Law on this topic is not developing as quickly as the advances in digital technology, which are bringing sweeping change to the pornography scene. In some countries, there is no legislation at all on child pornography on the Internet or even, in some cases, on child pornography in general, whatever the medium. The growth of international travel and commerce has had dramatic consequences for the development of sex tourism in general and that involving children in particular. An increasing number of people now travel abroad to have sexual relations with children. The number of child prostitutes in the world is not known.
Estimates vary between one and three million.
They are found for the most part in Latin America, Asia and, increasingly, in Africa and Eastern Europe. The countries where the laws on the sexual abuse of under-age persons are not particularly strict are, naturally, the favoured destinations for sex tourists. More than 4 million children under fifteen are thought to have been infected since the illness first appeared. It is reported that 2.8 million of these have already died. Among children under fifteen contaminated with the virus, several hundreds of thousands were infected by blood transfusions and by sexual contact.