MPHP 439: Health Policy and Management 04/25/2006
On-Line Textbook
Chapter Final / Section: International Health
Part I: HUMAN
TRAFFICKING
By Sharlin Mikhaila Noble
- INTRODUCTION -
The term
“trafficking in humans” refers generally to the concept of human beings moving
or being moved, outside the means of regional laws, from one area to another
via the actions of a third party – often called a trafficker – that typically
benefits from the moving of trafficked individuals by exploiting them in
various ways. In the many countries that suffer the burden of human
trafficking, high rates of trafficked persons – the majority of whom are women
and children – are typically due to a culmination of diverse economic, cultural
and historical factors. Due to the inherently shadowy nature of trafficking (a
difficulty that will be discussed at greater length later in this chapter),
estimates of the extent of the problem are at best educated guesses; with this
in mind, the 2005 US Trafficking In Persons Report estimated that a minimum of
600,000 to 800,000 people, mostly women and children, were trafficked across
borders worldwide. [i]
This chapter will first attempt to
present an introductory view on trafficking: the first few sections will
address human trafficking from a non-country-specific perspective, and explore
various subcategories of human trafficking, as well its epidemiology and
causes. Once the basics of trafficking have been explained, Part I of this
chapter will touch upon certain less defined themes within the literature of
trafficking, including the language of the trafficking discourse and its
underlying tone of victimization; and the issue of consent within the context
of sex trafficking and prostitution, with an examination of the United Nations
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially
Women and Children. Within the international community, women and children are
considered particularly vulnerable populations, and because it is primarily
females who suffer the burden of the worst types of human trafficking, Part II
of this Chapter will focus exclusively upon trafficking in women, sex
trafficking and its effects.
- DESCRIBING HUMAN TRAFFICKING: the vocabulary of
trafficking -
Before exploring
the complexities of human trafficking, one must first establish a basic working
definition of the issue. Part I of this chapter will employ the definition of
human trafficking as defined in the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress,
and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (hereafter
referred to the Palermo Protocol). The Palermo Protocol states,
(a) ‘Trafficking in persons’ shall
mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of
persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of
abduction or fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power of a position of
vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payment or benefits to achieve
the consent of a person having control over another persons, for the purpose of
exploitation. Exploitation shall
include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other
forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices
similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. [ii]
While this may
seem an unwieldy, jargon-filled paragraph, later sections of this chapter will
explore why a detailed definition may be necessary to help curb the rates of
human trafficking across the world. At this point, however, a more basic
definition may be appropriate as an introduction to human trafficking. Within
the global economy, there exist various types of trafficking, such as the
trafficking of illicit drugs or weapons. As such, it is important to emphasize
that the subject of this chapter is trafficking in humans: in this chapter, therefore, where the term “trafficking”
is used, it refers specifically to human trafficking.
Basically, human
trafficking, also referred to as people
trafficking, is the process by which individuals are moved from an origin
region to a destination region, by means of deceit or force, by a third party
that benefits from the exploitation of the trafficked individuals. It should be
noted that human trafficking is a similar but separate issue from human
smuggling: Article 3 of the Palermo
Protocol explains that human smuggling
is an illicit process comprised of "the procurement, in order to obtain,
directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal
entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national or a
permanent resident.” [iii]
In more general terms, it refers to a
consensual transaction in which the transporter or “smuggler,” and the smuggled
individual or “transportee” agree to circumvent regular and lawful immigration
channels for mutually advantageous reasons. The most significant difference
between human smuggling and human trafficking is that, in smuggling, the
transaction between the smuggler and the smuggled party typically ends once the
individual has been transported to his or her destination.
Conversely, in trafficking, individuals
are exploited at the hands of trafficking agents. During the initial recruitment process,
trafficking situations are often presented to potential victims as mutually
beneficial transactions; however, once they are en route to their destination
regions, circumstances typically devolve into exploitation and abuse. Interpol
summarizes, “Human trafficking is distinct from people smuggling in that it
involves the exploitation of the migrant, often for purposes of forced labour
and prostitution.” [iv]
By definition, this is not always the case in smuggling situations.
While the terminology surrounding
human trafficking is varied, the following key terms will allow the reader to
gain a working knowledge of the issue, and a practical vocabulary. First, it is
important to distinguish between the two main types of human trafficking. International trafficking is the
trafficking of persons across national borders (i.e., between countries). Internal trafficking occurs when
persons are trafficked from one region to another within one country, and is
also referred to as domestic trafficking.
The trafficking labels are important because the ability to correctly identify
the process influences the degree to which offenses are rectifiable or
punishable in terms of law. For example: in situations involving the
international trafficking, because more than one nation is involved, the
prosecution of traffickers can become a sticky issue due to the overlap of two
discrete sets of national laws. Beyond this, human trafficking is rarely a
black-and-white issue, and it is not uncommon for situations to involve both
internal and international trafficking.
Because human
trafficking is a transient process, the various places involved have specific
names. Country of origin and area of origin, depending upon whether
the trafficking is international or internal, refer to the region where
trafficked persons began their journey – in other words, the place from which
they were initially recruited and trafficked. It should be noted that these
terms do not always correlate to the trafficked person’s ethnicity, birthplace
or geographic nationality. It is typically at the area of origin that recruitment occurs, a process by which
individuals are lured, tricked or bought into trafficking situations by
trafficking or recruiting agents.
The terms destination country and destination region designate the final
area to which persons are trafficked, and where they typically end up working,
most frequently in exploitative conditions and activities.
Human trafficking
does not always occur on a point A-to-point B basis; there are often several
stops along the way between the country of origin and the destination country.
Here, the terms transit country and transit region come into play: these
are the countries or areas through which trafficked persons are routed on their
way to their final destination region. According to the regulations set forth
by the US Government via the 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report, [v]
countries known to be only trafficking transit
areas are considered to be conducting or aiding in human trafficking and can be
prosecuted as such, given the UN Protocol’s definition of trafficking, which
includes the phrases “transportation, transfer, and harboring.” [vi]
The term trafficker, or trafficking agent, refers to the entity that moves people from one
region to another, whether internationally or domestically, via means of deceit
or force, and in doing so benefits at the expense of the trafficked person. A
trafficking agent can be an individual or an organization: for example, in many
situations involving small-scale human trafficking, the trafficker or
recruiting agent in question is often a family friend or even a relative of the
individual being trafficked. On a larger scale, human trafficking can also
involve organizations such as semi-legitimate “placement agencies” that serve
as agents, often in trafficking rings.
Individuals who undergo the process of human
trafficking are most often referred to as victims
of trafficking. However, a lack of standardization in the literature’s
terminology is perhaps most notable in the range of terms by which these
individuals are identified: examples from the literature include “victims,”
“smuggled aliens,” “irregular migrants,” “trafficked persons,” “forced
migrants,” and “coerced immigrants;” in the case of trafficked individuals who
become prostitutes, terms range from “forced sex workers” to “comfort women,”
and many of the terms convey an underlying sense of victimization. Undertones of victimization are inherent to
the majority of the labels associated with human trafficking to avoid this, for
the purposes of this chapter, the neutral term trafficked individuals will be used to refer to individuals who
have undergone human trafficking.
- TYPES OF HUMAN
TRAFFICKING -
Human trafficking
exists as an illicit means to fulfill various underground economic demands, and
there are several subcategories within the larger framework of human
trafficking. Exploitation is a
definitive part of the process of trafficking; however, there is a broad range
of defined “exploitation”: the latter portion of the UN Palermo Protocol’s
definition of human trafficking emphasizes that “Exploitation shall include, at
a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of
sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to
slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.” [vii] The next few sections focus on the most
common subtypes of human trafficking: amongst them, sex trafficking, child
trafficking, and labor trafficking.
- Sex trafficking -
Sex trafficking, or the trafficking of
individuals specifically for the purpose of sexual exploitation, is strongly
tied to the trafficking of women and children on a global basis and is
overwhelmingly the most common type of human trafficking; in fact, “the U.S Department of State estimates that 70% of all
victims of international human trafficking are forced into the commercial sex
industry.” [viii]
Sex trafficking is typified by trafficked individuals, whether women, men or
children, being forced to participate in sex work, often for minimal or no pay,
in their destination country. Beyond simple
prostitution, related activities include the practices of sex and marriage
tourism, as well as the mail-order bride industry (these issues will be
discussed further in Part II of this chapter); widespread demand for all of
these industries feeds into the trafficking of women and children into the sex
industry all over the world. Because sex trafficking is the most predominant
type of trafficking, Part II of this chapter is devoted entirely to this issue.
-
Trafficking of children -
Child
trafficking is a grievous and widespread issue in the realm of human
trafficking. As defined by the United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), “a ‘child victim of trafficking’ is any
person under 18 who is recruited, transported, transferred, harboured or received
for the purpose of exploitation, either within or outside a country. The use of
illicit means, including violence or fraud, is irrelevant.”[ix]
Unlike adults, children cannot give consent to be trafficked, regardless
of their word or situation, because they are underage. It is estimated that
half of all trafficking victims are children,[x] “as
many as 1.2 million children [are] being trafficked every year,”[xi]
and that the majority of these children are channeled into sex work. Because child trafficking primarily feeds
into the underground sex industry across the world, it is considered one of the
worst forms of sex trafficking. It occurs in response to a widespread global
demand for cheap, undocumented labor, or for sexual exploitation. Many
trafficked children were stolen or kidnapped forcibly and then channeled into
trafficking rings; however, another common process is recruitment, a
deceit-ridden process in which typically poor urban or rural families are lured
into essentially selling their children to recruiting individuals who offer
promises that the child will be provided opportunities, education or wealth
that the family could never afford. Alternately, in the case of many teenage
girls, it is a friend, acquaintance or boyfriend that acts as the trafficking
agent, offering a better life in a new country.
- Male-child kidnapping -
Beyond labor or
sexual exploitation purposes, a newer form of child trafficking is emerging
today, in regions such as
[In
- disparity of
terms: trafficking language and data difficulties -
The official definition of human
trafficking varies widely between governments, NGOs and other agencies, with
certain themes often, and other key issues remaining under-addressed; this
“lack of consensus” underlines the innately nebulous nature of the issue and
“continues to be a barrier to progress – both in addressing and studying the
issue.” [xiii]
One issue is language: where separate nations’ trafficking documents are
converted into other languages (for presentation at multinational
anti-trafficking conventions, for example), such documents, which often detail
the experiences and first-hand interviews of trafficked persons as originally
given in their native tongue, may suffer from mistranslation; loose, shoddy or
overly-interpretable transliteration; lack of relevant translations for local
vernacular (a common issue when addressing sensitive issues of sex work or
domestic labor) and the loss of difficult, nuanced, or culturally-specific
ideas and undertones via the process of translation.
Once the inherent linguistic issues
have been addressed, establishing a common trafficking vocabulary – one that,
ideally, upholds some sense of cultural relevance regarding multiple cultures’
different trafficking terms and the subtleties therein – proves difficult. Another
obstacle to standardizing the language of trafficking, writes Elizabeth Kelly
for the International Organization for Migration, is the lack of trafficked persons’ self-identification. With so many terms in use,
…[it] is even less likely that
research participants, trafficked women and children in particular, will be
aware of an agreed international definition and they are, therefore, likely to
define trafficking in a variety of ways that diverge both from the Palermo
definition and various national laws. While this is a problem in practice,
research and policy need not rely on ‘self-definitions,’ especially since the
tendency for women to minimize their situation and not define themselves as
victims is certainly not limited to trafficking. [xiv]
Disparities in
the terms across the trafficking discourse are widespread, and the resulting
discrepancies across nations’ trafficking data often stymie anti-trafficking
efforts and skew numbers: “…signatories to the Protocol are likely to have
different definitions in their national laws, and it is these that are used in
the construction of official data.” [xv]
As such, language and terminology differences result in nearly all global
statistical reports on trafficking – reports that are numerically questionable
to begin with, due to the illicit, difficult to track, and therefore grossly
underreported nature of trafficking incidents – being further distorted.
- What Causes Trafficking? - What factors
render individuals vulnerable to human trafficking? The vulnerability of
victims of trafficking is made up of a constellation of elements, and women and
children are particularly susceptible to these various forces that propel
trafficking. Status- and empowerment-reducing elements, including poverty and
the feminization of poverty, in the case of the trade’s many female victims;
reduced cultural esteem of the woman’s or child’s value in society; scarce job
opportunities within the home country, and the traditional roles played by
women and children as determined by culture and religion in the various origin
countries all serve as driving factors for the booming trafficking trade.
On a global scale, possibly the most
influential factor to motivate trafficking is poverty. According to the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID), "Trafficking is
inextricably linked to poverty. Wherever privation and economic hardship prevail,
there will be those destitute and desperate enough to enter into the fraudulent
employment schemes that are the most common intake systems in the world of
trafficking."[xvi]
Throughout many poverty-stricken regions of the world, a belief often predominates that any work abroad will
yield more income and a better life than work within the country; as such,
poverty-ridden families are particularly vulnerable to the recruitment methods
used by trafficking agents. Beyond this, feminization of poverty,
in particular, contributes heavily to the increased rates of trafficking of
women across the world: the combination of more female-funded households, lower
pay rates and scarce domestic job opportunities for women, paired with the
often prohibitive expense of trying to emigrate legally for work abroad,
results in the increased likelihood that a woman will turn to the informal
economy to earn a living, or that the family of a young female or child will
resort to trafficking measures as a source of income and opportunity.
Poverty
drives trafficking in more than one way, and contributes to the vicious cycle
in which many trafficked women become ensnared. In many situations, women who
were once on the receiving end of the harmful results of trafficking eventually
become the perpetuators of the process in order to remain above poverty. The literature cites several examples of
Filipina women trafficked from the
Existing
global issues of gender imbalance – which often stem from the traditional,
religiously-determined roles of women – compounded with the feminization of
poverty, render women and children, in particular, prime candidates for
trafficking.
Social constructs, as set forth by
religion, impact significantly upon the vulnerability of women and children to
trafficking. Various social customs, such as the practice of dowry, require
that women marry at a young age, often via forced or
arranged marriages. Traditionally associated with bride-burning and the
commoditization of women in other areas of the world, dowry is one of the
cultural practices that contribute to the reduction of the value of the female,
which in turn informs upon the spread of trafficking. Among many international communities and
subcultures, there is significant emphasis placed upon the traditional,
subservient role of a woman, in which she is responsible for serving and
supporting her family. [xvii]
Traffickers take full advantage of
the proverbial hands that these women have been dealt, manipulating potential
victims in various ways: “…by advertising in newspapers for dancers,
waitresses, club hostesses, etc. or by direct recruitment in discotheques and
bars. [Traffickers] also lure women through the use of marriage bureaus.” [xviii]
Means of coercing women into prostitution are as diverse: upon entry into the
destination country, victims may have their passports and travel documentation
confiscated or destroyed, such that they cannot leave; some women are even led
into drug dependency by their traffickers or madams, so that they have to
continue sex work as a means to support their addiction. [xix]
Another
issue frequently cited by returned trafficking victims is debt bondage. As defined by the Supplementary
Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, debt bondage is “the status or condition arising from a pledge by a debtor
of his personal services or of those of a person under his control as security
for a debt, if the value of those services as reasonably assessed is not
applied towards the liquidation of the debt or the length and nature of those
services are not respectively limited and defined.” [xx]
Debt bondage is a
particularly harmful coercion technique in that it contributes to a
systematized cycle of trafficking: in many situations, if a woman cannot repay
the monies owed to traffickers for her transportation and document costs, she
may take on additional jobs while abroad (for which hiring a “placement agent”
can cost her a large portion of her typically sparse salary), or, upon
repatriation, be forced into trafficking again – thereby compiling more
documentation and travel debt – in order to pay off her initial debts. With few
legitimate earning options available to her, this practice can set the woman on
a path of perpetual indebtedness, in which repeated trafficking is both the cause
and the most available solution.
- What
constitutes choice? -
Separate from,
and yet intricately linked to the idea of consent (discussed in the next
section) is the hazy realm of choice.
This topic merits attention because it is significantly correlated with the
trafficking of individuals; however, it is a huge subject and therefore will
only be summarized briefly in this chapter. Looking beyond the disputed issue
of an individual’s consent to enter into a trafficking situation, even in
situations where people actively and knowingly choose to be trafficked to jobs
of sex work or servitude, the idea of “choice” is debatable. While the individual home-country situations
of trafficked people across the world vary tremendously, the average
trafficking victim typically comes from a particularly poor region or family
within a less affluent country. Most of the countries that experience high
rates of outbound female trafficking are also characterized by significant
gender imbalances often due to disparate educational levels, religious beliefs,
and a resultant lack of earning opportunities for females within the formal
economy. Does the act of deciding between inexistent or scarce earning options
and any available earning prospects truly represent an active choice, or is it
simply a means of moving oneself a few meager notches up an economic spectrum
by taking advantage of an illicit, and possibly harmful, opportunity? With so
few chances for earning available to them in their home regions, individuals
who “choose” to be trafficked typically do so in order to mitigate economic
difficulties faced either personally or by their families. Beyond this, regular
migration (traveling to another country via lawful means) is often
prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for people in this situation, which
is one reason trafficking becomes a viable option.
Anti-Slavery
International’s UK Communications Director Mike Kaye explains, “The lack of regular migration opportunities to take up
work in other countries and the fact that many migrants are looking for work
abroad as a means of survival, rather than an opportunity to improve their
standard of living, has left migrants with little choice but to rely on
smugglers or traffickers in order to access these jobs.” [xxi]
It is not, therefore, a matter of living well: for the majority of people who
have undergone trafficking, the decision to travel irregularly stemmed from
their need to simply survive. From a humanitarian perspective, this kind of
“choice” serves to emphasize the condition of poverty-stricken individuals’
lives in their home countries: what problems are they facing, on a global
scale, that they should regard irregular migration or trafficking as a
solution? Additionally, returning to the
difficult issue of defining trafficking, the Palermo Protocol states that
trafficking has occurred if a person is moved under “…threat or …forms of
coercion, [or] …of the abuse of power of a position of vulnerability….”[xxii]
Within this definition, the sources (be it a person or a social construct) and
forms (whether physical, mental, fiscal, emotional, or of another quality) of
these various means of coercion, and their temporal nature (immediate,
sporadic, or long-term) are not explained, however. To this end, given the
typical home situation of a person who turns to trafficking as a means to earn
subsistence, one must ask whether poverty or suppressive home-culture measures
should be considered coercive forces that drove him or her to turn to
trafficking in order to better define trafficking and to better identify and
target at-risk populations.
Another
difficulty regarding the matter of choice is common to various other
international health affairs: its tremendously relative nature, both culturally
and economically. This speaks to the idea that what one person from one
culture, education level, family status and earning ability may consider to be
a “choice” does not necessarily reflect what another person within a different
set of circumstances might. This seems to be a relatively recent subject in the
discourse, and needs to be better addressed within the literature on human
trafficking to make anti-trafficking programs more effective.
- INTRICACIES WITHIN HUMAN TRAFFICKING: Prostitution,
Consent and Victimization in the UN Palermo Protocol -
There is a huge spectrum of beliefs
regarding sex trafficking, prostitution, and consent, and this chapter will
touch upon a few of these issues surrounding the negotiations of the Palermo
Protocols. In December 2000, over eighty countries signed the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress
and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, in
Palermo, Italy (hence the documents are often referred to as the Palermo
Protocols). A definition of human trafficking was created in
For the purposes of this Protocol:
(a) ‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation,
transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of
force or other forms of coercion, of abduction or fraud, of deception, of the
abuse of power of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of
payment or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over
another persons, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the
exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual
exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to
slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.[xxiii]
This definition
of trafficking was the target of heavy feminist lobbying during the two years
in which the
The lobby efforts were split into
two camps, deeply divided in their attitudes towards prostitution. One lobby
framed prostitution as legitimate labor. The other considered all prostitution
to be a violation of women’s human rights. Not only feminist NGO networks were
bitterly divided over the issue, however: many state delegations used the
negotiations as an opportunity to denounce the evils of prostitution, while
others…argued that focusing on prostitution detracted from the efforts to come
to an agreement on trafficking. The differences were most ferociously fought
out during debates on the proposed definition of trafficking, with the pivotal
term “consent.” [xxiv]
The Palermo
Protocol’s definition of trafficking suggests that even if the victim initially
gives consent to be trafficked, her consent is considered moot within a legal
framework because various methods of coercing the victim into issuing a consent
(amongst them, “means of threat, or use of force or other forms of coercion, of
abduction or fraud…” [xxv])
were probably used; as such,
the trafficked person’s word is not truly uninfluenced, freely-given consent.
Essentially, the consent of a victim to the intended exploitation is irrelevant
where any of the exploitative means have been used.
Part II of this chapter will
discuss in depth the situation of the many women who are unwittingly or
forcibly trafficked into sex work. The UN Palermo Protocol states that
prostitution is by definition a form of exploitation, and that any woman who
has been trafficked into prostitution has been exploited. In this sense, the
language in the Protocol characterizes all women who have been trafficked as
victims in need of protection, regardless of consent or whether they suffered
due to the trafficking, and, in the case of prostitutes, whether or not their
involvement in prostitution was coerced or voluntary. However, there are women
working as prostitutes who knowingly used trafficking as a means to travel from
their home countries to situations of improved earning opportunity, and it has
been argued that these individuals are not necessarily “victims” of
trafficking.
Many
ideas regarding prostitution as one implicitly non-consensual end result of
human trafficking informs further upon women’s health on a global scale by
targeting the issue of prostitution and its vulnerable, largely female
population. Because various definitions of trafficking make little or no
distinction between the forced and unforced types of prostitution into which
trafficked women may enter, and due to the frequent societal correlation
between prostitutes and trafficked women, many agencies combine their
anti-trafficking efforts with measures to combat prostitution, regardless of
whether the women in each case chose to become prostitutes, or whether they
were coerced into it.
Bebe Loff
writes, “Historically, efforts to combat trafficking have ended up justifying
repressive measures against prostitutes themselves in the name of 'protection'
for women and children.” [xxvi]
Implementing highly restrictive measures on sex workers can have devastating
consequences, from both global health and human rights perspectives: because
the majority of prostitutes work outside of the law, they are civilly
vulnerable, with no recourse to protection from crime and little or no access to
healthcare. Additionally, “legally sanctioned encouragement of prostitutes to
use condoms or access screening services, both major determinants of the
prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, is impossible because of their
illegal status.” [xxvii]
Regardless
of the moral and legal connotations attached to prostitution, wide-aiming
anti-trafficking policies that simultaneously target the practice of
prostitution relegate millions of trafficked sex workers further to the
outskirts of society, and impede the protection of the individuals involved,
rather than helping them:
The
International Labor Organization (ILO) has signed conventions on forced labor
(1930), holidays with pay (1936), the protection of the right to organize
(1948), the protection of wages (1949), and migration for employment (1949),
but because of our intuitive sense that sex work should be marginalized as
immoral and degrading to women, none of these rules has been applied to the
gray market in sexual services. Our well-meaning desire to "protect"
women forces the prostitution industry underground and out of the reach of
established labor statutes. [xxviii]
The continued stripping of prostitutes’ human rights – one
unfortunate side effect of anti-trafficking campaigns – pares down their
already limited health rights, further reduces their access to healthcare, and
renders sex workers even more vulnerable to harm from various sources. Inherent
to the nature of their work, prostitutes are at great risk of violence in the
workplace, or violence at the hands of arresting or deporting authorities;
additionally, they are significantly more susceptible to HIV infection due to
their lowered status: “Vulnerability to contracting HIV has been characterised
as ‘exercising little or no control over one’s risk of acquiring HIV infection…
vulnerability is magnified by societal factors such as marginalisation or
discrimination.’ This account encapsulates the situation of most prostitutes.” [xxix]
Marginalization of prostitution can also impact the very individuals whom the
anti-trafficking policies aim to protect: those who have already been
unwillingly or unwittingly trafficked and coerced into sex work. This is
particularly true in situations involving the rescuing and reintegrating of
these victims: “Where women are still within the sex industry, their fear of
both the traffickers and the local law enforcement and immigration officials is
likely to affect what they will say, including whether they identify themselves
as victims of trafficking.” [xxx]
Addressing the UN Palermo Protocol’s definition of prostitution within the
framework of trafficking, Bebe Loff and her coauthors conclude,
The failure to recognize the
distinction between forced and unforced prostitution allows the claims of
prostitutes’ rights groups to be ignored. This expression of international law
undermines efforts to reduce the incidence of HIV and AIDS and discriminates
against prostitution on the basis of occupation. …This problem contributes to
the vulnerability of prostitutes to disease. …[Human] Rights instruments should
not contribute to the vulnerability of populations to disease, they should aim
to diminish this vulnerability.[xxxi]
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Part II: TRAFFICKED
WOMEN: SEX TRAFFICKING, INVOLUNTARY PROSTITUTION AND THEIR EFFECTS
By Asma Hussain
- INTRODUCTION -
The exploitation of women occurs in
numerous fashions through a variety of forces and conditions such as poverty,
lack of education, little or no access to health care, economic restrictions,
cultural, social, and religious ideologies, political violence and corruption,
family structure, childcare, and limited decision-making in the household. The
interplay and overlap of these forces reproduces, reinforces, and maintains the
oppression of women. In order to survive, many women enter the dangerous work
of prostitution – a profession that often keeps women in the strong threshold
of oppression.
Consider the following statistics:
according to the United Nations, although women comprise one-half of the
world’s population, they do two-thirds of the world’s work while only earning
one-tenth of the world’s income and they own one-hundredth of the world’s
property.[xxxii]
Eighty-percent of the world’s refugees are women and children and women
constitute 70% of the world’s poor and two-thirds of the world’s illiterates.[xxxiii]
Women occupy approximately one in seven of the world’s managerial and
administrative jobs, and women are less likely to have access to paid
employment; the average woman who does have a job earns only approximately half
of the average man’s income.[xxxiv]
Clearly, the current condition of
women worldwide is one that offers little consolation, and when the situation
of women is so despairing, the condition of prostitutes is typically worse.
The complex and multifaceted
forces outlined above are intricately woven together to create, multiply, and
sustain prostitution. The sex industry has become a multi-billion dollar
global phenomenon that profits immensely from the collective and corrupt,
direct and indirect work of mafias, police, government officials,
policy-makers, tourists, airline workers, businessmen, clients, and even other
women. Part II of this chapter is divided into five parts: the
different methods through which women become prostitutes; the multiple social, economic,
and political factors which help keep them in this work; the physical and
health consequences of prostitution; the emotional, psychological and mental
effects of prostitution; and a resource list of different organizations working
to combat this worldwide problem. The final section of this chapter will
address various steps that are being taken to stem the human trafficking trade
on a global scale.
- Section 1: BECOMING A PROSTITUTE -
There are many methods through which women become prostitutes; this chapter
will highlight four of the means by which individuals enter situations that
result in their entry into involuntary prostitution: via trafficking; by
kidnapping; via trickery; and via the selling of female relatives.
- Trafficking -
According to USAID, between
700,000 to 4 million people are annually bought and sold as prostitutes,
domestic workers, sex slaves, child laborers, and child soldiers.[xxxv]
As many as 100,000 female victims are forced into prostitution each year and
trafficking generally flows from poorer to wealthier nations, with South and
- Kidnapping -
Women and girls
are forced into prostitution when traffickers who focus their attention on poor
villages kidnap, illegally smuggle, and then sell the women to others who will
force them to have intercourse with scores of strange men. One incident
described how a trafficking agent in a central Thai province photographed
village girls on their way to school. He then showed the pictures to a
brothel keeper who “ordered” the girls he wanted. After the selection,
the agent returned and kidnapped the chosen girls.[xl]
-
Trickery -
Traffickers or
recruiters may also offer women legitimate work such as restaurant workers,
hostesses, models, domestic and household servants, or entertainment workers.[xli]
The financially dismal situation of these families often drives them to give
their children to traffickers who pose as job placement agents.
Unbeknownst to them, their children are instead often forced to engage in
dangerous sex with paying clients. Offers made to the families become even more
appealing when traffickers take the responsibility to secure travel documents
and even pay for the passage of the victims to different countries.
Traffickers also often offer cash advances to poor families with young children
in order to lay claim on their children’s futures.[xlii]
For families who have little opportunity of a stable future, an offer of
legitimate work with an all-expense-paid trip to another country hardly sounds
like the workings of an illegal, corrupt, and violent underground economy.
-
Selling of Female Relatives -
Apart from being kidnapped or tricked,
women also become prostitutes when their families knowingly sell them into this
profession. The lack of jobs and basic necessities experienced by those
in poverty-stricken areas is cause enough to send their daughters to work with
the only commodity they can sell — their bodies. And there is demand
enough.
-
Section 2: REMAINING A PROSTITUTE -
THE OPPRESSION OF PROSTITUTES
The nature of prostitution has
been argued to be inherently oppressive; however, the tragedy does not end
there. This oppression is methodical, stemming from a variety of social
and cultural ideologies and economic and political forces. Sociologist Julia O’Connell Davidson[xliii]
quotes Iris Young by declaring that “We cannot eliminate…structural oppression
by getting rid of the rulers or making some new laws, because oppressions are
systematically reproduced in major economic, political and cultural
institutions.” [xliv]
Although Davidson says that the domination of women is more than “being merely
oppressed by the bad laws of bad guys,” this is actually a very large and
imperative aspect of the perpetuation of oppression against prostitutes,
especially when these “bad guys” legitimize their “bad laws” through ideology.
-
Cultural Ideology -
In most societies, mainstream
religious and cultural ideologies perpetuate the view that prostitutes are
undeserving deviants from dominant society. Many also believe that
because these women have “chosen” this “promiscuous profession,” violence
against them is permissible. The popular notion that prostitutes are
morally inferior causes prostitutes to view themselves as being unworthy— a
belief that is of course maintained by the majority of the society in which
these prostitutes reside. Beadle
describes how the Sangha —
Davidson also
describes how prostitutes “often buy into discourse about gender and sexuality
which attach stigma and moral blame to prostitutes, rather than to their
third-party exploiters or clients.”[xlviii] She goes on to support her claim by providing
the account of one Filipina prostitute who says, “…If you have sex outside of
marriage, it’s as if you’re a bad woman who has ruined her life. You’re repulsive to look at. I think I’m still conservative in my
thinking. I still feel the same towards
the women who work in the clubs.”[xlix] Not only do prostitutes develop negative
feelings towards themselves, but they come to also view fellow prostitutes in
the same manner: in this way, ostracizing and stigmatization become a vicious
cycle within sex worker communities. In other cases, older women help younger
ones enter this profession and the former find no problems with this action. In fact, they believe they are helping these
younger women. Flamm describes one
narration by a female brothel owner who had just received a new girl: “She is
very pretty and very young, just 15 years old.
My girls are happy to stay here with my family. We live as one family. I provide for them a place to live and work,
and they can earn some money for later.
They are from very poor villages in
-
Family structure/Childcare -
The
limited involvement of women in household decisions also has an important
effect upon their treatment as women and as prostitutes. Again, the rule
of patriarchal societies does not allow women equal membership in important
matters in the home. Rather, the rule becomes less participation, but
more contribution. Remember that women do two-thirds of the world’s work
despite the fact that men have more jobs and own more property than
women. Husbands may live off the earnings of their wives who prostitute
or they may even help their wives find clients. Husbands may even be the
ones who first force their wives into prostituting to ensure the steady arrival
of an income. Because of the woman’s lack of control over herself and her
social position, the money she makes ends up in the hands of the decision-maker
— this certainly not being her. Even
women who are not prostitutes are subjected to their husband’s violent demands.
Davidson shares the following disconcerting account:
I know non-prostitute women, for example, whose economically
inactive male partners expect them to work two or three part-time cleaning
jobs, as well as to perform all the domestic tasks in their own household, and
who will use physical violence or the threat of it to ensure that they meet
these expectations. I have also known non-prostitute women who have been
manipulated into performing unpaid sexual acts with acquaintances, strangers,
even dogs, for the sexual and psychological pleasure of their male partner.[li]
The subordination of wives is intertwined
closely with the cultural ideologies described above. Clearly, the
negative beliefs against prostitutes and even women help create a situation in
which they not only lose their autonomy to their husbands and the patriarchal
society, but their rights over their own bodies as well. Just as prostitutes come to accept the belief
that they are unworthy, many Thai women come to accept that their husbands will
visit prostitutes. Some even prefer this behavior to an adulterous
affair and the possibility that their husband’s will take on a mia noi —
a “minor wife.” Since prostitutes are simply considered to be another
commodity to be bought and sold, the night activities of Thai men are never
questioned and usually ignored.[lii] In fact, surveys of Thai university students,
military officers, and young men reveal that between 60%-97% either lose their
virginity to a prostitute or continue visiting prostitutes on a regular basis.[liii]
Beadle describes how “for the
majority of adolescent boys, their initiation into adulthood begins with a
night of carousing and drinking with their buddies, and ends in the bed of a
prostitute.”[liv] This phenomenon illustrates how not only do
family dynamics play an essential role in prostitution, but how these actions
are considered legitimate because of the ideology that supports these actions.
Changing dynamics
of the family structure are also affecting the social environment for women and
children. The breakdown of the extended
family, the increased rate of marriage breakdown, and the separation of
families for long periods due to migration for work have resulted in an
increase of broken families. This has in
turn exposed many children to high-risk behavior, including drug use or has
increased their chances of becoming homeless or delinquent.[lv] Migration is also a key component in
the spread of AIDS, as men separate from their wives to leave their homes in
search of economic security but then end up finding prostitutes instead.
Another aspect
closely related to family structure is the care women must provide for their
children. In situations where women are left to care for numerous children
and opportunities are scarce, they resort to having sex with other men and the
matter is worsened when the woman is the sole provider for an extended
family. In societies and cultures where
fathers are missing and mainstream society rejects prostitutes, the future of
half the world’s population is not promising.
- ECONOMIC FACTORS -
- Poverty: Jobs, Education,
Healthcare -
Poverty is one of
the fundamental problems underlying the entrance of women into
prostitution. According to the United Nations Chronicle, “Poverty
will always remain one of the root causes for women and children to be lured
into prostitution. In
USAID describes
how “poverty and unemployment fuel the supply for potential victims.” According to this agency, between 70-80% of
unemployed workers in the
PART
3: THE HEALTH REPERCUSSIONS OF PROSTITUTION
- VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN AND PROSTITUTES -
“It
is a violation of human rights when women are trafficked, bought and sold as
prostitutes.”[lviii]
This statement, made by Hillary
Clinton, reflects the current belief held by organizations such as the World
Health Organization and the United States Agency for International
Development. However, it is essential to
note that violence against prostitutes only comes after violence against
women—that is to say, violence against a prostitute is first and foremost
violence against a woman. This
phenomenon is a global one, affecting every region, culture, nation, people,
and religion. Violence against women is
truly an international occurrence.
Consider these statistics: in the
PHYSICAL TRAUMA: RAPE, TORTURE,
MURDERS, MUTILATIONS, WHIPPINGS
A survey by the Prostitution Research and
Education project interviewed 854 people currently or recently involved in
prostitution in the
Davidson
describes the physical injuries and illnesses suffered by child prostitutes in
Child
prostitutes are especially treated violently.
Brothel owners make them work without break, steal their wages, and warn
them not to leave by informing them that they will be arrested as illegal
immigrants. Many are beaten for refusing to work and even the men who buy the
child prostitutes become violent if they refuse to perform various sexual acts.[lxviii]
According
to a Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography, women in prostitution
have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average.[lxix]
One study [lxx]revealed
that 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide and prostitutes
comprise 15% of all completed suicides reported by hospitals. Seventy-eight percent of women who sought
help from the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in
Every
woman in the Dignity House program (Developing Individual Growth and New
Independence Through Yourself) said she had been robbed, raped, kicked, and
beaten with knives, fists, guns, baseball bats, coat hangers, and boards and
every girl knew someone who had been murdered while working in prostitution.[lxxii] One woman in another study offered the
following graphic account:
"I’ve had three broken arms, nose broken twice, [and]
I’m partially deaf in one ear….I have a small fragment of a bone floating in my
head that gives me migraines. I’ve had a fractured skull. My legs ain’t worth
shit no more; my toes have been broken. My feet, bottom of my feet, have been
burned; they've been whopped with a hot iron and clothes hanger… the hair on my
pussy had been burned off at one time…I have scars. I’ve been cut with a knife,
beat with guns, two-by-fours. There hasn’t been a place on my body that hasn’t
been bruised somehow, some way, some big, some small."[lxxiii]
PSYCHOLOGICAL, EMOTIONAL, MENTAL
TRAUMA
The
same study at Kaiser Permanente mentioned above also found that two-thirds of
prostitutes suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Symptoms of PTSD include anxiety, depression,
insomnia, irritability, flashbacks, and nightmares. This disorder is a psychological reaction to
exceptionally stressful events and is more commonly associated with war
veterans or those who have been involved in serious accidents. However, researchers concluded that, “The
severity of the post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by the prostitutes was
comparable to that of
Prostitutes
also suffer from high rates of drug and alcohol abuse. In the
Another
factor that contributes to the mental and emotional trauma of prostitutes is
their presence in a new country when they are trafficked. Here, they truly become powerless as they
struggle to stay alive in a foreign land with new people and no understanding
of the language or culture. The prostitutes realize that their chances of
escaping are near impossible without the knowledge of the area, their lack of
communication skills, and their illegal status in the country. Eliciting help
from authorities would be unfeasible, first because of their lack of
information on where authorities are located and the difficulty getting there,
and secondly, because the authorities themselves are simply part of the
system. The emotional and mental stress
is exacerbated when prostitutes discover that they have been tricked and have
arrived in a new country and their loved ones back home have no knowledge of
their whereabouts.
The
sheer number of clients prostitutes are expected to service is also a factor
that results in the deterioration of the latter’s health. Strange men after men after men are given
permission from some more strange men to intrude into the women’s most private,
intimate, and personal being. One author
describes how “The everyday life of prostitution is distant from most of us.
And here, our imagination is a poor assistant. Negotiate a price with a
stranger. Agree. Pull down one pant leg. Come and take me. Finished. Next,
please. It becomes too ugly to really take it in. The imagination screeches to
a halt."[lxxviii]
The repeated exposure of women to
these undignified acts undoubtedly takes a toll. The following is an account by a prostitute
who describes her emotional pain.
For a great part of 1992 I lived in a beautiful apartment
on Capitol Hill. I drove my expensive car. I bought lovely clothes and traveled
extensively out of the country. For the first time in my 20 years as an adult
woman, I paid my own way. There was no need to worry about affording my rent,
my phone bill, all the debts one accumulates simply by living month to month. I
felt invincible. And I was miserable to the core. I hated myself because I
hated my life. All the things I came to possess meant nothing. I could not face
myself in the mirror. Working in prostitution lost my soul.[lxxix]
Children who have no understanding of sex
are also forced to perform degrading acts they did not know existed. One Australian man beat and raped two Thai
girls, aged eight and eleven, in a
It
comes as absolutely no surprise, then, that prostitutes strongly desire to
leave this daily threat. Another study by Kaiser Permanente and the
Prostitution and Research Education found that 92% of the 130 people surveyed
reported that they wanted to leave prostitution but could not because of a lack
of basic human services, including job training, healthcare, counseling and
treatment for drug and alcohol addictions, or even a home.[lxxxi]
AIDS:
A CATEGORY OF ITS OWN
The
threat and reality of AIDS has become a constant social force deeply
intertwined with prostitution, which has heightened the vulnerability of women,
especially prostitutes, to the dangers of this combined phenomenon. A United Nations report stated that although
Sub-Saharan Africa continues to have the world’s highest incidence of AIDS,
Eastern Europe and
The
travel industry is a vital factor in the proliferation of HIV/AIDS and also
profits immensely from prostitution, both directly and indirectly. However, Davidson writes that,
Most travel companies and airlines would, of course, be
quick to distance themselves from sex tourism and to insist that it is beyond
their power to affect what individual tourists choose to do while abroad. Yet tour operators typically promote travel
to known sex tourist destinations by emphasizing the pleasures of the
‘nightlife’ which exists in them, and, whether these third-party beneficiaries
connive with sexual exploiters by drawing attention to the ‘opportunities’ on
offer or not, companies which facilitate tourism to known sex tourist resorts
play a very active role in the daily reproduction of tourist-related
prostitution and derive substantial profits from it.[lxxxvi]
- PART IV: COMBATTING THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF PROSTITUTION
-
In
addition to the URLs throughout this Chapter’s “Works Cited” list, please refer
to the following list for additional resources of information on prostitution
and human trafficking. An asterisk (*) next to the link indicates that opening
the document requires Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader.
United Nations Global Programme Against Trafficking in Human Beings (GPAT)
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/trafficking_human_beings.html
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
http://www.catwinternational.org/
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
http://www.usaid.gov/about/women/trafficking.html
Human
Rights Watch: Women: Trafficking
http://www.hrw.org/women/trafficking.html
United
States Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
UNICEF
Child Protection Information Sheet – Trafficking *
http://www.unicef.org/protection/files/trafficking.pdf
UNICEF-USA.
Child Trafficking: Advocate: Take Action
- WHAT CAN BE DONE? Combating and preventing human
trafficking -
Many UN agencies
on a global scale have established special programs or offices to deal with the
issue of trafficking, including UNICEF, the United Nations’ Women’s Fund
(UNIFEM), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the United Nations’
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). US and multinational organizations including
USAID, the International Labor Organization (ILO), the International
Organization for Migration, and the World Health Organization have also taken
up the call, creating programs and funding huge projects, backed by millions of
dollars, to further identify, quantify and determine ways to lessen the degree
of the trafficking problem. Additionally, beyond the widespread reach of UN
organizations, NGOs and local governments, nearly every single nation afflicted
by trafficking – whether they are origin, transit or destination regions – have
established local trafficking watchdog organizations, as well as various local
agencies that disseminate anti-trafficking awareness via widespread campaigns,
and work with returned trafficking victims on assuring them a smooth reintegration
into their home societies.
Additionally,
multinational conventions like the
However, the worldwide
problem of trafficking will not be fully extinguished until the underlying,
large-scale factors that truly fuel it, including global poverty, the feminization
of poverty, the widespread lowered values of the female, and a global demand
for the sex industry, have been properly addressed. Because these issues are
also at the root of a multitude of other international problems, including the
degradation of the environment, urban sprawl, overpopulation, loss of natural
resources, and the degradation of the Earth, it is becoming even more urgent
now that these matters be recognized and addressed on a massive, globally
cooperative scale.
Works Cited, URLs, and Bibliography