What I meant was, it seems to me that these evil practices are far more culturally accepted in these places compared to an average Western culture. And I think there are reasons for that other than mere poverty. People have lived in poverty throughout history, throughout the world. Poverty is essentially universal. But selling one's own children into sex slavery is not. Plenty of people living in poverty still have strong moral values.
> Evil is an intuitive but ultimately ineffective concept. These behaviours are harmful both to the individual and to society at large. They unilaterally violate the personal liberty and human rights of the victim. That's why we consider them evil, not the other way around.
Respectfully, I think this is a narrow view. There are other cultures which place much lower value on personal liberty and individual rights, but would still consider such practices abhorrent. Now you are right that these behaviors do violate personal liberty and rights, and so to us, that is another reason why they are wrong. But there are groups who have little concept of personal liberty and rights, yet would never consider such a thing acceptable.
In fact, this is part of the problem: here we have people divided into two groups, geographically at least. One group can exploit the other--with no cost to its own society. These evil men get on a plane, have their fun, and return home, thousands of miles away, leaving their wake of destruction far behind.
And the families of these exploited children do not care about their children's personal liberty or rights. They sell them and then shut the door in their faces when they return. To them, it's acceptable to dispose of one family member to get a few dollars that the rest of the family can use.
> That's why we consider them evil, not the other way around.
I don't think it is a one-way function. Violating personal liberty and individual rights are innately evil. If this were not so, then whether they were evil would only depend on whether you valued personal liberty and rights. If you don't--and many people don't!--then they would not be considered evil. And this is exactly what we are seeing here.
You can go to them and try to convince them that they are harming optimal social interactions, but why should they care? To them, the people being harmed are not even part of society. They are...no better than animals.
Maybe what I'm trying to say is that, what is considered "natural" is irrelevant. People can "naturally" behave one way or another, depending on how they were raised, genetic disorders, mental illnesses, brain injuries, etc.
What matters is right and wrong, good and evil. These behaviors are not merely suboptimal--they are innately wrong. They are not wrong because they are inefficient--they are wrong because they are wrong. (Yes, circular, unless you want to go into the sources of morality. And ultimately that is probably required.)
The reason I want to emphasize that is that defining evil by harm to society is completely relative. If you exclude someone from society, then whether something harms them no longer matters, and then it would no longer be evil. And then when you try to tell someone to stop doing it, they look at you funny and say, "Why?"
Utilitarianism and relativism lead to tyranny. If something works, and the victim doesn't count, then they aren't a victim, and it isn't wrong. And for the people on the safe side of the line, without external, absolute moral values, they have no reason to change their behavior.