The Children of Sex Tourists

The story in The Guardian kept recurring in my thoughts until I finally decided to write about it. The article was about the children of sex tourists in  Pueblo de los Angeles, one of Manila’s poorest neighborhoods, and what made it haunting was that it is duplicated in the slums of many cities, in Asia and the US and surely other continents. Of the 4.7 million tourists in the Philippines each year, 1.2 million are men traveling alone and it has been estimated that probably 40% of them are sex tourists. They have web sites and their own social networks where they call themselves “mongers” for whore-mongers and share tips and other information including what they call GFE, girl friend experience. Maybe 40 to 50% of the girls working in Angeles City had at least their first child from “mongers” whether they were from Europe, America or Australia. These children have no fathers and consequently no financial support from them. They often live in dire poverty, where the mother perhaps a third generation sex worker, may live on the equivalent of $3 a day. They may not have enough to eat, live in hovels with leaky tin roofs where the floor turns to mud when it rains. It can be difficult for them to go to school. The article mentioned one child who was too weak from hunger to walk to school.

If these men are that oblivious to the consequences of their self-gratification they would hardly make good fathers. But if they have the means to travel to the Philippines or elsewhere, they should have the means to help support their progeny. Tourism is embedded in the economy of many nations so it is doubtful sex tourism would be banned by the respective governments. Still it can be addressed, perhaps something like  a general tourist tax or a  tariff to create a fund for those children. Any way to address this problem is very much in order and quite possible.

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