Ecuador has the largest population of refugees in Latin America,
a consequence of the ongoing war in Colombia.
Each month hundreds of asylum seekers arrive, fleeing violence and seeking jobs.
I traveled through the jungle in the oil-rich province of Sucumbios
to Puerto Nuevo, a northern border town across the San Miguel river
from one of the world’s largest cocoa growing regions.
Columbians make up 80 percent of the Puerto Nuevo population.
Nubia Collazos arrived in Ecuador just two months ago.
I am from Caquetà, Colombia. My eldest brother was a guerilla.
They had given him some money, and he couldn't pay it back.
So he ran from the guerillas, and they began persecuting our family.
I am Xavier Creach, head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) office in Lago Agrio,
a town in Eucador that borders Colombia.
We estimate that 130,000 Colombians in Ecuador are in need of protection.
There are 50,000 of them living on the Columbian border.
The conflict in Colombia has been going on for 40 years.
I'm not sure there are any families living on the other side of the border
that have not suffered traumatic experiences.
The guerillas burned everything I had.
And they took away my son.
The same year, they slipped a note under my door
telling me I had one day to get out of the neighborhood.
At the time, I owned a store. I sold clothes and shoes. I had a nice house.
I had to leave everything behind and run away with my children.
Until refugees have a visa, they cannot work legally.
This can take up to 18 months, leaving women and girls especially vulnerable.
On a weekend the main thing you see is drunk men.
The men say they have no money, but for drinking there is always money.
There is so much prostitution in this town.
You look for a job and they point to the bars, as if they see "prostitute" on your face.
I met with a group of Columbian refugee women
and asked what economic opportunities they have here.
I remember one time, I had nothing to eat.
I asked a woman for job, offered to help her with a load of laundry.
She said no, and offered me a job as a waitress. I said I'd rather starve.
Waitresses are street woman. Let’s say it straight: they’re prostitutes.
I arrived November 24.
People told us to move to this side of the border to be safer,
but we continue to live in fear. At the moment, I am without protection
because my husband and I have no jobs, and my children are sick.
There are many women, desperate, who have been here three months or six months.
Who don’t have any more savings and can’t find any work.
One of the most accessible sources of income is sex work.
When I had just arrived and was looking for work, a woman said to me,
“You have a beautiful daughter. Why don't you send her to work in a bar?”
She offered my daughter a job. My daughter is thirteen.
I told her that my daughter was not here for that. I had come here in great need,
but I was not about to throw my daughter into the streets.
Back in Lago Agrio, the capital of Sucumbios Province,
Maria Helena Posada told me there hadn't always been such demand for sex workers.
When I first came here there weren’t so many brothels.
Now there are more brothels than football fields.
The oil companies started it. The first clients were the oil workers.
Posada has been documenting the number of bars and brothels that hire minors.
She took me to numerous brothels that hire underaged girls for sex work.
This area is the most vulgar and dirty, the worst of Lago Agrio.
Our taxi driver moved here when it was first becoming the oil capital of Ecuador.
An oil company would arrive and set up in a field.
And right next to it they would put up a brothel.
He drove us past the spots where he takes oil workers, military men and merchants.
The men use code words for the brothels. They say, “Take me to the university.”
“Take me where the girls are easy.”
They charge U.S.$10 for the “score.”
This is supposed to be a juice shop, but actually
they sell beer, and there is a room for prostitution.
They employ minors and Colombians.
There are many children, say 11 or 12 years old, with nothing to do.
They are extremely vulnerable to various illegal activities.
Girls are particularly vulnerable to sex work and sex trafficking.
Maribel Loza Munoz fled from Colombia to Lago Agrio with her two daughters
three weeks ago.
I wanted to try my luck alone here with the girls.
I thought here we could have a better life. My goal was to come here and work.
When I came, I had U.S.$50. I battled for food. Gradually the money was gone.
I have seen so many advertisements for work as a "cook."
You also see inappropriate ads.
But I think of my daughters.
Although Munoz says that she is not a prostitute,
many women here eventually turn to sex work to pay their bills.