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W
hen the Bangladesh Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that the absence of a father’s name in government documents should no longer bar a child from availing of state services, including entry to school, many children’s rights advocates were pleased.
Former sex worker Hajera Begum, president of Shishuder Janano Amara (We Are for Children) shelter, however, was less than impressed. “This judgment has benefited single mothers but not us,” she told Asia Democracy Chronicles (ADC). “To give guardianship to mothers, the occupation must be mentioned. If we mention we are sex workers, they don’t let our children take the admission test. Or don’t call us for the exam.”

It’s an open secret in Bangladesh that while sex work has been legal for decades, discrimination against sex workers persists and extends even to their children. Among other things, this has meant that most of these children are deprived of an education that is supposedly guaranteed by the state, and even as some groups and individuals have stepped in to help a few keep going to school. Indeed, for most, the future is bleak, and often one that confines them to brothel-related work.
There are no statistics on just how many these children are. According to some estimates, however, there are at least 400 children in the brothel enclave in Daulatadia alone, the biggest sex-worker community not only in Dhaka but in the entire country.
‘‘I don’t want to live in this brothel area,” said one 10-year-old girl there. “I don’t like being here. I want to go to school. I want to establish myself….I am very afraid that brokers will force me to do bad work. ’’
‘‘I have bad luck,” her mother said. “So I have to work as a sex worker. But I don’t want my daughter to work as a sex worker. I want her to study and later have a good job. But being the child of a prostitute, no good school would admit her. Because I cannot identify her father.’’
Nari Pokkho, an organization that works with sex workers, says that at present there are 14 brothels registered with government approval across Bangladesh. Each of these legal brothel areas has a school run by non-profit groups where children of sex workers can study up to the primary level. After that, they have little or no chance to further their education, largely because of the stigma that follows them as children of sex workers.
“My mother took us outside the area to get admission in a good school,” recounted one remarkably articulate seven-year-old girl. “Sir did not admit me to school because we are living in a brothel in Daulatadia village. Sir told my mother, ‘Admitting your daughter will make other parents angry. They can take their children out of my school and enroll them in another school. I don’t want to lose so many students. Besides, you can’t even reveal the identity of the girl’s father.’’
A boy of similar age said, “`I cross the road and go to another village to play. And when I go to play in other villages, no one plays with me. Other guardians also don’t let their children play with me. They say, ‘Your mother is bad. Your mother does bad things.’ But my mother is very good. Those guys who I don’t know are bad.’’
Educating every child
According to Deputy Secretary Deepak Kumar Roy of the Children and Coordination Division at the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs, the government aims to bring “every child to mainstream education.” That includes children of sex workers, he said.
“If these children are deprived of mainstream education, then the victims can complain to us (and) name the authorities of that educational institution,” Roy told ADC. “The complaint helpline is 109. Then we will take action against that institution.’’
He reiterated that after the Supreme Court ruling last January, the identity of a child’s father is no longer required for school admissions. Told that the mother’s occupation is still being asked by schools, leading to problems for children of sex workers, Roy said, ‘‘The Ministry has not yet taken any initiative on this issue.” He also noted that “only sex workers may have trouble mentioning their profession,” while other women would not mind saying what their job is.
Said Roy, though: “I will discuss the matter with the ministry so that any specific action is taken in this regard later.’’
Action for Social Development project manager Farhana Sultana thinks part of the problem is the separation of areas specifically for sex workers. She pointed out, “By doing this, the children are also getting marked that they are living in the sex village. So they don’t get a chance in normal environments. Sex workers think schools are safe for their children in their villages. But when the children pass from these designated schools and go to the higher level, the barrier arises again. Because they are identified as having passed the brothel school, they are the children of sex workers.”
Policy researcher and development professional Mahmud Hassan Talukdar meanwhile believes that societal attitudes need to change. For example, he said, “Avoid thinking that a child is bad because he is growing up in a brothel.” Talukdar said that not only adults have been thinking this way, children are doing so as well. “For this reason,” he said, “children of mainstream society do not want to sit next to the children of sex workers.”
“We have information that school teachers and parents also behave like this with these deprived children,” he added. “As such, they lose their motivation to go to school as they are discriminated against because of their mothers’ profession.’’

But then the children do not have the luxury of time to wait for attitudes to change. Mashiul Azam Mintu and his friends realized this a decade ago when they were still students at Jahangir Nagar University in Dhaka. They had been teaching some children whose mothers happened to be sex workers and thought it a waste that the kids were not in school.
“Many of the children were intelligent,” said Mintu, now an NGO worker. “But because they were fatherless, they could not get admitted to good public schools.”
Mintu said he and his friends decided they would stand as the children’s fathers so that the kids could go to school. “It was our personal initiative and decision,” he said.
When he got married later, he and his wife stood as the parents of five children of sex workers to ease their admission to schools. According to Mintu, it is the mothers who pay for the children’s expenses. He also said that currently, “guardian-parents” like him and his wife number around 15 in all.
“The city corporation said that I cannot take the responsibility of guardian of more than five children,” said Mintu, who has yet to have a child of his own. “Even with that birth certificate, children cannot get admission in good public schools. And because my five children are in the same class, I had to face various questions about this. Not all schools want to admit them. But two of the kids have already made it to university level under our tutelage.”
Aiming for better futures
The international non-profit Save the Children, for its part, has taken another approach: It runs “safe homes”, especially for the daughters of sex workers. This is because the girls are usually eyed by the pimps or brokers as potential sex workers; the earlier they are out of the brothel villages, the lesser the chances that they will wind up like their mothers.
One of the two Save the Children safe homes is at Daulatdia while the other is at Kuizbari in Tangail, in central Bangladesh. The homes offer room and board, as well as education for girls. Among the conditions for being accepted to a Save the Children safe home are that the girls are to continue to college and that they will never go back to the brothel villages. There is a monthly fee per student that the NGO foots in part, while the mother pays for the rest.
At present, the Save the Children school-hostel at Daulatdia has 39 girls, aged seven to 17. One of them said that before being brought to the safe home by her mother, she had not known any “normal life outside of the sex business.” Only 12 years old, she said that she thought she would end up doing sex work herself. “Now,” she said, “I want to finish my education and get a good job.”
“We need more space in the safe homes,” said a 15-year-old who is also staying at the Daulatdia safe home. “Only 50 girls can stay here. A friend of mine wanted to come to this safe home, but there was no room (at the time). One day a broker brought a customer to her house. Later my friend committed suicide by tying a rope around her neck (and hanging herself).”
However, even the sons of sex workers could use more than some help in furthering their education. NGO workers admit that within their small world and without getting more schooling, these boys usually have only two work options once they grow up: as pimps or as drug dealers.

A mother of an eight-year-old boy said that her son is smart enough to become a doctor or an engineer someday. But when she tried to enroll him in a school outside of the brothel village, the administrator asked for his father’s identity. Having no father for her child, the mother has resigned herself to having her son go to school within the brothel village; she has yet to think beyond what will happen after he finishes primary school.
The boy, however, is still oblivious of how things will probably turn out for him. He declared to ADC: “I will enroll in a college in Dhaka. I will be a doctor. Then I will take my mother from this brothel village.’’ ◉