitutes. In Thailand, a 1997 government survey found 65,000 prostitutes
but the ILO said the unofficial figure could be as high as 300,000. Indonesia
had 140,000 to 230,000 prostitutes, Malaysia 142,000 and Philippines nearly
half a million. The sector is expanding beyond borders with many sex establishments
in the Philippines found to have foreign financial backing including the
international trafficking of prostitutes, the ILO survey said. The surge
in recent years in the number of women in Asia's migrant workforce -- where
they now equal or outnumber male migrants -- has fuelled the growth in
the sex industry, the ILO said. Because of the shadowy nature of the sector,
smugglers were increasingly trading in women. Some 80 percent of Asian
female migrant workers who legally entered Japan in the 1990s were ``entertainers,''
a euphemism for a booming sex industry, it said. In Indonesia, the ILO
estimated the financial turnover of the sex industry at up to $3.6 billion
annually, including close to $100 million a year it said was generated
in the capital Jakarta alone from activities related to the sale of sex.
In Thailand, ILO said urban prostitutes were transferring $300 million
in net income to rural families annually. It put the annual income from
prostitution at more than $20 billion. Elsewhere, the ILO said prostitution
grossed some $30 million annually in Australia while in Japan, the sex
industry accounted for one percent of GDP. Japanese men were the leading
sex tourists in Asia, the report said. The survey found that earnings from
prostitution were higher than in other unskilled jobs in the middle range
-- averaging $800 a month in Thailand, and more than $600 in Indonesia.
The actual number of prostitutes enslaved, trafficked or kept in prison
was no more than 20 percent of the total.
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- Thai Police Arrest 2 Men In AIDS Rape
Case Nearly One Million Thais Officially Said AIDS Infected
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- BANGKOK 8-19-98 (Reuters) - Thai police
said on Wednesday they had arrested two men on rape charges and sought
a third on suspicion of passing the HIV virus to an 11-year-old girl. The
men, 76 and 32, were arrested in Cha-am district of Patchaburi province,
about 150 kilometres (90 miles) south of Bangkok, police said. They said
the victim, who is in hospital suffering from AIDS, told police the three
men had raped her systematically since she was eight years old. ``The suspects
are charged with raping a girl younger than 15,'' police said. Thai Ministry
of Public Health records show that as of June, 90,637 Thais were suffering
from the last stage of AIDS and 24,667 people had died from AIDS since
1984. It estimates that some 900,000 people are carrying the human immunodeficiency
virus that leads to AIDS.
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