A report published in 2001 by the National Commission for Child Welfare and Development (NCCWD) revealed the existence of child prostitution in Pakistan, the first official admission of this violation of children’s rights in the country. According to the report, both girls and boys are victims of prostitution.


The 11-year-old girl blushed as she walked into the car dealer’s showroom on Quetta’s Adalat Road in southwest Pakistan. Her 17-year-old cousin, eyes fixed to the ground, followed her. When the younger girl asked the owner for five rupees (6 cents), he pointed to the back room and told both girls to follow him.

POVERTY INCREASES PROBLEM - Fathers often send their young daughters out on the streets to earn money for the family. The girls begin by begging – some as young as 3-years old – and as they grow older, they become part of the flourishing sex trade in this deeply conservative city in southwest Pakistan. "The fathers of these girls are usually drug addicts or alcoholics and the family is impoverished," said Fauzia Baloch, a coordinator for the Aurat Foundation, an NGO that works for women’s rights in rural Pakistan.


Most of the 15,000-20,000 estimated child sex workers present in Lahore live in areas near bus stands and railway station. Male child prostitution is more common than any other form of commercial sexual exploitation in Pakistan.
Though the trend of selling organs (kidney.) for cash does not seem to have caught hold in Lahore or was not reported, quite a few children were aware of the fact that they could sell their blood for money if the need arose.


The limited blood screening facilities make such practice extremely unsafe and can spread HIV/AIDS on a rapid scale. Though not a single child admitted to resorting to this practice, they had come to know about this through adult drug addicts.

UNICEF Programme Officer Shamshad Qureshi announced the results of a UNICEF survey that there are 10, 000 street children in Lahore, out of which 9,000 children have been sexually abused. He said UNICET could reach only 3,000 sexually abused children and rehabilitate them by giving them vocational training, psychological aid and financial support to their parents.



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