[9][10] Food handling hygiene rules require all staff employed in bars to have monthly health checks, but this is not always enforced.
[9] Often the bar girls are from rural areas, moving to the towns and cities in search of lucrative employment.
This has been interpreted by the courts to include a sex worker's own earnings, effectively making prostitution illegal.
[1][3] Section 184(c) of the Penal Code makes an offence of: "every person in or upon or near any premises or in any road or highway or any place adjacent thereto or in any public place at such time and under such circumstances as to lead to the conclusion that such person is there for an illegal or disorderly purpose, is deemed a rogue and vagabond".
The sex workers subsequently sued the Malawi government for "damages as compensation for violation of their constitutional rights and trauma suffered as a result of actions of the police and a hospital”.
[19] In January 2017, three judges of the Malawi High Court declared section 184(1)(c) of the Penal Code unconstitutional and invalid.
Traffickers, primarily facilitators or brothel owners, typically lure children from their families in rural areas under pretences of employment opportunities, clothing, or lodging for which they are sometimes charged exorbitant fees, resulting in prostitution coerced through debts.
Some girls recruited for domestic service are instead forced to marry and subsequently subjected to child sex trafficking by their “husbands”.
Fraudulent employment agencies lure women and girls to Gulf states where they are exploited in sex trafficking.