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Protecting Children from Being Exploited for Sex in Thailand

Saeng holds a picture he’s drawn of a woman dressed in designer clothes
© UNICEF EAPRO/2014/Andy Brown

CHIANG RAI – There are no circumstances in which using children for sex is acceptable. HIV Specialist for UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Shirley Mark Prabhu says: “The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been signed by all countries in this region, is very clear on this point. There is no such thing as a child prostitute. Any child under the age of 18 is a victim of sexual exploitation. It violates their rights to health, education and a childhood.”

Saeng* was forced into prostitution at the age of 14. After falling out with his** parents and running away from home, he found himself on the street with no money. Desperate and too young to understand the risks involved, he ended up in the sex industry, exploited by adults. Bars wouldn’t allow him to work on the premises because he was underage, so he sold sex on the streets.

“I fought with my Dad because I wanted to be a kathoey and he couldn’t understand,” recalls Saeng, who is now 18. The Thai term he uses is colloquial for a range of transgender identities. “I went to stay with a friend who sold sex in the bars around Nana district. I would hook up with foreigners who paid me 500 baht (US$15) for sex. If I got enough customers, I could spend the night in a hotel. Otherwise, I would sleep on the streets. I didn’t know much about HIV.”

Adults who exploited Saeng put him at grave risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Some committed acts of violence against him. “One time a customer forced my head into a hotel basin and wouldn’t let me go. I shouted for help and the receptionist came and rescued me.”

There were also issues with acceptance. “There was a kathoey mafia in Nana,” he says. “They would slap or beat me for working in their territory.”

Saeng also had a run-in with the police. “Another time a customer was getting money out of a cash point for me,” he says. “The police came up behind me and dragged me away. They arrested three of us. They let the others go for 1,000 baht each, but I had no money. They kept me in jail overnight and released me the next morning.”

In the dark backstreets

Nathee talks to volunteers before the evening’s street outreach © UNICEF EAPRO/2014/Metee Thuentap

The area where Saeng ended up, Nana, is a sex district catering mainly to foreign tourists. Other areas see a different clientele. In dark backstreets and along canals in Sanam Luang near the Grand Palace, women sell sex to Thai taxi and tuk-tuk drivers. They rent plastic chairs along the pavement where they advertise themselves. Once the deal is done, they move on to seedy hotels that rent rooms by the hour.

Nathee Sornwaree is a social worker for Issarachon Foundation, which reaches out to sex workers and people living on the streets in the area. While the majority of people selling sex are adults, Nathee says that children are also involved, occasionally starting at a very young age. “We have found boys as young as 8 years old being sold for sex,” he explains. “Girls start from 11 or 12. When schools are out, they come and work along the canal.”

The reasons that children are drawn into prostitution have changed over the years. “In the past, they did it to help support their families,” Nathee says. “But society is changing. Now, children from poorer backgrounds do it to get money to buy smart phones and other consumer goods that they couldn’t otherwise afford. We’ve also seen more gay and transgender sex workers. They can meet customers more easily on social media.”

In Thailand, soliciting sex is illegal, so people doing so cannot go to the police for help. “Sex workers often get into trouble with the police,” Nathee says, a situation that Saeng’s experience bears out. “If they’re under 18, they can be sent to a juvenile detention centre. Often, what they most need is a friend, someone who won’t judge them. Most of them know about HIV, but they don’t think about other sexually transmitted diseases.”

In the evenings, Nathee walks the streets, distributing condoms, helping sex workers access health services – and trying to find them alternative employment.

Concrete action for change

HIV Specialist Shirley Mark Prabhu talks with Saeng about his situation © UNICEF EAPRO/2014/Andy Brown

UNICEF is working to prevent young people like Saeng from being forced into prostitution in the first place. We also work to ensure that governments meet their obligations to protect and care for sexually exploited children, including by ensuring access to health care services and information about HIV/AIDS.

Working with partners, UNICEF East Asia and Pacific has produced guidance for researchers (pdf) on how to obtain data about at-risk adolescents and young people, while guaranteeing their anonymity. “This is a hidden population,” says Ms. Prabhu. “The first step is getting reliable data about them. We are now working on a guidebook to help youth organizations use and understand data, in the style of a comic book.”

In 2014, UNICEF Thailand produced a report (pdf) on young people affected by HIV, which found that Thailand is facing a new rise in sexually transmitted infections, with 70 per cent of all cases occurring in the 15–24 age group. UNICEF has used these data to talk to the Government about reducing the age of consent for HIV tests to below 18, providing training for health workers on working with at-risk young people and expanding HIV education in schools. In December 2014, the official guidance on HIV tests in Thailand was changed in line with our recommendation.

A better life

Celeste holds a picture painted by Saeng at Dton Naam © UNICEF EAPRO/2014/Andy Brown

For young people like Saeng, there are alternatives to selling sex. Two years ago, outreach workers from another NGO, Dton Naam (Source of Water), approached him while he was sleeping rough on the streets of Nana.

Dton Naam works with Thailand’s transgender community. Executive Director Celeste McGee explains that this group faces particular challenges. “Their options in life are very limited,” she says. “They can only do certain jobs, such as in the entertainment industry, and it’s easy for them to transition into prostitution. They can use the money for cosmetics, hormones and surgery, but it becomes a vicious circle, and they need to keep on selling sex to maintain their lifestyle.”

Thanks to Dton Naam’s work, Saeng is no longer on the streets. They helped him to reconcile with his parents and get medical treatment. They provided alternative employment, including working in a coffee shop, and making arts and crafts. Now, he visits the organization once a week for counselling and painting classes. He missed out on years of education – but it is a start.

“My parents treat me much better now,” Saeng says. “My mum doesn’t shout at me anymore. She’s much calmer and kinder. My father still doesn’t like my kathoey lifestyle, but he has accepted it.”

As far as Saeng’s plans for the future, “I would like to go back to school, and then work as a chef or an artist,” he says.

*Name has been changed.
**Saeng’s gender assignment at birth was male. Saeng’s gender identity and expression are not fixed, and he speaks using both male and female indicators. As interviews showed his self-identification, including language and choice of clothes, leaned more often towards male, masculine pronouns have been used through this article.

Andy Brown is Regional Communication Specialist for UNICEF East Asia and Pacific.

News

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

News

The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

News

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP