The situation of Kenyan girls forced into prostitution by their parents

Kenya’s tourism industry relies primarily on the influx of foreign visitors to the coastal region, which has more than 800 hotels and resorts and accounts for 60 percent of national tourism activity. Between 1998 and 2006, Kenya was Africa’s top sex tourism destination, and Kenya’s coast was home to approximately 50,000 commercial sex workers.

The sex trade offers an attractive standard of income for shorter hours and maintains a voracious degree of autonomy. The trade restricts civil liberties, creates the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and the absence of strict regulation creates vulnerable prey for pedophiles.

Sex tourism involves travel and exploration for the purpose of engaging in transactional sexual gratification. It is one of the most emotional and sensational occupations in society and, like food, is often incidental to other travel motives. Extreme poverty in remote areas and the constant expansion of urban slums have subsequently provided a springboard for citizens to continually trade their bodies.

Sex trafficking has been fundamental to the success of Kenya’s tourism industry for decades, but it violates the rights of underage girls. Depending on the ability to retain money, the trade in Kenya is classified into three levels: poverty sex trafficking, tourism sex trafficking and premium sex trafficking.

At the top are the premium sex traffickers, who cater to local elites, expats and international tourists. Their ability to retain money is optimised by their position in the sex trade spectrum, and their potential to retain money is enhanced by the fact that they operate independently of their will and are not beholden to predatory pimps and devious brothels.

Sex workers in this category usually come from the white-collar echelons of society and have conventional incomes and a steady cash flow. They encourage commercial sex work to supplement their professional income as doctors, secretaries, teachers, nurses, business people or company directors. For them, working in the sex industry is more about consumption than about survival. Their participation in the sex industry is openly discreet because their reputation is determined by their graduated profession.

The sex workers in the second tier, the tourist sex trade, cater to both international and domestic tourists and in some cases are associated with nightclubs, restaurants and bars. Their clientele pays a fee to the hosting facility to support the sexual encounter and in cases where the sex workers operate autonomously, they operate their sex businesses in the areas visited by tourists. Tourists are their primary target group and commercial sexual services are packaged, marketed and sold as part of the tourist product in the facilities they visit.

Cash retention levels for sex workers in the tourist sex industry are superior to those of sex workers in the poverty sex industry, which is at the bottom of the three-tiered pyramid. Poverty reduces their commercial sex work and client interaction to a master-servant relationship.

The advances of women into prostitution are the result of a desperate survival instinct to earn an income to meet socio-cultural obligations and possibly to devise a reformed lifestyle to enable them to escape poverty. In several cases, women in this category work under pimps or are connected to hotels and brothels who take on the role of pimp. Their connection with a second party reduces their ability to hold money. As a result, their well-being often declines and they experience limited liberation.

A large percentage of poverty sex traffickers are children of parents who previously worked in the sex trade. Most of them come from families that have been ravaged by subjugation and lured, seduced and indoctrinated into the sex trade by parents who violate the conventional decency of parenthood and shirk their primary role of protecting their children.

According to Wanjohi Kibicho’s 10-year research, Sex Tourism in Africa: Kenya’s Booming Industry, In 1996, Kenya had approximately 3,000 commercial child sex workers on the coast. The number increased dramatically in the new millennium. More than 90 percent of child sex workers are girls, with the exploitative child sex tourism serving both international and local clients.

Commercial child sex workers are lured into the sex industry in many ways. Some of them are lured by their parents into private homes owned by international or local tourists under the guise of domestic workers. They are then left at the mercy of their employers, who are child sex predators, and their guardians are paid directly for the sexual services. This bad move by the parents distorts the girls’ perception of dignity and makes the reality of immorality more palatable.

According to Kibicho’s research, the prevalence of this practice is centered in Nairobi, Malindi, Mombasa and Ukunda. The girls are manipulated and conditioned to believe that the survival of their families is based on satisfying the sexual desires of their employers.

The most organized form of child sex tourism involves employees of popular and politically connected hotels and resorts, where parents of victims are either employees or previously visited the facilities as prostitutes. Hotel staff create the perfect vantage point by seamlessly integrating encounters between the girls and the sex tourists.

The tailor-made incriminating violations take place in correlation with the hotel management and their execution is blatantly normalized and is vividly and shamelessly accepted within the context of the tourist culture. The administration of the hotels receives a transaction percentage of the revenue generated by the sexual encounters. The staff directly involved in such arrangements also earn a commission from the exploitation of the girls and so do the parents, who in this case take on the role of pimp.

The author is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 representative in Kenya and founder of Jeff’s Fitness Centre (@jeffbigbrother).