Gender, Trafficking, and Slavery

by Rachel Masika

Overview

This book explores areas of human experience that are highly complex, and which evoke powerful and contradictory feelings amongst those attempting to understand them. Although many view the institution of slavery as a purely historical phenomenon, slavery remains widespread today. One aspect of modern slavery which elicits particular revulsion is the trafficking of women and young girls and boys into the sex industry and this is the focus of many of the authors of this book. This book examines the operations of trafficking and other kinds of 'modern-day' slavery, from a gender perspective. It explores the relationships between gender, poverty, conflict and globalization that are driving today's slave trade. The authors provide an overview of what trafficking and slavery are, their magnitude, and their complexity. They introduce the key debates, competing definitions, and conceptual divides within this controversial subject. In their search for solutions, the contributors expose the weaknesses in national and international legal frameworks intended to protect bonded workers and trafficked persons. They analyse and assess the attempts of development and human-rights organizations to support those at risk, to create alternative livelihood options for them and to help those who escape slavery to rebuild their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780855984786
Publisher:	Oxfam Publishing
Publication date:	06/28/2002
Series:	Oxfam Focus on Gender Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.62(h) x 0.30(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Crossing borders and building bridges: the Baltic Region Networking Project

Carolina Johansson Wennerholm

'16 year old Lithuanian girl found dead on a highway outside Malmo in southern Sweden.' She committed suicide after escaping from an apartment where she earned her living selling sexual services. 'Czech girls kept as sex slaves at a hotel outside Stockholm calling their mothers for help.' Headlines like this concerning the trafficking of women and girls occur in many countries of the world every day. Some trafficked women are seeking to improve their lives or feed their children, while others have been abducted and forced into 'slave' labour. Occurrences of violence and human rights violations are common. This article gives an overview of the reasons for, and mechanics of, trafficking. It also highlights the anti-trafficking approaches and activities undertaken by the Swedish NGO Kvinnoforum in partnership with five NGOs in the Baltic Sea and Nordic Region. These projects address trafficking through research, information, and networking to create awareness of the complexity of trafficking, and the serious human rights violations that it involves.

Trafficking of women has been a feminist issue since the beginning of the 20th century when advocates for change like Josephine Butler fought against the 'white slave trade'. They recognised that women and girls have been the majority of all victims of trafficking. It is only recently that the magnitude and complexity of trafficking has increased its importance on the international agenda. This process has been assisted by a widening of focus to encompass trafficking for bonded labour in sweatshops, domestic work, adoption, and marriage, in addition to trafficking for prostitution.

The definition of trafficking in human beings has been hotly debated amongst the anti-trafficking movement. The debate reflects many differing approaches or foci. However, in December 2000 the UN adopted a definition which covered the diversity of means and mechanics used, the issue of violence and abuse of power for purposes of exploitation, as well as the many purposes for trafficking – including exploitation of others through prostitution, forced labour, and slavery-like practices, or the removal of organs.

A global phenomenon

Global political and economic processes and developments influence trafficking. Economic crises and disparities between countries fuel supply, while demand for cheap labour attracts desperate migrants. Economic liberalisation relaxes controls and opens borders between countries, facilitating population mobility. Conflict, transnational crime, and political transitions and upheavals are also contributory factors.

The International Organisation for Migration has estimated that between 700,000 and two million women are trafficked across international borders annually (IOM 2001). Accurate numbers are difficult to ascertain for various reasons. Firstly, the definition of trafficking is contested. Secondly, the criminal nature of the problem has consequences for what is measured and how. Thirdly, it has not been a priority in many countries to make the problem visible.

Trafficking occurs both within domestic borders, and across countries, regions, and continents. Countries of origin, transit, and destination are intertwined and overlap. A single country may export women, girls, and boys abroad, may temporarily harbour arrivals from other countries, and act as the destination country for others.

In South and East Asia, trafficked persons originate mainly from Thailand, China, the Philippines, Burma/Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Transit and destination countries include Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, India, and Pakistan. While the provision of workers for the sex industry is the main purpose of this traffic, women from these regions are also trafficked for domestic work and other forms of bonded labour. As a result of the burden of dowry, some women are trafficked for marriage purposes. In some communities in India and Nepal, commercial sexual services have religious and cultural links, increasing the complexity of the problem (O'Neill 1999). Trafficking in children – girls and boys – for purposes of sexual exploitation, adoption, begging and other forms of bonded labour, is mostly reported from East, South-East, and South Asia (Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs 2001). In Sri Lanka the majority of the children offering sexual services are boys (O'Neill 1999).

Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries in Central Asia are also origin countries. Women from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyszstan, and Tajikistan are trafficked to the Middle East, Turkey, Greece, and Ukraine (IOM 2001), often via Russia.

Trafficking has increased dramatically in Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Most trafficked women come from former communist countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Albania, Kosovo, the Baltic States, the Czech Republic, and Poland, and are destined for Western European countries (IOM 2001). However, women from South-East Asia, Africa, and Latin America also arrive in Western European destinations. These women are usually involved in the sex business, and sometimes in domestic work. The international presence in the Balkans as a result of the war there has led to an increase in the demand for sex services within these countries, and an increase in the trafficking of women into countries such as Kosovo. Children are also trafficked into and within Western Europe, such as Albanian children to Greece and Italy for begging and drug-dealing (UNICEF 2000 in Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs 2001).

The USA is a major destination country, particularly for women and children from South-East Asia, Latin America, and increasingly from FSU countries. While again the main purposes are the sex industry and bonded labour, other trafficking industries include mail-order bride companies, maid schemes, domestic servants, and illicit foreign adoption (O'Neill 1999). Canada is a receiving country, as well as transit country for those travelling to the USA (McDonald et al. 2000).

Latin America has a long tradition of trafficking. Countries of origin include Dominican Republic, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Surinam, Venezuela, Uruguay, Peru, Argentina, and Paraguay. Destination countries include mostly Western European countries, but also Japan and the USA (STV 1996). The purposes include prostitution, domestic work, and marriage.

There is growing concern over the increasing numbers of trafficked persons within and from Africa, but as yet there is little data available. Countries of origin include Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Mali; destination countries include Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Western Europe, and Middle Eastern countries – Lebanon, Libya, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia – as well as the USA (IOM 2001). In Central and West Africa, women may be trafficked as domestic workers, and children for plantation work, domestic work, and sex services. The Middle East receives women from Africa and Central Asia. Israel has received women from Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Turkey, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and South Africa (Gruenpeter Gold et al. 2001).

Exploring the causes of trafficking

The causes of trafficking are complex, intertwined, and context-specific, with poverty and unequal gender relations as key underlying root causes. The situation of women and children in countries of origin, the profit motive, the ease with which trafficking occurs, and the demand for women and children for different exploitative purposes are principal supply and demand factors.

The situation of women, girls, and boys in countries of origin

The socio-economic and cultural context underpinning women and children's lives determines their choices, strategies, and coping mechanisms. Women's unequal rights and access to formal labour, the restricted control they exercise over their own lives, and the gendered aspects of poverty all lead women to seek work abroad. In middle and low-income countries, many women face high unemployment, low wages, lack of child care, and a high frequency of sexual harassment in the workplace as well as gender violence. Some women opt to enter the prostitution business, sometimes encouraged by their husbands. Others seek trafficking mechanisms for domestic, catering, or other work, and end up in prostitution against their will (Strandberg 1999).

Traffickers can exploit women's desire to create a better life for themselves in other countries by luring them with promises of jobs as waitresses, maids, dancers, models, and babysitters. In some cases, women answer advertisements for work in the EU, or trust 'friends of a friend' to arrange such work. Women are told that all they need to do is sign a contract, and that the expenses of the trip are to be paid when they start earning. Upon arrival, however, some women find that the promised job does not exist, and are forced to perform sexual services or take part in pornographic films, often in conditions of slavery.

Social constructions of gender relations and sexuality facilitate trafficking for sexual exploitation. Girls may feel a sense of duty to repay their parents' care and protection. In some poor rural households in South-East Asia, remittances from daughters who have entered prostitution represent the sole source of financial support (Lim 1998). Girls sold into prostitution have sometimes returned home with honour, because they brought money, goods, and security to the family (Belsey 1996, cited in Lim 1998, 13). In some areas in South-East Asia, prostitution is socially accepted as an inevitable evil 'necessary to satiate an uncontainable male sexuality' (D'Cunha 1992, 36, cited in Lim 1998,12).

Psychological problems owing to unpleasant encounters and their social impact can drive women away from home and into prostitution. In the Philippines, unmarried women who lose their virginity – some as a result of rape – enter prostitution believing it is what they deserve (Lim 1998). Women who endure violence at home or at work, who suffer from sexual harassment, or who were sexually abused as children, may enter prostitution, and are often easy targets for traffickers (Kvinnoforum 1999).

Evidence from countries as diverse as Mali, the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Moldova, and Thailand show that some girls and women enter prostitution or seek trafficking mechanisms longing for a more materialistic life style or to participate in the urban nightlife (MAHR 2000; Diakiti 1999).

Of those who migrate for sex work, few realise that at best they will keep only a small proportion of their earnings, and most are unaware that they will be locked up, beaten, and have no control over the number and nature of services they will have to provide. Debt-bondage, violence, threats, physical bondage, guilt, and the threat of harming their families, keep women in compliance. Because they risk arrest for prostitution or illegal immigration, women seldom seek help from the police. A frequent inability to speak the local language makes these women additionally vulnerable and powerless (Strandberg 1999, 7).

In some cases, girls, boys, and women are kidnapped or abducted into the trafficking trade. In some regions, parents sell their children, and partners or relatives sell women.

Demand for services

Increasing demand for commercial sexual services in an expanding industry fuels trafficking. The argument that addressing poverty would on its own inhibit trafficking is questionable. Where economic growth has created an expanding middle class, for example in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, the capacity and even the motivation for men to buy sexual services has increased. This has expanded the industry to the extent where aspects like age, ethnicity and race, virginity, and sexual health are key considerations for customers and thus traffickers, with increasing emphasis on trafficking younger persons who are less likely to have contracted HIV/AIDS and other STDs. Thus, to buy sexual services may in this context be seen as a lifestyle choice, which adapts to economic circumstances (Lim 1998).

Although the growth of tourism has drawn an increasing number of women and children to the sex industry in these countries, local people continue to account for most of the demand (ibid.). Thus, the expansion of attitudes and lifestyles where buying sex is acceptable are a key factor in the increased demand for women and children in the sex business.

Trafficking has an ethnic dimension. Minorities often experience difficulties in the formal labour market and may be discriminated against. In Estonia and Latvia, ethnic Russians find it difficult to find formal employment. As a result, there are large numbers of Russian women prostitutes in Riga and Tallinn. Similarly, Thai and Sri Lankan children from the hill tribes are trafficked for sex exploitation (Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs 2001). It has also been reported how modern 'slave markets' in the Balkan region contain women from a wide range of ethnic origin whose value and marketing depends largely on their skin colour, racial characteristics, and the prevailing perception about what is 'exotic'.

Organised trafficking and profit

Trafficking is a lucrative business, and – unlike arms and drugs – trafficked women and children can be sold many times. The UN estimates that the trafficking industry is worth US$5-7 billion annually (CATW 2001, 1). The main beneficiaries are the various actors involved in the trafficking chain, and profits earned by pimps are often laundered.

The increase in criminal networks dealing with trafficking has a direct link with the levels of profit, the ease with which trafficking can be undertaken, and the low penalties for those caught (Europol 1999). In many cases, traffickers also deal in drugs, arms, and animals. However, it is safer to trade with human beings. It is relatively easy for traffickers to set up undercover businesses such as model and film agencies and marriage bureaux, through which women and children are contracted and traded. Women may also enter countries on a tourist visa or with a false passport. Corruption among state officials, police officers, migration staff, and others further facilitates the commerce (Kvinnoforum 1999).

Traffickers operate both within small-scale informal networks and as part of well-organised international criminal networks (Europol 1999). In Northern Europe, Russian and Estonian women cross the border to Finland, Sweden, and Norway every weekend, sometimes encouraged by husbands or other relatives. Bus drivers, hotel and camp-site owners, and pimps all earn from this. The actors in the trafficking chain may or may not know each other. However, these informal criminal networks may be as dangerous as mafia groups. In small villages where everybody knows each other, threats and harassment can have a tremendous impact on women and children, keeping them in compliance with the traffickers. The stigma that women and girls who are trafficked fear or experience may inhibit their return to their own communities if they escape.

Measuring the impacts of trafficking

The impacts of trafficking on societies require further research. Communities where trafficking is frequent lose young, productive women. Where these women return, they may in turn become traffickers themselves. Negative socialisation may also become a major problem for abused children. The costs of supporting rescued women and children, and of training and prosecuting traffickers are high.

The impact of trafficking on victims, who often face unexpected harsh conditions, is better understood. For women and children trafficked into prostitution, the effects on their psychological, reproductive and sexual health, and well-being can be devastating.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

	Editorial	2
	Crossing borders and building bridges: the Baltic Region Networking Project	10
	Who gets to choose? Coercion, consent, and the UN Trafficking Protocol	20
	Human rights or wrongs? The struggle for a rights-based response to trafficking in human beings	28
	Trafficking in children in West and Central Africa	38
	Child marriage and prostitution: two forms of sexual exploitation?	43
	Slavery and gender: women's double exploitation	50
	Half-hearted protection: what does victim protection really mean for victims of trafficking in Europe?	56
	NGO responses to trafficking in women	60
	A tale of two cities: shifting the paradigm of anti-trafficking programmes	69
	Reducing poverty and upholding human rights: a pragmatic approach	80
	Resources	87
	Publications	87
	Organisations	92
	Electronic resources	94
	Videos	94
	Conferences	95

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