Like many other girls, she was introduced to prostitution by friends. A survey conducted in September by Confident Children out of Conflict CCC and the French embassy found that 31 percent of street girls surveyed were victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Young South Sudanese girls started to fill the void in a growing market, partly fuelled by the increased presence of soldiers around Juba, aid agencies say. The breakdown of traditional family structures during the war, neglect and abuse often precede child prostitution.
Cathy Groenendijk, Director of Confident Children out of Conflict, explains that internally displaced or returnee children who have lost their parents or whose parents are unable to care for them find their situation particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation. They start selling plastic bottles or polishing shoes.
As such, the brothels constitute a lucrative business for their owners, especially in light of the recent economic downturn. Organisations such as PSI and International AIDS Alliance run HIV awareness campaigns and hand out condoms, yet in light of the political unrest over the past six months, funding priorities have shifted towards protection of civilians and humanitarian aid. Awareness of HIV transmission and protection mechanisms is more limited among younger girls. But the younger girls are often unable to assert themselves over clients who refuse to use condoms, and many South Sudanese still believe that they are the cause for disease transmission.
Abuse by clients and the police is not unusual, and has been further fuelled by rising gender based violence during the recent conflict. According to several accounts, police officers conduct occasional raids on the brothels and use the presence of condoms as evidence for prostitution to extort payments from the women.
The girls might be taken to the police station, but the police often can't get the brothel owners. James Monday Enoka, Director of Public Relations at the Ministry of Interior, told Al Jazeera that no cases of misconduct or abuse by the police in brothel areas have been brought to his attention. Prostitution in South Sudan is illegal. Yet, in a country where young girls in their puberty are often married away, legislation on under-age sexual conduct stands in stark contrast to customary law and local culture.
