State Department: Human trafficking report

Most of the Gulf countries have made it onto the Tier 3 list (those countries with the worst record in human trafficking, according to the report) of the State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report 2007: Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. UAE is on the Tier 2 watch list.

So is Egypt. From the report:

Egypt is a transit country for women trafficked from Uzbekistan, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and other
Eastern European countries to Israel for the purpose of sexual exploitation, and may be a source for
children trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation and domestic servitude. Reports indicate
that some of Cairo’s estimated 1 million street children — both girls and boys — are exploited in
prostitution.

I'm surprised at this large number of street children in Cairo. Does anyone have other sources on this?

In addition, wealthy men from the Gulf reportedly travel to Egypt to purchase “temporary
marriages� with Egyptian women, including in some cases girls who are under age 18, often apparently as
a front for commercial sexual exploitation facilitated by the females’ parents and marriage brokers.

What I also heard is that Cairo's chronically underfunded state-run orphanages are using this to make some extra money (or their employees).

The full report can be downloaded here.