According to a recent UN report, up to 30% of girls in some Kenyan resorts are involved in the sex industry.

The UN children’s fund UNICEF, which looked at resorts along Kenya’s coast, found that 15,000 girls aged 12 to 18, said to live in the resort areas districts of Mombassa, Kilifi, Malindi and Kwale were engaged in casual sex for money. Another 2,000-3,000 girls and boys were involved in full-time prostitution, said the study – carried out jointly with the Kenyan government.

Poverty is the reason, UNICEF says: many families see the sex industry as the only way of putting food on the table. European men represented half of all their clients, the report said. Italian, German and Swiss nationals are the most common clients of child sex workers among tourists – at 18%, 14% and 12% respectively. Kenyan men are the largest single group of clients, comprising 38% of the total.