RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Northeast Major Source of Trafficking Victims

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 19 2004 (IPS) - An estimated 100,000 Brazilian girls and women fall prey each year to organised rings of people traffickers and are taken abroad, where many end up in the sex trade, according to experts.

However, a possibly greater number are trafficked within Brazil.

Although many are seduced by promises of marriage in Germany and others by purported job offers in Spain, a large number simply end up in the sex trade in this country of nearly 180 million, Ricardo Lins, the head of the Pernambuco state government’s trafficking prevention programme, told IPS.

Lins was the lead organiser of an international conference on the trafficking of human beings, which drew more than 200 experts on the subject to Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, on Thursday and Friday.

Pernambuco, located in the arid northeast, Brazil’s poorest region, is one of the main sources of women trafficked into the sex trade.

International organisations estimate that around 100,000 Brazilian girls and women fall victim to traffickers annually and are taken abroad, where they are sexually exploited, said Lins.

Panellists at the conference pointed out that Brazil’s laws and institutions are ill-prepared to crack down on this kind of organised crime, which according to the United Nations involves millions of victims around the world and 12 billion dollars a year – an amount only surpassed by the illegal arms trade and drug trafficking.

The lower house of Congress is currently studying the inclusion of people trafficking in Brazil’s penal code, which dates back to 1941 and fails to provide police and judicial authorities with appropriate legal instruments to combat the crime, said parliamentary Deputy Nelson Pellegrino, who sponsored the bill.

The bill defines criminal offences related to ”deceptive recruitment” for the sex trade or work in near-slavery conditions, or to obtain human organs for transplants, Pellegrino, a member of the governing Workers Party (PT), explained to IPS.

Besides updating Brazil’s legislation to make it possible to combat the new forms of human trafficking, the proposal seeks to create a system in which the various government agencies and society would join forces to prevent the phenomenon.

There are two initiatives against organised criminal networks involved in people trafficking in Brazil. One involves the Justice Ministry, which has launched a campaign to raise public awareness and to encourage people to report suspected cases. It also involves special training for the police and the judiciary.

The other is organised by the non-governmental Latin American Institute for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights (ILADH), which offers victims social and psychological assistance.

”We must bring together the two initiatives,” said Pellegrino, addressing a panel on legal matters at the two-day conference, which was organised by the ILADH and the Pernambuco state government.

Also needed are ”greater international cooperation and new global treaties” to effectively combat the problem, PT Deputy Maria do Rosario Nunes said in a conversation with IPS.

Nunes is the chair of the parliamentary investigative commission on sexual exploitation.

”International norms on trafficking are scarce and fragile,” as are Brazil’s laws and the controls against human trafficking along the country’s borders and highways and in the airports, she said.

The police who patrol the highways ”are only watching out for smuggling of merchandise, not trafficking of persons,” said Nunes.

Few formal complaints have been lodged by victims of trafficking, and the few lawsuits brought ”are not moving forward,” because society has not mobilised to confront trafficking, which is socially tolerated and seen as something that is ”almost natural,” while the country’s institutions fail to act, she added.

Girls and adolescents from Brazil’s interior are drawn by ”the possibility of a better life, one that would allow them to escape poverty,” said Nunes.

In large cities like Rio de Janeiro there is also a ”cultural factor, the desire to become bigger consumers,” said the lawmaker, whose parliamentary commission is to complete its report on sexual exploitation in Brazil in May.

A study completed in 2001 by the non-governmental child and adolescence research centre CECRIA, based in Brasilia, identified 241 trafficking routes in Brazilian territory used for exploiting women, adolescents and girls in the sex trade.

But it is very difficult to obtain reliable data on this criminal activity, the information is "subjective and inconsistent," whether in the court system, the press or the testimonies themselves, says Neide Castanha, head of CECRIA and a consultant to the parliamentary commission on sexual exploitation.

"There is a fear of reporting" because it is widely known that the activity is within the realm of organised crime," Castanha told IPS.

Irregularities and corruption impede the keeping of official records, and it all occurs with a certain level of "consent from the victims," who "prefer to survive and be exploited than to die of hunger."

Furthermore, the sexual nature of the problem creates difficulties for taking a "realistic" approach "in a moralistic society," she added.

In the debate, in the legislation and in the fight against human trafficking, it is essential, Castanha says, to take nuances into account. One cannot consider a girl or adolescent to have the maturity to make a decision about work – sexual or not – far from her family, or even outside the country, she explains.

"Consent" does not exist if there is not freedom to choose, when the objective circumstances practically force a person to accept just about any proposal or promise for a better life, says the expert.