Gulf Visitors Use Syria as Sex Tourism Destination

Illicit sex tourism involving marriages of convenience is creating a legacy of social problems, activist Ruhada Abdosh wrote in an editorial published on the independent website Syrian Women on November 7.



Abdosh said some Gulf tourists who visit Syria’s northeast in the summer month are there to seeking sex with minors and local women. Some locals collude with them to arrange marriages with girls as young as 15, often lasting just two or three months.



The girls are paid, but any children that result from these transitory marriages will be stateless, because in Syria only fathers can pass their citizenship onto their offspring.



Abdosh cited the case of one young woman who was forced to abandon her fiancé and marry a 40-year-old Saudi man. He paid a large sum as the customary bride-price, but beat and degraded the woman when he took her back to Saudi Arabia. She subsequently left the man and the child she had with him, but on her return to Syria, her family placed her in another arranged marriage.



Abdosh described such arranged marriages as prostitution, noting that the practice is illegal in Syria and violates international conventions on women’s and children’s rights.