* I recently saw the documentary on the Dancing Boys of Afghanistan. It exposed an ancient custom called “bacha bazi” (boy for play), where rich men buy boys as young as 11 from impoverished families for sexual slavery. The boys are dressed in women’s clothes and made to dance and sing at parties, before being carted away by the men for sex. Owning boys is considered a symbol of status and one former warlord boasted of having up to 3,000 boys over a 20-year period, even though he was married, with two sons. The involvement of the police and inaction of the government means this form of child prostitution is widespread.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/25/middle-east-child-abuse-pederasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
Commercial sexual exploitation of children:
The situation in the Middle East/North Africa region
http://www.unicef.org/events/yokohama/backgound8.html
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/09/child-abuse-on-the-rise-in-bahrain/
