03/14/2002

“Trafficking.” It’s a bland euphemism for a despicable crime committed primarily against women and children. It involves the theft and sale of human beings into lives of bondage, sexual abuse or both.

Most trafficking stories begin with a woman or child, almost always poor, almost always living in insecure areas with high levels of organized crime. Sometimes, they are recruited under the pretext of legal employment in foreign countries. Sometimes, they are simply whisked away, kidnapped from bus stops, schools, refugee camps, or even their own homes. Too often, they are sold to traffickers by family members, police officers, or kidnappers.

The U.S. government defines trafficking as “all acts involved in the transport, harboring, or sale of persons within national or across international borders through coercion, force, kidnapping, deception or fraud, for purposes of placing persons in situations of forced labor or services, such as forced prostitution, domestic servitude, debt bondage or other slavery-like practices.” It is estimated that 1 to 2 million women and children are trafficked each year. Of those, at least 50,000 are trafficked to the United States.

In the case of Naw Htoo, a 15-year-old woman from Burma, the trafficker was a man from her refugee camp in Thailand. Naw Htoo, like many other young refugee women, lived in poor and insecure conditions with little hope for her future. The trafficker told her and four friends that he would get them jobs in a restaurant. They even paid him a fee. The five women were packed underneath cabbages in the back of a pickup truck and smuggled to Bangkok where their nightmare began as domestic servants.

High levels of organized crime and insecurity have been correlated to an increase in the trafficking of women and children. Often, the trafficking targets specific populations. Racially exclusive brothels, such as those found in Chinatown in New York City, for example, create a demand for women and children from a specific region. Traffickers earn large profits by feeding the demand for trafficked women and children around the world. Most of the trafficking of women and children is for employment in the sex industry. Pimps can pocket anywhere from 5-20 times the amount they pay for trafficked women and children. Globally, the sex industry earned $56 billion (US) last year.

Corruption, especially of local officials who are supposed to help protect the population, contributes to the widespread threat faced by women. When Naw Htoo’s friends tried to escape, one police officer attempted to return them to the home where they were being tortured and abused. Within refugee or internally displaced persons (IDP) communities, camp leaders may work with local prostitution rings to provide them with new supplies of women. The recent report by UNHCR and Save the Children (UK) documenting the abuse of power by humanitarian aid workers in refugee camps in West Africa underscores the vulnerability that women and children face in these settings.

The Internet has also contributed to the increase in trafficking of women and children for sexual purposes. Many sites feature streaming videos of beatings, violent sexual acts, and child pornography. The recent case of one site called “Camp Rape” illustrates this trend, and also the lack of prosecution of perpetrators of these acts against women and children.

Once lured, sold, coerced or kidnapped, these women and children face high levels of violence, sexual abuse, and horrid working conditions. Many who have been deceived into thinking they were to receive legitimate jobs are coerced into prostitution by those who brought them into the country. Methods of coercion include: confiscation of travel documentation (when it exists), physical threats, assault, confinement, threatened harm to their family members or children, or the promise of release upon payment of the costs incurred on the part of the trafficker or pimp. Because many trafficked women have crossed a border illegally, they are afraid to seek help from the authorities. In addition, those who abuse and exploit refugee women often do so believing that they will not be held accountable for the abuse of illegal people. More than 75% of trafficked women did not know what sort of employment they were being recruited for.

Women and children who are forced into prostitution face additional abuses. Generally, the men refuse to use condoms, and beat women who try to insist on their use as a means of protection from sexually transmitted diseases. The physical damage inflicted ranges from bruises to broken bones to death as a result of the ferocity of the assaults. Studies of prostitutes in the United States indicate psychological damage in the forms of high rates of depression, suicidal thoughts, and hopelessness. More than 66% of this group had contemplated suicide. Globally, approximately 90% of sex workers resort to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism on a daily basis.

Viable solutions to the trafficking of women and children need to incorporate attacks on both the demand side of trafficking, and the supply side. On the supply side, the international community must work to provide physical security and stability for women worldwide, including refugees and IDPs. Perhaps even more important, these women need the education and economic opportunities that give them more control over their lives and make them less vulnerable to traffickers. On the demand side, governments must recognize trafficking as a serious crime against humanity and implement laws and penalties aimed at those who engage in that crime—those who sell women and children, and those who buy them.

Naw Htoo spent more than a year in bondage to a family that worked her as a domestic servant during the day and tortured her during the night. Eventually she and two of the friends she was sold with escaped and returned to a refugee camp. One of her friends was not so lucky. She died of torture. Naw Htoo did not know the fate of the fourth friend. Nothing happened to the families that killed them.