Prostitution in Peru is legal and

regulated Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...

UNAIDS The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) (, ONUSIDA) is the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The mission of UNAIDS is to lead, strengthen and support an ...

estimate there to be 67,000 prostitutes in the country.

Adult prostitution

Prostitution between adults is legal for women and men over 18 years of age if they register with municipal authorities and carry a health certificate.

Brothels A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub ...

must be licensed. The vast majority of prostitutes work in the

informal sector An informal economy (informal sector or grey economy) is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government. Although the informal sector makes up a significant portion of the economies in developing countrie ...

, where they lack health protection. Individual police officers tolerate the operation of unlicensed brothels.

Child prostitution

Child prostitution is illegal. Penalties for pimps and clients of underage prostitutes range from four to eight years in prison. Child prostitution is common in the country, and especially in Peru's isolated Amazonian mining communities. In the Amazonian department of Madre de Dios the illegal exploitation of

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

has dramatically increased the recruitment and coercion of adolescents into prostitution through false employment offers. While poverty and

inequality Inequality may refer to: Economics * Attention inequality, unequal distribution of attention across users, groups of people, issues in etc. in attention economy * Economic inequality, difference in economic well-being between population groups * ...

are important causes of child prostitution, part of the problem is also a social attitude that views sex—including paid sex—between adult men and adolescent girls as normal. Luis Gonzalez-Polar Zuzunada, president of La Restinga (an Iquitos-based nonprofit organization that works with at-risk children) said about teenage prostitution:"It's not seen as a crime. People think that's the way it is. Here, anyone is a potential client." The Peruvian government recognizes child sex tourism to be a problem, particularly in Iquitos, Madre de Dios, and

Cuzco Cusco, often spelled Cuzco (; qu, Qusqu ()), is a city in Southeastern Peru near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region and of the Cusco Province. The city is the seventh most populous in Peru; ...

Sex trafficking

Peru is a source, transit point, and destination for trafficked persons. The majority of human trafficking occurs within the country. Many trafficking victims are women and girls from impoverished rural regions of the Amazon, recruited and coerced into prostitution in urban nightclubs, bars, and brothels, often through false employment offers or promises of education. Domestic trafficking occurs particularly in districts located in the

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

or the

Amazon jungle The Amazon rainforest, Amazon jungle or ; es, Selva amazónica, , or usually ; french: Forêt amazonienne; nl, Amazoneregenwoud. In English, the names are sometimes capitalized further, as Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Forest, or Amazon Jungle. ...

, to bring underage girls into cities or mining areas to work as prostitutes. Victims are recruited by friends or acquaintances and through newspaper and

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

advertisements or street posters offering employment; some victims are recruited by local employment agencies that offer poor young women from rural areas relatively well-paid "restaurant work" in

Lima Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín Rivers, in the desert zone of the central coastal part of ...

, Cusco, major coastal cities, and abroad. The principal victims and groups at high risk for trafficking are children and young women from rural or poor urban areas, persons living in poverty, persons with disabilities, victims of domestic abuse, illiterate persons, and persons lacking birth certificates or other identification documents. Peru also is a destination country for some

Ecuadorian Ecuadorians ( es, ecuatorianos) are people identified with the South American country of Ecuador. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Ecuadorians, several (or all) of these connections exist and are colle ...

and Bolivian women trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. The

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP) is an agency within the United States Department of State charged with investigating and creating programs to prevent human trafficking both within the United States and internation ...

ranks Peru as a ' Tier 2' country.

References

External links

Lima, Peru: Want to get rid of prostitution? Add more light
{{South America in topic, Prostitution in Society of Peru