there is no shortage of kids for sale. Across Asia, tens of thousands of children are peddled into slavery each year. Some toil with their families as bonded laborers on farms. Others are sold by their parents—or tricked by agents—into servitude as camel jockeys, fisher boys or beggars. In Burma, some are kidnapped by the state and forced to become soldiers. And, according to the International Labor Organization, at least 1 million children are prostitutes, with the greatest numbers in Thailand, India, Taiwan and the Philippines. It's a growing problem, fueled by the Asian economic boom and the subsequent bust, which has fostered an increasingly yawning gap between rich and poor, countryside and city, isolated hinterlands and wealthy coasts. On the continent, alongside the millionaires of Bangkok and Hong Kong, live two-thirds of the world's extreme poor—790 million people earning less than $1 a day. In the race to escape their deprivation, whole villages are sometimes complicit in the sale of their children. The procurers, says Sompop Jantraka, a leading Thai activist who has saved thousands of girls from being sold into brothels, might be the wives of village heads. Teachers know which children are vulnerable, and some alert procurers for a fee. He has seen pickup trucks full of girls sold to brothels leaving from schools in what is called tok keow, or the green harvest. A police officer is often at the wheel. "This is a war," Sompop says. "A war for our children."
