SYRIA SCRIPT:

(GIRLS DANCING IN CLUB)

This is the sex industry, Syrian-style ... the girls in this club have to  pay to parade their wares on the dance floor...  but they can earn the equivalent of a month's wages in a night by going home with one of the clients who watch them from the sidelines... We were told that the girls here are almost all Iraqi... many of them are refugees who have been forced into this life as a result of the war in their country.

(SOT HANA IBRAHIM, IRAQI WOMEN'S ACTIVIST):

There is talk of 50,000 Iraqi prostitutes here in Syria, but the market was already there... before it was Moroccans, Russians, Romanians, Lebanese and Syrians. So why Iraqis? The country is under occupation, with rape, chaos, violence, conflict, forced migration, poverty and death - anything can come out of such a situation.

(GVS)

There are more than a million Iraqi refugees in Syria, but they are not allowed to work here. A high proportion of them are women whose husbands and fathers have been killed. For women like Fatima, prostitution is one of few avenues left open.

(SOT "FATIMA", PROSTITUTE)

I came to Syria after my husband was killed, leaving me with two children. My aunt asked me to join her here to work in a textile factory, and my brothers pressurised me to go. I was surprised to find the type of work my aunt was doing was not what she said - I tried to leave and find other work, but I couldn't even get a cleaning job, so I had to go back to her.

(FATIMA CUT AWAY/BASSAM SETUP)

According to campaigners, Fatima's experience is just one of many routes into prostitution for Iraqi women and girls.

(SOT: BASSAM AL-KADI, SYRIAN WOMEN  OBSERVATORY)

There's another side to the problem - we're seeing strong indications that there are a lot of underage girls -  the number of Iraqi children working as prostitutes is very high. Some have been sexually abused in Iraq, but there is another category  who are being prostituted by the fathers and uncles who brought them here under the pretext of protecting them. They are virgins, and they are brought here like an investment and exploited in a very ugly way... 

(DARKER CLUB)

In this club on the outskirts of Damascus, their heavy make-up can't disguise the fact that many of the girls dancing are under age. We were told that most are Iraqis under 16, and some as young as 12. The customers here are mainly young- fashionably -dressed men from the Gulf region. Though we heard one man being quoted  500 dollars for sex with one of the girls, they told us they earn 60 dollars a customer.

Zahra is 16, and has worked in the club since she came to Syria  three years ago - her 13-year old sister has now started there too. Zahra says she hopes to go back to Iraq one day, but at the moment she has to look after her sister.

(SAMER SETUP - PLAYING MUSIC)

Samer, an Iraqi musician who performsin the clubs, gained the trust of some of the Iraqi girls, and heard their stories:

(SAMER SOT - DISGUISED)

One girl, a Sunni, told me she came here with her mother and brothers to get away from the militias and the violence in Baghdad... at first her uncles sent them money. Then they stopped, and her brother wasn't working, so there was no other source of income.

(FATIMA/FLATS)

But the clubs are only the tip of the iceberg. Women like Fatima work out of privately-rented flats like those in this apartment block.

(FATIMA SOT)

I live with my aunt in a flat in a building owned by a Saudi man. The customers can come at any time, but mainly at night. They are sent by taxi drivers or other people who know my aunt. We put signs on the doors to show that the flat is occupied and the customer should not try to come in.

(BASSAM SOT)

Those who deal in prostitution used to be well known to the authorities, we knew where they operated, and the few taxi drivers and tour guides who were involved. It used to be constrained but now people hand out leaflets in supermarkets... what this shows is that Iraqis involved in prostitution have no fear of the authorities.

(CLUB PIX)

He says this is because laws against facilitating prostitution are applied less strictly to foreigners.  Iraqi women who are caught are simply deported across the border, where they are often brought straight back to Damascus by organised sex networks.

(FATIMA SOT)

If they catch me and put me in prison , my aunt and her group will not be touched, because they have people to protect them. I have no one. I'll get sent back to the border, but they can still reach me there.

(CLUB)

Many of the young women here are in an even more powerless position - teenage girls like Zahra often providing the sole income for their families...while conservative Syria's thriving sex industry profits  from Iraq's continuing refugee crisis.