Gambia News : Child Sex Tourism In The Gambia

The Gambia ’s mercurial leader has spent the best part of the past year attacking gay and homosexuals, but to many a much bigger problem is the sexual exploitation of minors.  Child protection experts say sexual exploitation of children by tourists is on the increase in The Gambia, despite national laws against it.

“More and more children are working in the sex industry with tourists,” said an officer at the Department of State for Tourism. “Sexual relations between children and tourists are shifting from hotels, deeper into communities, where it is harder to track.”

Though there has not been any comprehensive report on the problem since the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) completed its study of 2003, many think there is ample evidence to shows the practice has increased since then.

A 17-year-old sex worker, who said her name, is Ida but refuse to reveal her surname, told The Gambia Journal many of her fellow sex workers are under 18, and most of her clients are Western male tourists. “In fact since I first got initiated into sex at the age of fourteen I have been with a black man only twice. I do not think I like making it with blacks. In bed they cannot make me feel good as the tourists, and then I end up getting nothing for the service.” At least half of the female Gambian sex-workers UNICEF talked to for its 2003 report said they started as a sex worker before the age of 18, some as early as age 12. Many started as food vendors on the beach where they meet tourists who at the start act as selfless good Samaritans. Friends bring others into the “business”. There are a lot of them who use the business as a stepping-stone for greener pastures in European countries. 

Many of the girls involved come from deprived socio-economic backgrounds, have dropped out of school, or have been uprooted from rural areas and lost the protection of their extended families, according to a tourism resource officer for the Gambia Tourism Authority (GTA). The girls can earn up to D2, 000 about US$76 a day through this work, he said, versus the $1 a day the majority of working Gambians earn, according to World Bank figures. He added that the girls may also receive presents such as mobile phones, jewelries, clothes and watches and some consider themselves the ‘girlfriends’ of return tourists.

Mr. Malamin Cham, who works with one of the tour operators in the country told The Gambia Journal many of the girls are also “duped” into getting involved in the sex industry, through offers of payment of school or medical fees. “Tourists…take advantage of poor girls…they approach them and say ‘I will sponsor your education’. They do not just stop at the girls…they even approach the parents,” he said.

According to UNICEF’s research, some of the girls’ families do not view the work as exploitative child labor, and many of the girls involved no longer consider themselves children.

Many of the mainly European tourists involved come to Gambia specifically looking for “cheap sex” with young girls, and some tour operators even promote these services to their clients as a lure, Mr. Cham said. Tourists meet girls in clubs, on the beaches, in the streets, through “bumsters” – local men who act as intermediaries – and even at school gates, according to the non-profit group End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking.


The officer from the Department f State for Culture and Tourism said government is reluctant to emphasize child sex tourism as a problem because the country relies so heavily on tourist dollars. This is particularly the case for the upcoming 2008-09 seasons, she said, given concerns that the global financial crisis could force many tourists to cancel holidays. Asked why then President Jammeh’s resent series of outbursts and condemnation of homosexual relations, he smiled and said, “ President Jammeh hardly goes in line with government policies. Verbal diarrhea and the indiscipline that goes with too much power.”

With an average of 100,000 travelers per year, according to the GTA, tourism brings in approximately 16 percent of The Gambia’s national income, and 30 percent of its export earnings, according to the World Bank. One in five private sector jobs in The Gambia is in the tourism sector, according to a 2008 Overseas Development Institute report.

Mr. Cham and other child rights experts say the government has made some positive steps. The Gambia in 2005 passed the Children’s act, which harmonizes Gambian laws relating to children with the UN Child Rights Convention, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and other international conventions, according to UNICEF. “The [2005] act is quite strong,” he said, “a good start…it provides the framework for a protective environment.”

The government also passed the Tourism Offences Act in 2003 to regulate tourists’ behavior and outline how hotel owners should act when tourists break the law, Cham said. The government has also set up an army-led tourism security unit to protect tourists and Gambians.
The GTA now has a code of conduct for tourists outlining punishments for child protection abuses, which UNICEF and the CPA helped develop. Under current law, tourists who sexually abuse a child, whether or not they believed the child to be over 18, could face up to 14 years in prison if convicted.

“These [laws] have done a lot to curb the situation,” Cham added, citing the case of a Norwegian teacher who was recently tried in Norway for having sexual relations with a child in The Gambia.

A court in the capital Banjul is currently reviewing a child pornography case involving tourists.

But it has been difficult for the GTA to enforce tourist-related laws, according to the child protection group CPA. The GTA official said some hotels such as the Ocean Bay in Bakau proudly display the code of conduct in their lobbies, which helps to raise awareness, but no one is tasked with evaluating whether staff adheres to it.

The CPA and UNICEF train immigration and department officials as well as hotel staff, from security guards to receptionists, in the code.

“If we see an underage girl who is not a guest entering the hotel, the security guards now automatically refer her to reception,” said Sulayman Corr, duty manager at the Ocean Bay hotel. “We don’t allow teens to be used. And guests now have to pay for all additional visitors who go to their rooms.”

When asked if he knew of security guards accepting bribes to let girls through, he said, “Of course it is a possibility but we haven’t heard of it.”

Other hotels are stricter and stipulate that no one other than the person booked can stay overnight, or ban “bumsters” from their premises. “These are basic but effective measures,” a hotel manager told The Gambia Journal.

The government official said UNICEF would be willing to help the GTA monitor sex tourism, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the GTA. According to her it is also up to tour operators to promote responsible tourism. Tour operators that the Journal contacted did not wish to comment on the issue.

But the practice will not end, Cham said, unless the GTA goes into villages and communities where tourists are increasingly renting houses or staying at smaller, less regulated hotels.

“We have to take the fight to the community level, to get families, teachers and community leaders involved in better protecting children if we’re going to be able to reduce the rates [of child sexual exploitation],” he added.

Src: Gambia Journal, The