Top Five Countries with Highest Rates
 of Child Prostitution

Child prostitution has been defined by the UN as "the act of engaging or offering the services of a child to perform sexual acts for money or other consideration with that person or any other person".

By 1990, international awareness of the commercial sexual exploitation and the sale of children had grown to such a level that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights decided to appoint a Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.Here is a list of the five countries with the highest rates of child prostitution.


Sri Lanka

The number of crimes against children in Sri Lanka increased by 64% in 2012 , compared to the previous year, a Unicef report said.

"According to Unicef and ILO [International Labour Organisation] there are 40,000 child prostitutes in Sri Lanka and 6.4% of the country's child population gets pregnant," said United National Party MP Rosy Senanayake.

Although girls are sexually exploited both in the sex industry and by sex tourists, many NGOs believe that it is boys who face greater abuse by foreign sex offenders, NGO Ecpact (Ending Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking) said.

In Sri Lanka, the plantation sector has been identified as a notorious area for trafficking of children into the worst forms of child labour, particularly child domestic work and commercial sexual exploitation, according to ILO.

The National Child Protection Authority issued a warning in 2011 of an increase in child sexual exploitation, related to the rapid growth of tourism.



Thailand


Child prostitution in Thailand involved 800,000 children under the age of sixteen in 2004.

According to Ecpat, due to the hidden nature of child sexual abuse reliable figures are hard to compile and cases difficult to document. Available figures estimate that currently some 30,000 to 40,000 children, not including foreign children, are exploited as prostitutes.

Sexual exploitation of children in Thailand, as in many other countries, is tremendously influenced by tourism.

"In Pattaya [ Thailand], if there were fewer foreign people coming in to buy sex, then the problem would be easier to manage," Palissorn Noja, who runs Pattaya's Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Abuse Centre, told the Huffington Post.

"They [pedophiles] have an entire worldwide network of people looking for children through human trafficking. And sex tourism makes it harder to stop."

The photographic documentary, "Underage" by photographer Ohm Phanphiroj shows the life of thousands of underage male prostitutes in Thailand.

"The film aims at exposing the rotten problem about sexual exploitation against minors and mistreatment towards children," the photographer said in a statement.



Brazil

Sex trafficking is an appalling truth to many young people in Brazil, where there are half-a-million child sex workers, according to the National Forum for the Prevention of Child Labour.

Children as young as 12 are selling themselves for sex for as little as 80p in Brazil, according to an investigation by Sky News.

The shocking revelation comes as international footballers join a campaign warning fans travelling to Brazil for the World Cup to exploit children.

According to the documentary "Brazil- Children for sale", hundreds of children who live in the slums leave their homes in search of tourists, who are "eager for easy and cheap bodies", to earn money and escape poverty.

Unemployment and poverty is extremely high in Brazil and children are sometimes encouraged by their parents to start prostituting.


United States

According to Crimes Against Children research Centre (CCRC), the numbers of juvenile prostitutes within the United States range from 1,400 to 2.4 million, although most fall between 300,000 and 600,000.

16 children as young as 13 were rescued from the sex trade in a law enforcement operation that targeted suspected pimps who brought the victims to New Jersey for Super Bowl weekend, in February 2014.

"Prostituted children remain the orphans of America's justice system. They are either ignored or, when they do come in contact with law enforcement, harassed, arrested, and incarcerated while the adults who exploit them - the pimp and their customers - largely escape punishment," said Julian Sher, author of the book Somebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of America's Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them.



Canada

Inuit babies and children are being sold by their families and are "prostituted out by a parent, family member or domestic partner", according to a recent report by Canadian Department of Justice.

The sexual exploitation of children is a deeply–rooted reality in too many Canadian homes, families and communities, according to a 2011 report by a Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.

The committee, which started the investigation in 2009, heard that in one year there were almost 9,000 reported sexual assaults against children
(many of whom belong to aboriginal communities) in Canada. The overwhelming majority of sexual abuse goes unreported.

Social service organisations have estimated the number of trafficked Canadians to be as high as 16,000 a year, but the number of children trafficked within Canada from place to place remains uncertain due to the clandestine nature of the activity, Unicef Canada said in a statement in 2009.

Healthy

gay men urged to take HIV drugs - WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) is urging all sexually active gay men to take antiretroviral drugs to reduce the spread of HIV.

The organisation says the move may help prevent a million new HIV infections over 10 years.

Officials warn rates of HIV in this group remain high across the globe.

But activists suggest this could discourage the use of condoms - one of the best methods to stop the virus spreading.

According to the WHO report, men who have sex with men are 19 times more likely to have HIV than the general population.

'Exciting approach'
Health experts say offering antiretroviral drugs to all at-risk men - known as pre-exposure prophylaxis - will provide an additional way to prevent infection, together with condom use.

When taken consistently by people at high risk, studies show the medication can reduce the chances of getting HIV by up to 92%.

And scientists say encouraging this group of men to take these pills could lead to a 25% reduction in new cases across the globe.

Dr Rosemary Gillespie, of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: "We already know if someone has HIV, using treatment drastically reduces the likelihood of them passing it on, as does using condoms.

"The idea of treatment as prevention is not new, but the idea of extending treatment to HIV-negative people from high-risk groups is.

"Pre-exposure prophylaxis is an exciting approach, and likely to be one of a number of ways in which we can reduce the spread of HIV in the future.

"However, we need to evaluate how effective it will be in preventing HIV among gay men."

'Progress threatened'
She says until the results of UK trials are known, condoms and regular testing remain the best weapons against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

And while the number of people dying of Aids is falling sharply, the WHO says key populations need more attention.

According to the report, transgender women are almost 50 times more likely to have HIV than other adults, a level similar to that seen among people who inject drugs.

And sex workers are 14 times more likely to have HIV than the general population.

"Dr Gottfried Hirnschall of the World Health Organization said: "Failure to provide services to the people who are at greatest risk of HIV jeopardises further progress against the global epidemic and threatens the health and well-being of individuals, their families and the broader community."

Extremism in Iraq,

The situation in Iraq is worsening, with Sunni militants declaring their own expansive Islamic “caliphate” this week. Now, the armed movement known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is demanding it be referred to as the “Islamic State.” The declaration comes as attempts to create a unity government composed of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions, under pressure from the international community, collapsed Tuesday amidst widespread acrimony in Iraq’s national assembly and boycotts by several MPs. Parliament has been adjourned until July 8. In the meanwhile, the fighting rages on; according to a United Nations report released Tuesday, June was the deadliest month in Iraq since 2008, with some 2,400 people killed. Below we dig into the history and tactics of the radical group that has many warning of the first credible challenger to Al Qaeda.

What’s the backstory?

ISIS – also known as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) – is an Al Qaeda offshoot formed in 2004 during the Iraq war to battle U.S. coalition troops. Its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed two years later by a U.S. airstrike, and the movement was (temporarily) disabled thanks to the “Sunni Awakening” of moderate tribal leaders, who fought ISIS in coordination with American troops. Ten years later, thanks to widespread unrest in Syria and the subsequent disruption to regional stability, ISIS re-emerged stronger than ever, joining the Sunni-led opposition and adopting tactics that proved too radical even for Al Qaeda. In the wake of bloody turf wars in Syria between ISIS and other extremist groups, Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri publicly disowned the offshoot in February 2014.

Now, ISIS, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, plans to take over Iraq; in mid-June, rebels boldly chased national security forces out of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. They hold large swathes of northern and western Iran, and the cities of  Tikrit, Fallujah, Tel Afar, and parts of Ramadi, and are planning to extend their campaign southward, all the way to Baghdad.

Why has the ISIS Iraqi assault been successful thus far?
Here, it’s important to cite the gargantuan failures of the Shiite-led Iraqi government under the stewardship of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Since the U.S. withdrew in December 2011, the prime minister has intensified his exclusionary policies targeting Iraq’s large Sunni minority, for example attempting to have his Sunni vice president arrested and launching a violent crackdown on a Sunni protest site last year. Little wonder then, as the New Yorker notes, “With nowhere else to go, Iraq’s Sunnis are turning, once again, to the extremists to protect them.” Case in point: ISIS has succeeded at recruiting members of marginalized groups like Sunni tribal fighters, Sufis, and Baathists.

Not that al-Maliki is the only one to blame. When American forces pulled out, they left behind a fragile, overstretched state that struggled to unite the country’s feuding sects and curb extremism. Before ISIS launched its campaign last month, Iraq was seeing daily suicide bombings and insurgent attacks in its worse spate of violence in five years.

Who are the rebels?

ISIS is thought to number in the thousands, though determining the exact size of the group is near impossible. More worrisome than the size of its ranks, however, is ISIS’ diversity: the radical organization has drawn fighters from across the world, notably from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Russia and France, and is set to attract even more as its high-profile Iraq campaign continues to bear visible fruit, i.e., the seizure of a major city like Mosul.

What’s their endgame?
Redraw the Middle East’s borders and create an empire ruled by an extreme interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic, law. The organization’s recent name change is an important, if ambitious, indicator that it is no longer willing to recognize Iraq or Syria’s sovereignty. While a five-year plan reportedly released by the group this weekend, which maps the extent of its territorial ambitions and stretches as far as Serbia and North Korea, has been revealed to be a hoax, ISIS is nonetheless aiming to create a vast Islamic state that would straddle Iraq and Syria. The radical organization has already imposed Sharia law on the residents of Mosul where, for example, women are barred from leaving the house unless “necessary.”

How is Baghdad responding?

Even though Iraqi security forces outnumber ISIS fighters, they have failed to contain the insurgency, as made chillingly clear by the exodus of soldiers from Mosul last month. Clashes continue in northern Iraq, notably near ISIS strongholds in Anbar province; Iraqi troops launched an offensive Saturday to push militants out of Tikrit.

The most effective security response, however, has come from largely autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, which deployed its U.S.-trained military, the Peshmerga, after the fall of Mosul. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has since welcomed thousands of Iraqi refugees, and reportedly offered protection to over 10,000 security forces. The KRG is using the crisis to bolster its regional authority, notably by seizing the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, to which it has long laid claim. Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani has announced he will hold a referendum on independence from Baghdad in the coming months.

What about the international community?

While rich in condemnation and outrage, foreign assistance to Baghdad – for now, at least – has been limited. The United States supplied helicopters and drones, as well as a small contingent of military advisors and several hundred soldiers, but is shying away from military intervention. However, U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Congress to approve $500 million to arm and train Iraq’s moderate rebel factions. Washington also placed a $10 million bounty on Baghdadi’s head. Russia delivered a fleet of aircraft this weekend, as did, reportedly, Iran, which has a lot at stake in preserving a Shiite-dominated Iraq and has accordingly pledged its military support.

What next?

ISIS is a potent regional threat. The organization has proved itself capable of not only recruiting an international network of fighters and stockpiling heavy weaponry, but also at self-funding via extortion schemes – it also seized about $450 million during a bank heist in Mosul – making it the wealthiest militant group in the world. That said, it remains to be seen if the organization’s radical tactics will alienate residents of seized territories within Iraq, as well as its loose fighting coalition, enough to lay the groundwork for a repeat of 2006’s pushback by moderates.

Analysts warn that ISIS is primed to usurp Al Qaeda as the world’s most dangerous jihadist movement. Western states are particularly anxious that ISIS militants will return home radicalized, as was the case for French citizen Mehdi Nemmouche, who went on a deadly shooting spree in a Jewish museum in Belgium last month after fighting with the jihadist group in Syria.

Look for ISIS to continue its efforts to consolidate control on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border via multi-pronged assaults. With no sign that the Iraqi government is capable of stemming the onslaught, foreign intervention may become more likely as ISIS sets its sights on Baghdad and beyond.

Chechen fighter emerges as face of Iraq militant group

BEIRUT –  A young, red-bearded ethnic Chechen has rapidly become one of the most prominent commanders in the breakaway Al Qaeda group that has overrun swaths of Iraq and Syria, illustrating the international nature of the movement.

Omar al-Shishani, one of hundreds of Chechens who have been among the toughest jihadi fighters in Syria, has emerged as the face of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, appearing frequently in its online videos — in contrast to the group's Iraqi leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who remains deep in hiding and has hardly ever been photographed.

In a video released by the group over the weekend, al-Shishani is shown standing next to the group's spokesman among a group of fighters as they declare the elimination of the border between Iraq and Syria. The video was released just hours before the extremist group announced the creation of a caliphate — or Islamic state — in the areas it controls.

"Our aim is clear and everyone knows why we are fighting. Our path is toward the caliphate," the 28-year-old al-Shishani declares. "We will bring back the caliphate, and if God does not make it our fate to restore the caliphate, then we ask him to grant us martyrdom." The video is consistent with other Associated Press reporting on al-Shishani.

Al-Shishani has been the group's military commander in Syria, leading it on an offensive to take over a broad stretch of territory leading to the Iraq border. But he may have risen to become the group's overall military chief, a post that has been vacant after the Iraqi militant who once held it — known as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Bilawi al-Anbari — was killed in the Iraqi city of Mosul in early June. The video identified al-Shishani as "the military commander" without specifying its Syria branch, suggesting he had been elevated to overall commander, though the group has not formally announced such a promotion.

As the militant group's operations in Iraq and Syria grow "more and more inter-dependent by the day, it is more than possible that someone like (al-Shishani) could assume overall military leadership," said Charles Lister, Visiting Fellow with the Brookings Doha Center.

The extremist group began as Al Qaeda's branch in Iraq, and many of its top leaders are Iraqi. But after it intervened in Syria's civil war last year, it drew hundreds of foreign fighters into its operations in Syria. Now with victories on the two sides of the border, the two branches are swapping fighters, equipment and weapons to an even greater extent than before, becoming a more integrated organization. Its declaration of the caliphate — aspiring to be a state for all Muslims — could mean an even greater internationalization of its ranks.

Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, said ethnicity is not a major factor in jihadi movements, only dedication to jihad. Al-Shishani "is a fanatic of Islam with war experience, and he obviously has had a strong track record (among fellow fighters)," he said.

Syria's civil war, in its fourth year, has attracted militants from around the world. Some estimates run as high as 10,000 foreign fighters in the country. But the Chechens — hardened from years of wars with Russia in the Caucasus region — are considered some of the best fighters.

Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency known under its Russian acronym FSB, said last October that about 500 militants from Russia and hundreds more from other ex-Soviet nations are fighting in Syria.

Al-Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Batirashvili, is an ethnic Chechen from the Caucasus nation of Georgia, specifically from the Pankisi Valley, a center of Georgia's Chechen community and once a stronghold for militants.

He did military service in the Georgian army but was discharged after an unspecified illness, said one of his former neighbors, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. At one point, Georgian police arrested him for illegal possession of arms, the neighbor said. As soon as he was released in 2010, Batirashvili left for Turkey. Georgian police refused to comment.

He later surfaced in Syria in 2013 with his nom de guerre, which means "Omar the Chechen" in Arabic, leading an Al Qaeda-inspired group called "The Army of Emigrants and Partisans," which included a large number of fighters from the former Soviet Union. A meeting was soon organized with al-Baghdadi in which al-Shishani pledged loyalty to him, according to Lebanon's al-Akhbar newspaper, which follows jihadi groups.

He first showed his battlefield prowess in August 2013, when his fighters proved pivotal in taking the Syrian military's Managh air base in the north of the country. Rebels had been trying for months to take the base, but it fell soon after al-Shishani joined the battle, said an activist from the region, Abu al-Hassan Maraee.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant entered the Syria conflict in 2013, and initially it was welcomed by other rebels. But rebel groups — including other Islamic militant factions — turned against it, alienated by its brutal methods and kidnappings and killings of rivals, and accusing it of trying to take over the opposition movement for its own ambitions of creating a transnational Islamic enclave. Rebel factions have been fighting against the group since last year in battles that have left thousands dead. Al Qaeda's central command ejected the extremist group from the network.

For the past two months, al-Shishani has led an offensive in Syria's eastern Deir el-Zour province against rival rebels, seeking to solidify his hold on a stretch of territory connected to neighboring Iraq.

In May, some Arab media organizations reported that al-Shishani was killed in the fighting. An activist in Iraq in contact with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said al-Shishani suffered wounds in his right arm and was taken into Iraq where he underwent treatment before returning to Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity for security concerns.

Since then, al-Shishani has appeared multiple times in photos and videos put out by the group. The photos and videos are consistent with the AP's reporting from activists on the ground. In a recent photograph, the young, round-faced al-Shishani, wearing a black cap and beige gown, is seen with a big smile as he examines a Humvee said to have been captured in Iraq and brought into Syria.

Hussein Nasser, spokesman for the Islamic Front coalition group of rebels, said Chechens are among the most feared fighters in Syria.

"A Chechen comes and has no idea about anything (in the country) and does whatever his leader tells him," Nasser said. "Even if his emir tells him to kill a child, he would do it."

Could a happy marriage be the key to a healthy heart?

A happy marriage or marital-like relationship may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, PA.

Many studies have investigated the link between marriage and heart health. In March this year, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that unmarried women are more likely to die from heart disease, while another study from NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, NY, linked marriage to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

According to study author Thomas Kamarck, professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, there is growing evidence that the quality and patterns of social relationships are linked to an array of health outcomes, including CVD.

As such, the team wanted to determine whether positive or negative marital interactions influence the risk of CVD.

Negative interactions 'increased CVD risk by 8.5%'

The researchers analyzed 281 healthy and employed middle-aged adults who were either married or living with a partner in a marital-like relationship.

Happy couple

Researchers found that positive marital interaction may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Over 4 days, interactions between participants and their partners were monitored every hour, and participants rated their interactions as positive or negative.

The thickness of subjects' carotid arteries - major blood vessels in the neck that supply the head and neck with oxygenated blood - were also measured. Thickening of the carotid arteries can cause them to narrow, which can lead to atherosclerosis - a build-up of fatty plaques in the arteries that increases the risk of CVD.

The results of the study, recently published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, revealed that participants who reported negative interactions with their partner had thicker carotid arteries. They calculated that these subjects had an 8.5% higher risk of developing CVD, compared with those who reported positive interactions with their partner.

The team notes that these findings were consistent across all age groups, races, genders and education levels. The results remained even after accounting for other factors that may influence the risk of CVD, the researchers say, and they were independent of the frequency of martial interaction, personality factors and nonmarital social interaction.

Commenting on the findings, Kamarck says:

"The contribution of this study is in showing that these sorts of links [between marital interactions and CVD] may be observed even during the earliest stages of plaque development, and that these observations may be rooted not just in the way that we evaluate our relationships in general but in the quality of specific social interactions with our partners as they unfold during our daily lives."

'Romantic relationships play major role in overall health'

But lead author Nataria Joseph, who recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh but who is now at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, says she believes the implications of the findings reach further than CVD risk.

"It's another bit of support for the thought that marital or serious romantic relationships play a significant role in overall health," she says. "Biological, psychological, and social processes all interact to determine physical health."

The study is subject to limitations, according to the team. For example, they are unable to establish a causal relationship between marital interactions and CVD because it is a cross-sectional study where all the data has been collected at one specific time period.

"What it does show," Joseph adds, "is that health care providers should look at relationships as a point of assessment. They are likely to promote health or place health at risk."