Nicaragua

Sexual commercial exploitation of children and women

More than 80 percent of Nicaraguans live on less than $2 a day, and one-third of all children never enroll in elementary school, fail to attend, or drop out before reaching the sixth grade. Poverty makes women and children particularly vulnerable to risk, including malnutrition, teenage pregnancy and early marriages, child trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Building on a collaboration that dates to 2008, the partners took new steps with this project to tackle sexual commercial exploitation of women, adolescents and children in Nicaragua. Through focus groups and interviews, they consulted government and community-based groups working to protect women and children who had been trafficked, and met informally with people in rural communities. In this way, they began to develop tools to measure the incidence of children and women involved in trafficking and sexual exploitation, as well as the incidence of forced migration to bordering countries and Canada.

They learned that drug trafficking and organized crime appear inextricably linked to the sexual exploitation of children and trafficking of women. They were also able to study how the lives of people in municipalities bordering other countries are vastly different from those in central regions of the country. Drawing on initial analysis of their data, the team secured funds from The United Nations Development Fund for Women to expand their consultations to the Atlantic coast and with bordering municipalities in Costa Rica.