Prostitution in Bangladesh is legal and regulated. Prostitution is legal in Bangladesh , but the Bangladesh constitution provides that the "State shall endeavor to prevent gambling and prostitution. Vagrancy laws are sometimes used against prostitutes, and they were detained in shelters indefinitely.
There are periodic crackdowns by the police, particularly against hotels being used for prostitution. Local NGOs estimated in the total number of female prostitutes to be as many as , There are 20 brothel-villages in the country. The largest is Daulatdia which has about 1, sex workers, it is one of the largest brothels in the world. Child prostitution is widespread and a serious problem. The majority of Bangladeshi prostituted children are based in brothels, with a smaller number of children exploited in hotel rooms, parks, railway and bus stations and rented flats.
The UN Children's Fund UNICEF estimated in that there were 10, underage girls used in commercial sexual exploitation in the country, but other estimates placed the figure as high as 29, Many girls involved in child labour, such as working in factories and as domestic workers are raped or sexually exploited; these girls are highly stigmatised and many of them flee to escape such abuse, but often they find that survival sex is the only option open to themβonce involved with prostitution they become even more marginalised.
More than 20, children are born and live in the 18 registered red-light areas of Bangladesh. Boys tend to become pimps once they grow up and girls continue in their mothers' profession. Most of these girls enter the profession before the age of Disabled children who live in institutions and children displaced as a result of natural disasters such as floods are highly susceptible to commercial sexual exploitation.
Girls are often sold by their families to brothels for a period of two to three years of bonded sex work. Visits to the brothels of Faridpur and Tangail in revealed that most sex workers there take or are made to take the steroid drug dexamethasone to gain weight and to look better. The authorities generally ignore the minimum age of 18, often circumvented by false statements of age, for legal female prostitution; the government rarely prosecutes procurers of minors.
