The Czech Republic is a prosperous country with a well-developed economic and political infrastructure and an educated population. Despite this prosperity, poverty and social inequalities persist – particularly within the Roma community, which makes up 3-4% of the population. At-risk populations, like the Roma and abandoned Czech and foreign national children under state care, remain at risk for commercial sexual exploitation.
The Czech government has implemented many measures to eradicate child sex tourism but cities like Prague remain a popular destination for Western Europeans. While the number of incidents of children sexually exploited in the context of street prostitution has declined, there are still children being exploited in the country’s underbelly of brothels, sex clubs and private commercial sex establishments. The persistence of child sex tourism is driven in part, by a “legal grey area” regarding prostitution and low age of consent, which is just fifteen years of age.
Unfortunately, incidents of sex trafficking appear to be on the rise in the Czech Republic, with Roma children thought to be at a greater risk. Despite this, there are no measures designed to address this group specifically. The Czech Republic has policies in place to combat commercial sexual exploitation of children, but attention must be focused on at-risk populations and addressing the hidden world of child prostitution and child sex tourism. To understand more about the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the Czech Republic, you can read the full report here.
A summary of what we know today: how the crime of child sexual exploitation has evolved globally