Once you arrived, you learned the only way to make the promised money was through prostitution. She sits on a bar stool in a dark basement bar in the old quarter of Dubai, dressed in a short skirt. Her hair is bleached. The country, and especially Dubai, one of the seven emirates, is known as a centre for prostitution and sex tourism in the Middle East.
It is one of the many in the emirate where prostitutes offer their services openly, even though prostitution is strictly forbidden in the UAE and sharia courts can impose flogging as punishment. Plastic flower garlands hang around their necks. The walls are draped with purple and red velvet. This man is fed up with waiting. You are so stubborn. Bring your price down. Sex services in the country are also openly advertised on websites and social media. Most of the victims had been offered a respectable job as a receptionist in a hotel or as a secretary in the UAE while still in their home countries, she explains from her office at a shelter in an Abu Dhabi suburb.
This was also the case with year old Oksana, of Uzbekistan, who has long brown hair and is wearing a wide flower-print dress. She has been staying in the shelter for a few months now. Instead he gave the mother 20, dirhams for the costs she had incurred in bringing the girl to the country. Maitha al-Mazrouei, a shelter employee says helping victims of sexual abuse is something new in the Gulf region.
So far, fewer than women and children have stayed in the shelters. However, Rothna Begum, researcher at Human Rights Watch, thinks that the number of victims who receive assistance, and the number of prosecutions are far lower than would conceivably be expected for a country known for its high rate of trafficking.
The government and recruitment agencies prefer not to upset the status quo, because they benefit from it economically, the activist says. Dubai in United Arab Emirates a centre of human trafficking and prostitution. Oct 05 Some estimates have as many as 30, sex workers in Dubai alone. Now she earns about 20, dirhams a month. Maitha al-Mazrouei is second from left.
