The study estimates that a summer-long marriage, usually lasting the duration of a seasonal Gulf tourist’s visit, cost about $2,800 to $10,000. The unions can at times last a year or two, though; the “bride” is typically expected to travel back to her buyer’s home country where she may work as a domestic. One-day marriages can cost as little as $115.
When young girls are sold into marriage, as 38,000 are every day, they can expect a life with no education and few opportunities, little public autonomy outside of their adult husband’s control and an increased risk of death from pregnancy or childbirth, which are the number one killer of girls age 15 to 18 in the developing world. One in seven girls born in the developing world is married by age 15, usually sold by her family.
But some girls who grow up in Egypt’s poor rural communities face an even scarier sort of child marriage: the temporary kind. Sex tourism to Egypt tends to spike in the summer, when wealthy men from Gulf countries flood into Egypt and thousands of underage girls are sold by their parents into temporary “marriages,” according to a story by Inter Press Service.
Child sex tourism is difficult to track, but the United Nations estimates that it affects two million children every year, often in countries that are poor but have preexisting tourism infrastructure, such as Thailand, India, Costa Rica and others.
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