Global Issues

Back to Map

Thailand

• Estimated 2.8 million prostitutes in Thailand, up to 800,000 of them minors.

• Annual income from the Thai sex industry $4.3 billion dollars.

• Source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children who are subjected to sex trafficking.

• Vietnamese women forced to act as surrogate mothers.

• Thai trafficking victims abroad who were repatriated back to Thailand exploited in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, and China. Thai victims were also repatriated from Russia, South Africa, Yemen, Vietnam, the United States, the United Kingdom (UK), and Singapore. Thais trafficked to Australia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, and Timor-Leste.

• Sex trafficking generally involves victims who are women and girls.

• Sex tourism continues to be a problem.

• Thailand is a transit country for victims from North Korea, China, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Burma destined for third countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Russia, Western Europe, South Korea, and the United States.

• NGOs believe that rape was a serious problem.

• 33.8% of women in provincial Thailand report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 28.9% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 43.8% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual and/or physical violence in their lifetime.

• 5.3% report forced first sex.

• 3.8% report abuse during pregnancy.

 

Advocacy:

• Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women

• Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers is a coalition of sex worker groups and projects working on issues of HIV and human rights for female, male and transgender sex workers across Asia and the Pacific.

 

Sources: Destiny Rescue; UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data:  Surveys by Country 2011; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011