Prostitution in Peru is legal and regulated. 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. The vast majority of prostitutes work in the informal sector , where they lack health protection. Child prostitution is illegal. Penalties for pimps and clients of underage prostitutes range from four to eight years in prison.
While poverty and inequality are important causes of child prostitution, part of the problem is also a social attitude that views sexβincluding paid sexβbetween 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. 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 or the 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 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 , Cusco , major coastal cities, and abroad.
