Some surveys made on the problem of prostitution in Addis Ababa show that over 7% of the female population (which is higher than that of male's) in the city is engaged in prostitution of which a significant and growing proportion represents children. The surveys further suggest that almost all these women and children are forced into prostitution, being unable to get jobs by which to survive. This is mainly because most of them are migrants from the rural areas and thus, unskilled, uneducated and with no or limited capital to engage themselves in another income generating activity. In fact, it is seldom that one gets across a woman or child who joined the practice without trying another way of survival. This is also true for those city-born and grown children and women involved in prostitution.

Despite the special legal protection given to children against sexual abuse and exploitation the prostitution of children is prevalent and growing in this situation walking or driving through the main streets of the city every night. In every side of the main streets young women are seen waiting for customers alone and unprotected. And go to the small and big, modern and traditional drinking houses, every where you see young women whose survival depends on prostitution.

Many tend to classify children and women involved in prostitution in Addis into two groups depending on their working site as those getting customers in bars, hotels and other drinking places -bar girls, and those who look for customers on the street-street girls. Those in the first group are mostly employees of the drinking places they work in. Although they are said to be employed to provide services in the place such as taking orders and cleaning and arranging chairs, tables and bedrooms, in actual fact, they are employed to attract drinking customers. A close look about the working condition of these bar girls reveals not only that they work in a condition below a reasonable standard, but that they are also victimized and exploited by the owner of the drinking places. Take for example their so-called salary. As a rule bar girls are promised to be paid as a salary a sum which normally ranges between Birr 20 to 50 (US $ 3-9) per month. Actually, however, they did not even receive this amount. For a variety of arbitrary reasons, most bar owners cut a large sum of the salary of the young girls. This may be for the reason that some drunkard customer went out without covering his bill or he has broken glasses and bottles. There is also a practice in the bars and hotels of Addis called mewcha that may be reduced from the salary of the bar girl by the employer. Mewcha is a payment that usually ranges between five to ten birr that a bar girl pays for the owner whenever she goes out with a male partner. When a bar girl gets her customer for a night, she is requested to pay the mewcha. If she or the man pays there and then, good but if she goes out with her customer without paying, then the bar or hotel owner will reduce the mewcha from the salary of the young girl. It should be noted here that the young girl getting a customer in the bar or hotel may not even have the privilege of having a salary but simply work in the place without any payment. She has to perform all the duties that any waitress performs by way of serving customers. Such a girl is also obliged to pay a mewcha for the bar owner for the mere fact that it is in his/her establishment she has got her male partner. This practice of making young girls and women work without pay as waitresses is not so rare. In fact most of the drinking places where prostitution is run in our capital operate on this basis.

The working hours of bar girls every where in Addis starts at 3:00 p.m... Under normal circumstances, the bar girls are expected to attend the customers till mid night. The girl has also to work all the while if the drinking customers prefer to stay to stay late. But passing the night as such does not mean that they would be resting in the morning. They have to be in their working place in the morning till 3:00 p.m. which is the time when is the time when another girl will take over.

In a bar hotel found in the middle of the city and where 15 to 20 girls may be working, usually only one room is provided for the employees to sleep in. Such a room commonly known as Yeset Bet (women's house) has no bed but a mattress made of cotton spread on the floor. Nor are there sufficient bed sheets and blankets. It is in such a room that the bar girls are expected to spend the night after long working hour.

On the other hand, those working in the streets can be categorized into three: those living and working on the streets, those who work under a landlady who controls a number of them, and those who rent their own room in groups and operate by themselves. If they have a house rented, it is a small room partitioned by a simple card board that can accommodate only a bed. For such a room, however, they pay a substantial sum amounting from 100-250 Birr. There are also some landladies who provide a working room for the street girls. The provision of such a room may be based on the agreement that the girls would pay a certain amount whenever they get a male partner. Street girls are also victims of violence such as robbery, rape, battery and sexual abuse because they stand alone and unprotected on the street.

The specific and desperate situation in which the children involved in the practice are trapped is explained directly by those involved in it in the article Life for Sale.