Victims say places like beauty salons have become hunting grounds for fixers, middlemen in sex and human trafficking. Courtesy: Ignatius Banda

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Mar 10 2020 (IPS)

Similo Ntuli* looks like a ordinary, fashion-savvy woman in her twenties. As a hairdresser and beauty therapist in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, Ntuli has her finger on the pulse of the latest styles and trends. But she also has, what she admits, are dark secrets.

“I have become suspicious of young rich women whose source of income cannot be explained,” she says. And she knows what she is talking about.

“I have been to Dubai (in 2018) where I was invited to work for some rich guys but what I saw made me think twice about how I want to make my money,” she tells IPS on condition of anonymity .

“The grossest sexual fantasies you can imagine can get a young girl money that is unthinkable here in Zimbabwe,” she says.

Ntuli says she was introduced to contacts or clients in the Near East by “a fixer” in Bulawayo. But she says she had to leave Dubai in a hurry after the demands to perform “despicable sex acts” proved unbearable.

Lobbyists in Zimbabwe are concerned by what they see as the weak enforcement of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, also known as the Palermo Protocol. It came  into effect on Dec. 25, 2003 and seeks to prevent, suppress and punish the trafficking of persons.

Zimbabwe may be a signatory, along with 184 members of the U.N.,  but activists here say that enforcement efforts against organised human and sex trafficking remain inadequate as the true factors driving this are not being addressed.

Zimbabwe is facing its worst economic crisis in decades and activists say that the lack of safety nets, awareness campaigns and legal recourse for exploited women has continued to expose them to exploitation.

“The rate at which foreigners come to the country exposes the young women to trafficking. Recently, Zimbabwe adopted the mantra that it is ‘open for business’ and potential investors in their quest to partner with Zimbabwe have been frequenting the country,” Fadzai Traquino, national director of Women in Law in Southern Africa, tells IPS.

She explains that because of the current economic climate perpetrators are able to take advantage of vulnerable young women, offering them “job opportunities”, explaining that those women who accept such opportunities often do so out of desperation.

“And so it becomes difficult to curb the pandemic as women are opting for these opportunities to secure financial and economic security,” Traquino says.

And, as Ntuli points out, there remain gaps in how human and sex trafficking crimes can be reported.

“I think people, including the police in Zimbabwe, have become cynical. I think its because of the economic crisis. Someone who I told my story to asked what I thought I was doing going to Dubai. I cannot even approach law enforcement officers on this matter as I feel I know what their reaction would be,” Ntuli says.

In 2019, the United States State Department issued the Trafficking in Persons Report noted that Zimbabwe “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”, while local researchers say more needs to be done if young women such as Ntuli are to come forward and report cases for justice to be served. Ntuli admits that she is unaware if there is any legal recourse open to her as a victim of sex trafficking.

“Educating vulnerable people about human trafficking for sexual exploitation is one piece to addressing the problem. As the Palermo Protocol mandates, governments need to deal with the root causes of trafficking for sexual exploitation, and these are grounded in gender inequality and discrimination,” says Tsitsi Matekaire, the global lead of End Sex Trafficking at Equality Now, an NGO that advocates for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women and girls.

“Governments must ensure that women and girls are supported to reach their potential, free from the impact of discrimination and poverty, and create more equal societies so that they are not vulnerable to sex trafficking in the first place,” Matekaire tells IPS.

“Governments must ensure that victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation are properly supported to rebuild their lives after the traumatic experience, whether they have been trafficked within the country or where trafficked to another country,” she adds.

The International Criminal Police Organisation’s (INTERPOL) Vulnerable Communities unit has noted the importance of training local enforcement agents on how to conduct victim interviews in cases of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation.

In responses to IPS’ enquires, the police organisation used the example of a successful INTERPOL-assisted raid of sex trafficking in West Africa in January, where local police were provided with specialised training to bust a trafficking ring. 

While Zimbabwe has made efforts to address human and sex trafficking, Traquino says more still needs to be done.

“The Government of Zimbabwe has demonstrated overall increasing efforts to meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is not has not fully reached the required level of commitment in tackling human trafficking at large,” she tells IPS.

“There is more that can be done to conscientise young economically vulnerable woman. The state has not taken advantage of the platforms that the youth are mostly found at, particularly Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and various other social media platforms. Sensitising young women about the risks of trafficking on the [social media] platforms that they frequently visit can be effective as the message reaches them directly,” Traquino says.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ), which actively supports the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 8 of decent work and economic growth, has focused much of its work on eliminating modern slavery. It acknowledges that the “legal system is failing — human trafficking is illegal everywhere but it is growing everywhere”.

“As a consequence something has to change — we need new laws — governments are obliged to protect their citizens,” GSN states.

Gillian Chinzete, senior programmes officer with the Harare-based NGO Girls and Women Empowerment Network, also believes African governments and respective legislatures must be pressured to act.

“This will help in ensuring effective implementation of policies,” she tells IPS.

“Communities have little or no information about human trafficking. Human trafficking cases are hidden from the general communities,” Chinzete adds.

*Not her real name.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Africa's children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 26 2015 (IPS)

“Poverty has become part of me,” says 13-year-old Aminata Kabangele from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me.”

Aminata, who fled her war-torn country after the rest of her family was killed by armed rebels and now lives as a as a refugee in Zimbabwe’s Tongogara refugee camp in Chipinge on the country’s eastern border, told IPS that she has had no option but to resign her fate to poverty.

Despite the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, African children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent.“Poverty has become part of me. I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me” – Aminata Kabangele, a 13-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo

“In every country you may turn to here in Africa, children are at the receiving end of poverty, with high numbers of them becoming orphans,” Melody Nhemachena, an independent social worker in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Based on a 2013 UNICEF report, the World Bank has estimated that up to 400 million children under the age of 17 worldwide live in extreme poverty, the majority of them in Africa and Asia.

According to human rights activists, the growing poverty facing many African families is also directly responsible for the fate of 200,000 African children that the United Nations estimates are sold into slavery every year.

“Many families in Africa are living in abject poverty, forcing them to trade their children for a meal to persons purporting to employ or take care of them (the children), but it is often not the case as the children end up in forced labour, earning almost nothing at the end of the day,” Amukusana Kalenga, a child rights activist based in Zambia, told IPS.

West Africa is one of the continent’s regions where modern-day slavery has not spared children.

According to Mike Sheil, who was sent by British charity and lobby group Anti-Slavery International to West Africa to photograph the lives of children trafficked as slaves and forced into marriage, for many families in Benin – one of the world’s poorest countries – “if someone offers to take their child away … it is almost a relief.”

Global March Against Child Labour, a worldwide network of trade unions, teachers’ and civil society organisations working to eliminate and prevent all forms of child labour, has reported that a 2010 study showed that “a staggering 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 years worked in cocoa farms of Ivory Coast and Ghana at the cost of their physical, emotional, cognitive and moral well-being.”

“Trafficking in children is real. Gabon, for example, is considered an Eldorado and draws a lot of West African immigrants who traffic children,” Gabon’s Social Affairs Director-General Mélanie Mbadinga Matsanga told a conference on preventing child trafficking held in Congo’s southern city of Pointe Noire in 2012.

Gabon is primarily a destination and transit country for children and women who are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 human trafficking report.

In Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, a study of child poverty showed that over 70 percent of children are not registered at birth while more than 30 percent experience severe educational deprivation. According to UNICEF Nigeria, about 4.7 million children of primary school age are still not in school.

“These boys and girls, some as young as 13-years-old, serve in the ranks of terror groups like Boko Haram, often participating  in suicide operations, and act as spies,” Hillary Akingbade, a Nigerian independent conflict management expert, told IPS.

“Girls here are often forced into sexual slavery while many other African children are abducted or recruited by force, with others joining out of desperation, believing that armed groups offer their best chance for survival,” she added.

Akingbade’s remarks echo the reality of poverty which also faces children in the Central African Republic, where an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 boys and girls became members of armed groups following an outbreak of a bloody civil war in the central African nation in December 2012, according to Save the Children.

Violence plagued the Central African Republic when the country’s Muslim Seleka rebels seized control of the country’s capital Bangui in March 2013, prompting a backlash by the largely Christian militia.

A 2013 report by Save the Children stated that in the Central African Republic, children as young as eight were being recruited by the country’s warring parties, with some of the children forcibly conscripted while others were impelled by poverty.

Last year, the United Nations reported that the recruitment of children in South Sudan’s on-going civil war was “rampant”, estimating that there were 11,000 children serving in both rebel and government armies, some of who had volunteered but others forced by their parents to join armed groups with the hopes of changing their economic fortunes for the better.

Meanwhile, back in the Tongogara refugee camp, Aminata has resigned herself. “I have descended into worse poverty since I came here in the company of other fleeing Congolese and, for many children like me here at the camp, poverty remains the order of the day.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

The view from a red-light district in India, where some three million sex workers are caught in the middle of a debate on legalisation. Credit: bengarrison/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Jan 16 2015 (IPS)

Thirty-six-year-old Chameli Devi, a sex worker operating out of New Delhi’s G.B. Road – Asia’s largest red-light district, housing an estimated 12,000 of India’s three million sex workers – is an unhappy woman these days.

A contentious debate over the sex trade in India, following a call for legalisation by the National Commission for Women (NCW) – a state-run body that advises the government on women-related policy matters – has Devi worried.

“In wealthier countries, many women genuinely choose this trade due to better income prospects and opportunities. But in India, every woman who enters this trade has invariably been coerced into it by a trafficker, her family or her husband." -- Sarita, a 43-year-old sex worker in New Delhi
She feels that merely issuing licences or permits to people of her ilk will not lead to the improvement of the unhealthy and, at times, dangerous conditions under which commercialised prostitution functions.

According to U.N. reports, about 70 percent of sex workers in India are abused by their clients and the police. Abuse, say activists, is often under-reported by sex workers due to a lack of knowledge of their basic rights.

“Most of us don’t take to the flesh trade out of choice but are sold by criminal mafias to brothels. The move to regulate our business will only end up giving immunity to the pimps and brothels to buy or sell poor women like us while increasing trafficking of young women and children,” Devi told IPS.

A recent study conducted by the Indian philanthropic non-profit Dasra found that roughly half of trafficking victims are adolescent girls, while the average age of sex workers has dropped from 14-16, to 10-14, “because young girls are believed to have a lower risk of carrying a sexually transmitted disease”.

“Most victims come from rural areas, over 70 percent are illiterate, and almost half reported that their families earned just about one dollar [per day],” the report stated.

Other studies have found that most sex workers in India are form the lower castes, communities that are routinely subjected to violence and exploitation in a highly stratified society.

It is unsurprising, then, that scores of women trapped in the trade remain highly opposed to legalization.

Sarita, 43, another sex worker, feels that while there may be a sound argument for legalisation in richer countries like the USA, or even China, such a system is ill-suited to India.

“In wealthier countries, many women genuinely choose this trade due to better income prospects and opportunities. But in India, every woman who enters this trade has invariably been coerced into it by a trafficker, her family or her husband,” she asserted. “So the dynamics of our society are very different.”

Curbing the flourishing sex trade

A 2014 study, ‘Economics Behind Forced Labour Trafficking’, spearheaded by Indian Nobel Peace Prize-winner Kailash Satyarthi, contains some of the most up-to-date data on the flourishing sex trade.

“The figures are shocking…In India alone, the money generated through [the] sex trade so far stands at a whopping 343 billion dollars. Research confirms that several agencies such as traffickers, brothel owners, money lenders, law enforcement officials, lawyers, judiciary and to a certain level even the victims of CSE (commercial sexual exploitation) eventually receive money for participation,” Satyarthi said in the study.

According to a 2009 United Nations report, sex trafficking is the commonest form of human trafficking in the world, making it the largest slave trade; about 79 percent of all human trafficking is for sex work and it is the fastest growing criminal industry globally.

Countries that have legalised prostitution are not much better off. The Netherlands, which legalised prostitution in 2000, continues to grapple with human traffickers smuggling women into the country’s brothels, point out non-profits working in the area.

With the legalisation debate gaining traction, public opinion in India is also splintered over the issue. Those who favour the move feel that it will whittle down harassment, legal intimidation, entrapment and exploitation of sex workers.

NCW Chairperson Lalitha Kumaramangalam, who set the ball rolling with her suggestion that the trade be brought under state control last month, feels that such a step will ensure better living conditions for women engaged in commercial sex work.

She contends it will reducing trafficking of both girls and women and improve the health conditions of sex workers who are presently forced to serve clients in unhygienic conditions and without condoms, which has caused HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases to spread.

In fact health care experts extend some of the strongest arguments in favour of legalising prostitution, or regulating it. They feel that the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, can be checked by bringing the business under the state umbrella as this will help health workers to better educate those in the trade about condom usage and basic hygiene.

Safer sex work or a massive bureaucracy?

Opponents of legalisation, however, are wary of the consequences of adding layers of regulation to India’s massive bureaucracy. They fear that government intervention could trigger harassment of the very people it seeks to protect.

“Legalising prostitution is legalising the profiteers of the sex-industry and their customers,” Ranjana Kumari, director for the New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Social Research, told IPS.

“It means rape of poor, lower-caste women with impunity. Not only that, it will make India a world magnet for sex trafficking and sex tourism.”

Donna M. Hughes, professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island, writes in her essay ‘Prostitution: Causes and Solutions’ that legalisation does not reduce prostitution or trafficking.

“In fact,” she writes, “both activities increase because men can legally buy sex acts, and pimps and brothel keepers can legally sell and profit from them … In the Netherlands, since legalisation, there has been an increase in the use of children in prostitution.”

Activists working with sex workers are also deeply divided over the issue. While Dr S. Jana, who launched the 65,000-strong sex workers’ forum — Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee — based out of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, has supported the legalisation call, others fear that it will further embolden traffickers and the prostitution mafia.

“Indian law and government policies have failed to protect sex workers due to the loopholes in law which makes them vulnerable to abuse. If the trade is legalised, the situation will worsen,” Meena Seshu, a feminist activist and founder of SANGRAM, a voluntary organisation working in the field of HIV control based in Sangli, a city in the western state of Maharashtra, told IPS.

Legalisation, adds the activist, could also scupper attempts by many women’s organisations and NGOs to rehabilitate women and children forced into prostitution.

“The state should formulate policies and schemes for the rehabilitation of sex workers who are coming out of this commercial sexual exploitation. This will offer a better solution to this complex problem,” Seshu contends.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A poster from the No Excuses campaign, organised by Conapees, el Instituto del Niño y Adolescente del Uruguay and Unicef. Photo courtesy of Conapees

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Jan 5 2015 (IPS)

Karina Núñez Rodríguez was only 12 when she was forced into prostitution. Now age 50 and a mother of six, she is an outspoken fighter against sexual exploitation of children and teenagers in Uruguay, a country reluctant to recognise this growing scourge.

Her mother’s surname, Rodríguez, “has everything to do with what I am,” she says, explaining that her grandmother was also an exploited child. Karina proudly says she broke this family burden when her youngest daughter turned 12 as a smiling girl ready to go to high school.“There were nine guys who gave me a beating. I was 11 days in an intensive-care unit and three months unable to walk. Once I could, I returned to report the same crime." -- Karina Núñez Rodríguez

It was an assurance that her own children have a bright future, even though Karina still makes a living selling her body.

In Uruguay, a countless number of children, mostly girls, have their childhoods stolen, to be sold for a pack of cigarettes, a cell phone card, food, clothes, shelter or plain cash. Some are exploited by their own relatives, others by by neighbours or organised criminal networks.

One grocer threw dance parties in her shop on the paydays of local rural workers and lured the men with 12 year-old-girls from the neighbourhood. The girls would spend the night drinking alcohol and having sexual relations with adults on the premises of a nearby chapel.

A 74-year-old owner of a hotel in a beach resort paid for the travel of a 15-year-old girl, who lives hundreds of kilometres away, to have sex. Afterwards, despite sending money to her pimps, the man avoided punishment by claiming he didn’t know she was underage.

A provincial high-ranking public official organised a party with teenagers, alcohol and cocaine in a government facility, and was caught drunk while driving away with one of the girls.

And a network of lorry drivers and the fathers of two victims forced girls into sexual encounters with drivers in three different towns.

These types of cases hit the news almost twice a week. Authorities established Dec. 7 as the national day against sexual exploitation of children. But they still have no accurate statistics on this crime, punishable by up to 12 years in prison under a 2004 law. Adult prostitution is legal and state-regulated.

There are as many as 1.8 million children exploited in prostitution or pornography worldwide, according to Ecpat. Nearly 80 per cent of trafficking is for sexual exploitation and over 20 percent of the victims are children.

From 2010 to September this year, the judiciary heard 79 cases involving 127 defendants. Only 43 were convicted, according to a report published by the judicial branch.

But police reports are increasing. In 2007, there were just 20. In 2011, the number jumped to 40, in 2013 there were 70, and last year there were more than 80.

“Each case is not just one boy or girl. It can involve four or five,” says Luis Purtscher, president of the National Committee for the Eradication of Commercial and non-Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Teenagers (Conapees). Perpetrators outnumber victims. “In a single night, a girl can have five or 10 sexual partners,” he says.

“Being a problem whose underlying causes are the power of capitalism to seize territories and the male workforce migrations, we could hypothesise that when both the economy and the mobility grow, child sex crimes also rise in places colonised by investors,” says Purtscher.

In the last five years, Conapees has trained 1,500 public servants, including teachers, social workers, police officers and prosecutors. “We have 3,000 extra ears and eyes skilled somehow to detect and report,” he adds.

Gender violence plays a role. On a list of 12 Latin American countries, Spain and Portugal, Uruguay has the highest rate of killings of women by a former or current partner, states a recently released report by the regional Gender Equality Observatory.

To graphically illustrate the depth of the problem, Conapees published an advert in the press: ‘Very young girls’, followed by a phone number. It received 100 calls the first day and 500 the first weekend.

Karina became an activist after witnessing the suffering of girls subjected to “breaking-down practices” in brothel-bars: torture, forced and collective penetrations and beatings, “aimed to create such a bond of fear between the victim and her exploiter that she can stand night after night in a corner in Europe without even thinking to go to the police.”

Her record includes 27 crime reports to authorities. “I was instrumental in nine indictments, and I’m honoured by people who trust me and give me more evidence.” She checks the facts and relies on a network of eight friends in different cities. “Thank God we have WhatsApp,” she says with a smile.

In 2007, she and other colleagues created Grupo Visión Nocturna (Night vision group) to promote an independent stance on health-related issues and demand respect for sex workers.

Shortly after reporting to a small city’s police station that three girls were about to be trafficked in 2009, a supposed client picked her up. They travelled 20 kilometres away from town. “There were nine guys who gave me a beating. I was 11 days in an intensive-care unit and three months unable to walk. Once I could, I returned to report the same crime,” she recalls. Karina has been threatened and fears she could be killed at any time.

Making public accusations is dangerous, yet the crime and the victims are not hidden. Belgian photographer Susette Kok visited many sites in an exhibition and book and portrayed 27 adults –24 women, two transgender women and a young man— who were child victims and now, invariably, are sex workers.

“I found the exploitation easily. It is all over the place,” says Kok, who was assisted by Karina’s knowledge and web of contacts.

The “little house of love”, a group of dilapidated and unroofed walls, the floor covered with used condoms, is just next door to a church in Fray Bentos, in the southwest of Uruguay. An oxidized “container of passions” – situated in a sports field and, again, next to a church at the entrance of the western city of Young— has the door open when it is vacant.

Dozens of places like it are scattered through the area: a bench in a communal football field, a huge tree by a bridge, ironically known as “ecological sex”, shacks, clubs and “waitress bars”.

In west Montevideo, bus stations, parks, canteens and even private houses are sites of child sex offences, according to the survey “An open secret”, authored by Purtscher and other seven experts who interviewed more than 50 sources.

The area is attracting major investment and a predominantly male workforce, which could worsen the situation, but it does not have mechanisms to assist the victims. Nor does the country as a whole. A governmental programme established in 2013 is underfunded and counts just two teams.

This slow official response exasperates Karina. “When a child is exploited,” she says, “we cannot wait.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Collage of news reports on trafficking in the Spanish press, from Mujer Emancipada de Málaga, an NGO that provides assistance to women in need. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain , Dec 23 2013 (IPS)

María came to Spain from Paraguay to work as a housekeeper in a hotel. But it was a false job promise, and she ended up in a nightclub, where she was forced to work as a prostitute.

One night she told a client the truth. Moved by her story, he started hiring her services day after day until he managed to find her a job somewhere else – and married her in the end.

It may sound like the plot of a movie with a happy ending, but it is a real case that happened recently, and was told to IPS by Felicia Carmen Marecos, a social worker with the general consulate of Paraguay in the southern Spanish city of Málaga.

It is just one of many stories of women who were trying to flee poverty and fell prey to human trafficking networks.

Most victims of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation in Spain come from Brazil, China, Nigeria, Paraguay and Romania, according to the police, who estimate the number of victims in the country at 12,000 and the earnings of the sex trafficking rings in Spain at five million euros (six million dollars) a day.

María (not her real name) came to the country encouraged by her sister, who was already living in Madrid and was in on the scheme.

Women forced into prostitution tend to be drawn in with the help of family members, friends or acquaintances.

The young woman dared to speak out and file a complaint. But most victims do not do so “because they are coerced from their countries of origin,” Helena Maleno, an expert in migration and human trafficking with Colectivo Caminando Fronteras, an NGO that defends migrant rights, told IPS.

Many of the victims do not speak Spanish and are under threat, in debt, and unaware that help is available. They are also undocumented immigrants, and are afraid to go to the police.

Besides, “they don’t tend to recognise that they are victims,” said Paula Mandillo, a social worker with Mujer Emancipada, an association in Málaga that helped over one hundred women, mainly from Nigeria and Romania, in 2012.

The first European Commission report on human trafficking in Europe, published by Eurostat in April 2013, put the number of victims between 2008 and 2010 at 23,632, with the number growing by 18 percent over the three-year period. Of that total, 15 percent were children and adolescents.

In 62 percent of the cases, the victims – mainly women – were trafficked for sexual exploitation, while 25 percent were trafficked for forced labour, and 14 percent were victims of other kinds of trafficking, such as organ removal.

In 2010, Spain had the second-highest number of victims of human trafficking in the European Union, after Italy, according to the study.

The organisations making up the Spanish Network Against Human Trafficking are calling for a comprehensive law against the crime, which would penalise trafficking in all its forms and not only sexual exploitation.

They are also demanding a human rights focus, arguing that an approach based on crime prevention, law enforcement and control of migration currently predominates.

One example of this was the case of an undocumented immigrant who was arrested and deported when she reported to the police in a coastal town in the province of Málaga that she had been raped, IPS was told by sources with the Guardia Civil immigrant support team (EDATI) in this southern Spanish province.

And a 24-year-old Romanian woman, who was fined by the police several times for working as a prostitute on the streets of Barcelona, committed suicide on Sept. 23. Only then was it discovered that since 2000 she had been a victim of a trafficking ring that sexually exploited some 200 women, and that the pimp was her own husband.

“To raise society’s awareness about what is happening, it has to be made clear that trafficking is not prostitution or irregular immigration, but that there are undocumented immigrants and people who are sexually exploited who are victims of trafficking,” Maleno said.

If the authorities in Spain find signs that an undocumented immigrant is a victim of trafficking, they must inform her that she has a 30-day grace period, when deportation procedures are suspended.

During that period, she receives advice and support from specialist organisations, and decides whether to report the crime and work with the police and judicial authorities in the investigation.

If she cooperates, she is eligible for a residency permit, under a 2009 reform of the law on aliens.

“It’s a problem for the prosecution of the crime to be based on whether or not the victim files a formal complaint. Even if they don’t report the crime, their human rights must be protected,” and that means not deporting them to their countries of origin, where their lives may be in danger, Maleno said.

Many Nigerian women who fall prey to trafficking networks have made a hazardous journey, involving walking across part of the Sahara desert, often pregnant or with children, to Morocco, where they take ‘pateras’ – small, flimsy boats used to traffic immigrants from North Africa – to the Spanish coast.

“The 30-day grace period is very short compared to what they have gone through,” said Maleno. In countries like Norway the period is six months, and NGOs participate in identifying victims, the Colectivo Caminando Fronteras activist pointed out.

Human trafficking was not classified as a crime in Spain’s penal code until December 2010. It is now punishable by sentences of five to 10 years in prison.

In the four cases that since then have resulted in firm convictions, 10 perpetrators were found guilty, Marta González, who heads Proyecto Esperanza of the Congregación de Religiosas Adoratrices, an order of Catholic nuns, told IPS.

According to Maleno, there is “an extremely big problem” in Spain involving victims of trafficking for sexual purposes from Romania, because they are legal immigrants, since Romania is an EU member.

For that reason, “they don’t enter into the circuit of protection established by the protocol against trafficking,” she said, adding that another problem is how frequently they are moved around the country and Europe as a whole.

The sex trafficking rings often use babies, whether to help women from sub-Saharan Africa get into Spain or to coerce them into forced prostitution, she said.

Until this year, when pateras landed on the coast, the authorities did not identify the babies. But now they have started to take their fingerprints, and are increasingly carrying out DNA tests on women and children at border posts, to verify that they are related, Maleno said.

In September, the government granted asylum for the first time to a woman who was a victim of a sexual exploitation network – a Nigerian mother of a three-year-old girl, who arrived by patera in late 2010 and decided to report and fight against the trafficking ring.

Seventy percent of France’s 20,000 sex workers are migrant women. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2013 (IPS)

The age-old debate over how to regulate sex work has led to a rift between the United Nations and anti-trafficking organisations, which are pressuring the world body to rethink its position following two reports that advocate decriminalising all aspects of prostitution.

“When we saw the reports we became very concerned,” said Lauren Hersh, New York director of Equality Now, which is leading the public campaign that launched this week. “To have U.N. agencies call for brothel-keeping is egregious,” she told IPS.“People in prostitution need to be recognised as trafficking victims… We don’t believe anyone chooses.” -- Stella Marr of Sex Trafficking Survivors United

The coalition of 98 groups is asking the U.N. to update and reissue the reports, which were published last year, to reflect the experiences of survivors of prostitution, and include a wider range of views on the impact of legalising of the sex industry.

The two reports, Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific, backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Joint United Nations Programme of HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and HIV and the Law, published by UNDP’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law, are focused on reducing HIV/AIDS while simultaneously protecting the rights of those involved in prostitution.

Survivors say that addressing the demand that keeps the cycle of prostitution in motion is imperative and is not adequately addressed in the reports.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for UNDP said in a statement that the reports examined the issues of sex work through a specific lens of the HIV epidemic and strongly condemned sex trafficking.

“UNDP advocates and promotes the respect of human rights for all, especially the most excluded and marginalised. The report on Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific… clearly distinguishes between adult consensual sex work and human trafficking for sexual exploitation,” the spokesperson said.

Spokespersons from UNFPA and UNAIDS told IPS that the UNDP statement accurately reflects their agencies’ position.

The reports also see decriminalisation of the sex industry as a way to promote the ability of prostitutes to negotiate condom use, but Equality Now says that for many women in prostitution, there is an economic dependency, thus pressure, to have sex without a condom as clients will often offer more money for sex without one.

If women are trafficked or controlled by a pimp, they have less ability to insist on the use of condoms.

In a statement, UNDP said that the criminalisation of sex work increases vulnerability to HIV and limits access to condoms and sexual health services.

But Hersh says that, “Often it’s the pimps and buyers that dictate condom use as women can get more money from not using one.”

Hersh emphasises that the coalition is not trying to undermine the efforts of the campaign against HIV/AIDS. Equality Now has spent nearly a year reaching out to the U.N. through internal channels, including sending a letter co-signed with over 80 organisations, to Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS.

Prostitution is legal in many countries, including Switzerland, where “sex boxes” were recently introduced in Zurich to promote the safety of prostitutes in what the city considers a more pleasant environment. But the situation for men and women in countries where prostitution is legalised and decriminalised remains dire, according to Equality Now.

“One of the major issues is that the reports did not consult with our partners on the ground, particularly survivor-led organisations,” Hersh told IPS.

Stella Marr, executive director and one of the co-founders of Sex Trafficking Survivors United, an international organisation of over 100 survivors of prostitution, is herself a survivor, first trafficked at age 20 and involved in prostitution for 10 years.

“If we don’t address demand, there will always be trafficking,” Marr told IPS, adding that she is “saddened” at the reports.

Marr believes the best solution is the Nordic model, which criminalises the purchase of sex, but decriminalises being a prostitute.

Marr left prostitution after a buyer offered to help her, giving her a safe place to live for two years. She is the only person she knows who this has happened to.

“The fact that I got out doesn’t mean I was strong. I was lucky,” Marr said.

Survivors of the sex industry do not have their voices heard as loudly as those who are currently involved due to the amount of shame around it, said Rachel Moran, a founding member of Survivors of Prostitution-Abuse Calling for Enlightenment (SPACE) International, who was prostituted from age 15 until she was 22.

Another facet of the reports Equality Now wants to address is the definition of “trafficking” by the U.N. In 2000, in the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, commonly known as the U.N. Trafficking Protocol, members states agreed on a broad definition of trafficking that reflects a variety of experiences from sex trafficking survivors.

The 2012 U.N. reports recommend narrowing down and redefining the definition, which could mean many trafficked persons would no longer be considered victims and their traffickers would not be held accountable.

“I understand that it’s difficult… you have to have a way to help people out of that life,” Marr said. “People in prostitution need to be recognised as trafficking victims… We don’t believe anyone chooses.”

Equality Now is optimistic about future reports, including a recent study from Asia and the Pacific, launched by UNDP, UNFPA and U.N. Women, that reports the purchase of commercial sex in the region is strongly associated with widespread rape and sexual violence against women.

Teenage girls in low-income areas of Egypt are vulnerable to trafficking. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
El HAWAMDIA, Egypt , Aug 5 2013 (IPS)

Each summer, wealthy male tourists from Gulf Arab states flock to Egypt to escape the oppressive heat of the Arabian Peninsula, taking residence at upscale hotels and rented flats in Cairo and Alexandria. Many come with their families and housekeeping staff, spending their days by the pool, shopping, and frequenting cafes and nightclubs. Others come for a more sinister purpose.

In El Hawamdia, a poor agricultural town 20 kilometres south of Cairo, they are easy to spot. Arab men in crisp white thawbs troll the town’s pot-holed, garbage-strewn streets in their luxury cars and SUVs. As they arrive, Egyptian fixers in flip flops run alongside their vehicles, offering short-term flats and what to them is the town’s most sought-after commodity – underage girls.

Each year, in El Hawamdia and other impoverished rural communities across Egypt, thousands of girls between the ages of 11 and 18 are sold by their parents to wealthy, much older Gulf Arab men under the pretext of marriage. The sham nuptials may last from a couple of hours to years, depending on the negotiated arrangement.“The girl may have 10 siblings, so the family considers her as a commodity.” -- Sandy Shinouda, a Cairo-based official at the IOM’s Counter-Trafficking Unit

“It’s a form of child prostitution in the guise of marriage,” Azza El-Ashmawy, director of the Child Anti-Trafficking Unit at the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) tells IPS. “The man pays a sum of money and will stay with the girl for a few days or the summer, or will take her back to his country for domestic work or prostitution.”

The girl is returned to her family when the marriage ends, usually to be married off again.

“Some girls have been married 60 times by the time they turn 18,” says El-Ashmawy. “Most ‘marriages’ last for just a couple of days or weeks.”

The deals are hatched in El Hawamdia’s myriad “marriage broker” offices, identifiable by the conspicuous presence of air-conditioners in a ramshackle town with intermittent power.

The brokers, usually second-rate lawyers, also offer a delivery service. Village girls as young as 11 are brought to the Arab tourists’ hotel or rented flat for selection. Arab men travelling with their wives and children often arrange a separate flat for such purposes.

The temporary marriages offer a way to circumvent Islamic restrictions on pre-marital sex.

“Many hotels and landlords in Egypt will not rent a room to unmarried couples,” explains Mohamed Fahmy, a Cairo real estate agent. “A marriage certificate, even a flimsy one, allows visiting men to have sexual liaisons.”

Engaging in sexual relations with minors is illegal in Egypt. Brokers can help with that too, forging birth certificates or substituting the identity card of the girl’s older sister.

A one-day mut’a or “pleasure” marriage can be arranged for as little as 800 Egyptian pounds (115 dollars). The money is split between the broker and the girl’s parents.

A summer-long misyar or “visitor” marriage runs from 20,000 Egyptian pounds (2,800 dollars) to 70,000 Egyptian pounds (10,000 dollars). The legally non-binding contract terminates when the man returns to his country.

The “dowry” that Gulf Arab men are prepared to pay for sex with young girls is a powerful magnet for impoverished Egyptian families in a country where a quarter of the population subsists on less than two dollars a day.

A NCCM-commissioned survey of 2,000 families in three towns near Cairo – El Hawamdia, Abu Nomros and Badrashein – found that the hefty sums paid by Arab tourists was the main motive for the high rate of “summer marriages” in these towns.

Some 75 percent of the respondents knew girls involved in the trade, and most believed the number of marriages was increasing.

The 2009 survey indicated that 81 percent of the “spouses” were from Saudi Arabia, 10 percent from the United Arab Emirates, and four percent from Kuwait.

The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) too has been studying these “marriages”. “The family takes the money, and the foreign ‘husband’ usually leaves the girl after two or three weeks,” says Sandy Shinouda, a Cairo-based official at the IOM’s Counter-Trafficking Unit.

“The unregistered marriages are not recognised by the state and afford no rights to the girl, or any children that result from these unions.”

Shinouda, who formerly ran a shelter for victims of the trade, says most of the young girls come from large families that see marriage to an older, wealthier foreigner as a way to escape grinding poverty.

“The girl may have 10 siblings, so the family considers her as a commodity,” she says.

Parents may seek a broker to arrange a marriage once their daughter reaches puberty. In about a third of cases the girl is pressured into accepting the arrangement, the NCCM study found.

This can have a profound psychological impact on the girl’s mental health, says Shinouda.

“The girls know their families have exploited them…they can understand that their parents sold them,” she says. “Reintegration is a big challenge because in many cases if you return the girls to their family the parents will sell them again.”

Egypt’s 2008 Child Law criminalises marriages to girls who have not reached the legal age of 18. Another law prohibits marriages to foreigners where the age difference exceeds 25 years.

But the laws are poorly enforced, concedes NCCM’s El-Ashmawy. Anecdotal evidence suggests the trade has grown since Egypt’s 2011 revolution as a result of worsening economic conditions and an ineffectual police force.

“It’s not simply about poverty or religion,” she asserts. “It’s cultural norms that support this illicit trade – people believe it is in the best interest of the girls and the families at large. And brokers succeeded in finding common ground with families in order to exploit young girls.”

In June, New York state legislature will vote on a bill that will increase protection for sex trafficking victims. Credit: Bigstock

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Jun 13 2013 (IPS)

It started for Ruth when she was 12 years old and for Lowyal when she was 13. After being raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Ruth ran away from home and was picked up by a pimp, who sold her into prostitution.

Lowyal, bullied at school and facing a deteriorating situation at home, dropped out of school and eventually began working on the streets. In a drawing Lowyal created to depict this traumatic time in her life, a wide eye reflects a city skyline as red flames curl at the bottom, with menacing faces on both sides.

This month, New York’s legislature will vote on the New York Trafficking Victims and Protection and Justice Act (TVPJA), which would give more protection to girls like Ruth and Lowyal, and harsher punishments for those who trafficked them. It is part of the Women’s Equality Act that supporters hope will be voted on before the legislative session ends Jun. 20.

Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, is working with the Jewish Child Care Association and the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition to get the law passed.

The organisation is encouraging supporters to send letters to Governor Andrew Cuomo, Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, and State Senator Dean G. Skelos.

The TVPJA will direct resources to toughening laws to target and arrest pimps and buyers rather than victims. And under the new law, penalties for buying sex from a minor will be similar to those for statutory rape.

The law would also mean that all prostituted persons under the age of 18 are treated as trafficking victims instead of criminals in the state of New York. Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds arrested for prostitution are prosecuted as adults.

“There are two provisions that we are having a hard time with and [are] getting opposition to,” Lauren Hersh, New York director of Equality Now, told IPS. Hersh is perplexed as to why these provisions are problematic."Sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born."
-- Lauren Hersh

The first is making sex trafficking a violent felony in New York State, which would send a message to law enforcement that trafficking is a violent crime, Hersh explained.

“Talk to any sex trafficking victim, and they’ll tell you how violent it is,” she added.

The second is aligning New York state law with U.S. federal law, which does not require prosecutors to prove that minors were coerced into sexual acts. Under the current law, with most cases in New York, victims have to testify in court, Hersh said.

“The New York State assembly is historically against raising penalties,” Emily Amick, staff attorney at Sanctuary for Families and legislative director for the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, told IPS.

“The law needs to evolve,” Amick said. “Albany is letting politics get in the way of helping people,” she added, with state lawmakers who oppose these provisions working against the livelihoods and futures of sex trafficking victims.

Despite some opposition, Hersh sees the bill as “excellent and comprehensive”.

The fact that women and girls are being trafficked not only inside U.S. borders, but also within city limits, may be a surprise to some people, Hersh said.

“When people think of sex trafficking, they often only think of women and girls being smuggled across international borders. But sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born,” Hersh said in a statement.

Legislative justice is one part of the solution. Sexually exploited girls like Ruth and Lowyal should also be given a voice in the process of advocacy and justice, Hersh said. Project IMPACT, a New York-based programme that allows trafficking victims to share their stories, if and how they choose to, is one way to do so.

“I think telling my story matters because it could help other girls like me,” Veronica, another formerly trafficked girl, said, after sharing her story at Project IMPACT. “Storytelling is important because I lived this – I’m the one who knows what it’s really like.”

Ruth, Lowyal and Veronica are part of Gateways, a residential treatment program for commercially sexually exploited youth that is run by the Jewish Child Care Association and allows them to rebuild their lives and self-esteem. Some Gateways residents visited Albany in May to lobby for the bill’s passing.

Reliable statistics on sex trafficking are difficult to obtain due to the hidden and underground nature of the crime, according to Hersh, but a 2010 State Department report put the number of people trafficked to the United States each year at around 15,000.

Two million children are exploited each year in the international commercial sex trade, according to 2012 data from the International Labour Organisation, which also estimates that women and girls make up 98 percent of sex trafficking victims.

And in the United States, while little data is available for the number of victims, the FBI estimates that 293,000 American children and teenagers are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

“The only way we’re going to have justice in New York is to pass this bill in its entirety,” Hersh told IPS.

The underground sex trade is closer to our everyday world than we may think.

Photo courtesy of Hsiao-Hung Pai

A brothel may be hidden inside that shabby building a few blocks away from home; the kitchen maid of our favourite Chinese restaurant may have gone into sex work to earn the money she desperately needs; a foreign student at the university we attend may do part-time sex work to support his or her studies.

These and other realities are investigated by journalist and writer Hsiao-Hung Pai in her new book “Invisible: Britain’s Migrant Sex Workers”, to be published in the United States this November.

Working undercover on exhausting shifts as a housekeeper in several brothels all over the U.K., Pai came in contact with the whole range of human stories that compose the sex trade: prostitutes, pimps, housekeepers and clients.

She collected their stories and created a book that highlights the complexity of this phenomenon, with all its political, social and human factors that sex workers themselves are not always aware of.

“They are not necessarily aware of all the factors, but … they are aware of the choices they have made in difficult circumstances and the … exploitation they are confronted with as a result of institutional failures,” Hsiao-Hung Pai told IPS, “They are also aware of their collective powerlessness.”

Entrapped in circumstance

Backing people’s stories with data and research, the book shows the multiple paths that can bring migrant women to the “choiseless choice” of sex work.

In a foreign country, with no money, little understanding of English and often no legal status, migrant women find themselves vulnerable and completely isolated.

They become an easy prey for pimps who trick them with a fake promise of help, or sometimes they decide themselves to try sex work in order “to earn as much as possible as fast as possible”, instead of keeping on with a low paid job that will never enable them to survive abroad, send money home and sometimes also pay off huge debts to those who smuggled them into the country."[Being] a neutral observer...removes the possibility of ever obtaining an entirely unfiltered account of the issues you want to write about." -- Hsiao-Hung Pai

However, as the author explains in the introduction, she didn’t want to portray migrant women as merely victims of oppression, but also to document their resistance against the circumstances of their lives.

“Only you yourself can know if it is all worth the effort. No one else can judge or evaluate it for you,” says one girl in the book.

Sending money home, doing the job as a sacrifice for a better life for themselves and their families are topics that keep coming back in the words of sex workers throughout the pages. “If you don’t bring cash back home you are nothing,” a pimp tells Pai, in a bid to convince her to take up sex work.

“Life becomes a little purposeless when you don’t have someone to look after and to earn for,” says another sex worker.

Once in the sex trade, women often end up trapped in it for years, either because of a pimp controlling them or out of a desperate need for money and the lack of any other income alternative. Locked in their work in the brothel, they become more and more isolated from society.

“Some of them like the idea that they can talk with someone empathetic outside about their lives and continue to share their stories with me [after I left the undercover job],” Pai told IPS.

“It won’t be long before I can go back, to my daughter and my parents,” says a Chinese sex worker in Bedford, in the southeast of England, in a rare pause of reflection while she works herself to the bone to make that moment come faster.

This kind of slavery is complex and cannot be read solely through the lens of sex trafficking. Policy responses that blur the difference between illegal immigration and trafficking are questioned in the book.

“With this discourse, solutions to the ills of trafficking have concentrated exclusively on immigration controls,” it says, “‘Combating trafficking’ has become entwined with cracking down on ‘illegal immigration’.”

Such an approach leads to targeting trafficking networks while avoiding looking at more systemic factors that stem from the lack of institutional protection for migrants and the police turning a blind eye to prostitution.

A frequent state response to sex trade is its criminalisation, which leads to the closing of brothels and pushes sex workers into the streets and further underground, where they become much more vulnerable.

An insider’s perspective

This is not the first time that Pai worked undercover. Before ‘Invisible’, she had already pretended to be an undocumented Chinese migrant worker in the U.K. during her research for the book “Chinese Whispers: The true story behind Britain’s hidden army of labour” (2008).

“The paradox is that sometimes we need to put on a different identity in order to understand how different social relations and identities really work. We need to deceive in order to expose deception,” she writes in the introduction of ‘Invisible’.

The idea of going undercover first came to her when a Chinese catering worker questioned her about the authenticity of reporting via conventional methods, she explained to IPS.

“Although it is a standard journalistic practice to adopt an objective stance as a neutral observer, doing so removes the possibility of ever obtaining an entirely unfiltered account of the issues you want to write about. … You lose the opportunity to build the closeness and intimacy which precondition truthfulness.

“I’d like to think that my work has done something in giving voice to the most marginalised groups of people in our society,” she said, “and hope that it will enable some change.”

Despite the enormous distance between the two countries, Argentina has become an increasingly frequent destination for migrants from the Dominican Republic, especially women, who are vulnerable to falling prey to sexual exploitation networks.

The immigration flow to Argentina from the Caribbean island nation is much smaller than the influx of Paraguayans, Bolivians, Peruvians and Uruguayans, who make up 80 percent of the foreign nationals who have come to this South American country since 2004.

But Dominicans stand out because of specific problems when it comes to insertion in the labour market.

Clarisa Rondó of the Association of Dominicans Living in Argentina tells IPS that the women come in search of better employment opportunities, but often fall into prostitution networks due to the difficulty in finding other work.

“Argentina is a country that takes us in, it makes us feel we are taking a step ahead,” she says. “It’s a big, generous country that offers possibilities.”

Rondó was 21 when she came here on her own in 1994. She has since married, had children, got divorced, and earned a teaching certificate in the arts.

“More women than men have always come, because men find it harder to break into the labour market,” she says. She clarifies that it is also difficult for women, but “they get involved in prostitution. Many of them are illiterate, they don’t find any other work, and they don’t have any alternative.”

The presence of Dominican women in Argentina becomes visible when the police raid places where prostitution is practiced, in Buenos Aires or in provinces like Córdoba, Misiones, La Pampa, Tierra del Fuego, Rio Negro or San Luis.

Although there are no official statistics, Rondó estimates that there are some 40,000 Dominicans living in this South American country of 40 million people. Most of them – some 15,000 – live in the capital.

Sociologist Lucía Nuñez Lodwick at the National University of San Martín explains to IPS that Dominicans, who traditionally migrated to the United States or Spain, began to come to Argentina in the mid-1990s.

Argentina’s rigid peg of the peso to the dollar in the 1990s drove the influx of immigrants from the rest of the region, who earned here in pesos and exchanged them for the same amount in dollars, to send back home as remittances, she points out.

That was one of the main reasons that Dominicans began to arrive, along with the common language – Spanish – and the demand in Argentina for people willing to do low-paid, low-skilled work – as domestics, nannies, caregivers for the elderly, hairdressers or restaurant workers, she explains.

According to a study carried out by the Ecumenical Services for the Support and Orientation of Migrants and Refugees (CAREF) and commissioned by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), thousands of Dominicans came to Argentina in the 1990s.

The study, “Migración, Prostitución y Trata de Mujeres Dominicanas en Argentina” (Migration, Prostitution and Trafficking of Dominican Women in Argentina) states that 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants from the Dominican Republic reached Argentina between 1995 and 2002.

In recent years, although the exchange rate is no longer a lure, Dominicans have continued to come. “We have been arriving for years, and some have managed to gain a good position in society,” Rondó says.

The activist explains that in some cases, the women take out a mortgage on their homes to travel, in the hope of finding a job in domestic service. But when they arrive, they find it hard to get a job, start racking up a debt with those who financed part of their journey, and end up falling into the hands of trafficking or prostitution rings, she says.

Nuñez concurs: “They come to Argentina with promises of jobs that don’t turn out to be what they had expected – work that would give them a better standard of living than they had in their country.”

Once here, they find it difficult to get any other kind of work, says the sociologist, who wrote the paper “Construyendo mapas: Cuerpos femeninos, espacio y jerarquización racial en la práctica de la prostitución en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires” on prostitution and racism in Buenos Aires.

Nuñez says that when they leave their countries in search of work abroad, women are aware that prostitution is one of the possibilities, from things they have heard about, but “many think it won’t happen to them.”

The sociologist studied the link between street prostitution and female migration in the Argentine capital, focusing on women from the Dominican Republic, who are highly visible as they are black in a country where there are so few people of African descent they only began to be counted in the 2010 census.

In her study, Nuñez says black women in Argentina are often seen as highly sexual, much more so than white or indigenous women, and this makes them more vulnerable.

One Dominican woman working as a sex worker in Buenos Aires, who was interviewed by Nuñez for her study, said “maybe they like (Dominican women) because we have big breasts.”

Another Dominican immigrant working as a street prostitute told the sociologist that “My mom didn’t want me to come here. She told me what women did when they came here, and I didn’t believe her.”

To combat this phenomenon, the Argentine authorities announced in August 2012 that people from the Dominican Republic would need visas to enter the country. And for those who already live here, the authorities simplified the legalisation process and streamlined the paperwork for gaining temporary residency for three years.

But Rondó believes that requiring visas is not a solution. The same view is shared in CAREF, where IPS spoke with Gabriela Liguori, and in the Dominican Republic Embassy in Buenos Aires. They all agree that the new visa requirement won’t solve the problem.

“This just makes things worse,” says the activist. “Because it will be difficult, but they’ll find other ways to get here on land, illegally, and then the women will be less protected and more exposed to trafficking.”

But the sources who spoke to IPS do believe it is a good idea to cut the red tape needed to regularise the situation of those who came in as tourists and are now living here without the proper documents, because temporary residency status would make it easier for them to find a job.

The programme has assistance from the Dominican consulate, Argentina’s foreign ministry, and the justice ministry’s office to rescue and support victims of trafficking.

Undocumented immigrants from the Dominican Republic were given from January to July to apply for temporary residency permits. By March, 631 permits had been granted, according to the web site of the national migrations office.

“My idea is that people who come should be able to regularise their situation, study or work, because even if some do come for prostitution, they could at least have other alternatives. But without documents, they’re forced to become sex workers,” Rondó says.

Minister of the Secretariat of Policies for Women Eleonora Menicucci, in her office. Credit: Courtesy of SPM

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 11 2013 (IPS)

The story generally begins in Brazil’s hinterland, with a pretty, young woman from a disadvantaged background and with little formal education, who is drawn in by false promises and ends up in a sex trade network that stretches overseas.

The disturbing trend has begun to be addressed by the government, the justice system, the legislature and even a popular soap opera, with encouraging results.

Sex trafficking is such a complex phenomenon that there is little systematic, reliable data on it. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates the number of victims of what the U.N. describes as modern-day slavery at 2.5 million people or more.

In Brazil, according to the presidency’s Secretariat of Policies for Women (SPM), 475 cases of trafficking were documented between 2005 and 2011. Of that total, 337 of the victims suffered sexual exploitation, while the rest were subjected to slave labour.

“The majority of the women are young, between the ages of 18 and 30, and are in a vulnerable situation: they are low-income, they didn’t have access to education, and they had difficulties finding work,” SPM Minister Eleonora Menicucci told IPS.

“That is why they accept what look at first glance like excellent job opportunities abroad or in another part of Brazil, believing that they will improve their lives and those of their families,” she said.

The victims are recruited all around the country. But an assessment by the SPM and UNODC indicates that sex trafficking recruitment occurs most often in the northeastern states of Pernambuco and Bahia and the central state of Mato Grosso.

São Paulo, whose capital is Brazil’s largest city, is the state where the largest number of victims from other states are taken, and the main spot from which trafficking victims are carried abroad.

“These young women are used in prostitution, and from here they are sent to other countries like Spain, Italy and Portugal,” Eloisa de Sousa Arruda, São Paulo state secretary for justice and defence of citizens, told IPS.

De Sousa Arruda says that fuelling sex trafficking from this country is “the image of Brazilian women as sexy, which sells abroad.”

Recruiters can be found everywhere, even in small towns in the interior. The route generally ends in brothels abroad. The sex trade gangs include Brazilians and foreigners.

They sniff out a potential victim’s vulnerability and approach her “with job offers that are much better than what they can find in the town, neighbourhood or city where they live,” de Sousa Arruda said.

Menicucci said “They offer them jobs as waitresses or in clubs. They tell the women they will pay for their plane ticket and say the first few pay checks will go towards paying off the debt but after that they will receive their full wages.”

But the victims soon find out it was a trap. When they reach their destination, they find that the debt has multiplied, along with the difficulty in paying it off, and the victims become hostages “subjected to degrading conditions of sexual exploitation.”

The victims are kept under constant vigil and are often held in “private prisons.”

“Even if they get a chance to report their situation, they don’t do so, for fear of the threats against their own lives or those of their families,” the minister said.

De Sousa Arruda, whose office is in charge of the National Plan to Counter Trafficking in Persons unit in São Paulo, created in 2009, said the young women who fall victim to the networks “lack orientation.”

For that reason, she said, it is essential to raise awareness on sex trafficking, in order to support the authorities’ efforts against it.

In February, the government established a second National Plan to Counter Trafficking in Persons, which set a 2014 target for opening 10 more units to provide attention to victims, on top of the 13 that are already operating within and outside Brazil.

And more than 400 additional agents will be trained in the fight against trafficking, and international legal cooperation will be strengthened with the help of the UNODC. A total of 716 people from different disciplines received training between 2011 and 2012.

An international hotline was also established in Spain, Italy and Portugal, to receive complaints from victims in those countries. A similar number – 180, the Women’s Assistance Hotline (Central de Atendimento à Mulher) – began to operate in Brazil in 2005.

Meanwhile, a Globo television network soap opera or novela, “Salve Jorge”, the last episodes of which are being aired this month, has helped draw attention to the problem of sex trafficking.

Based on a real case, the programme is about a Brazilian woman forced into prostitution in a nightclub in Turkey. The screenwriter is Gloria Perez, who has focused on social issues like the disappearance of children in her earlier work.

“A novela with such a large audience, broadcast during prime time (21:00) and re-broadcast abroad, is important for helping people understand an issue like this. It helps by saying: ‘be careful’, you or your daughter could become a target of a trafficker. Don’t fall for promises of easy money,” de Sousa Arruda said.

The novela reflects the plight of sex trafficking victims, showing, for example, the young women’s fear of turning to the authorities because they are undocumented immigrants. “It also shows details such as the difficulty of communicating in another language, which is a serious impediment,” the official said.

Salve Jorge actually contributed to saving a young woman from the state of Bahia, who had gone missing in Spain. Watching the novela, her mother realised that her daughter had fallen victim to a sex trade network. The police in both countries worked together to track down, rescue and bring the young woman back to Brazil.

The Federal Police distribute pamphlets in places like airports, to warn people of the risks of accepting job offers in other countries, and provide information on where to turn for help. This has also helped prompt people to take action.

“The most important thing is to tell society that these crimes are much closer to us than we imagine, not just something you see on TV,” said Congressman Arnaldo Jordy, the president of the parliamentary inquiry commission on trafficking in persons.

Twenty-one-year-old Aisha clings to her child as she recounts her tale of being trafficked. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS

By Rebecca Murray
ADEN, Yemen, Jan 2 2013 (IPS)

Twenty-one-year-old Aisha clings to her two children as she recounts her tale of horror. Growing up in the Somali capital Mogadishu, she fell in love and bore a child out of wedlock four years ago. When her family threatened her life for destroying her ‘honour’, Aisha escaped.

She braved the hazardous journey with smugglers across the Indian Ocean to Yemen, and to what she thought was a better life.

Instead, Aisha now squats with four other women in the sprawling, cinderblock slum of Basateen, in the eastern seaport city of Aden. They beg for money in the shabby southern seaport every day, often prostituting themselves for two dollars a trick. They split their meager earnings with their controlling pimp.

“I just want to go to a safer place for my children,” Aisha sighs. “In another country.”

Human trafficking networks with international reach are expanding in Yemen, and with poverty being a key factor, sexually exploited women are the most vulnerable victims.

Bleak as Aisha’s future may look, her fate is better than that of a 17-year-old Ethiopian girl who died alone in a hospital in Haradh, near the Saudi Arabian border.

Bought and sold within the trafficking network operating across Yemen, she was repeatedly raped and beaten until she died. She is now buried far from home and the trafficker who murdered her remains free.

“Between 2011 and 2012 there has been a significant increase in smuggling and trafficking, and of reported cases of violence and abuse perpetrated against new arrivals,” says Edward Leposky, an officer with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

In 2011 UNHCR recorded over 103,000 new arrivals in Yemen. This is the largest influx they have seen since they started documenting statistics six years ago, and Leposky suspects an increase for 2012. The real numbers are thought to be much higher.

Female migrants, mostly Ethiopian and Somali, often flee poverty and violence at home. They fork out hundreds of dollars to reach transit points in Djibouti or Puntland, and also for the dangerous, overcrowded boat rides – which can last one to three days – to Yemen.

Their goal is to reach Gulf states like Saudi Arabia for work. But along the way migrants are frequently gang raped, suffocated from overcrowding or thrown overboard by smugglers, as well as taken hostage by traffickers once they reach Yemeni soil.

“The most trafficking we see happening here is of those coming from the Horn of Africa to Saudi Arabia,” says Eman Mashour, part of the counter-trafficking team with the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) in Yemen.

“There is a network,” she says. “Females can be badly exploited by the traffickers. Women told us they were providing sex to smugglers along the way.”

Confirmation lies in the grim findings of October’s groundbreaking study, ‘Desperate Choices’, conducted by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS).

“Criminal networks extend through Ethiopia, Yemen, Djibouti, and Saudi Arabia,” the report says. “It seems highly likely that these gangs would have contacts in other countries.”

Local women fall victim to trafficking

But not all victims of sex trafficking in Yemen are migrants.

The brief marriages between young Yemeni girls and visitors from the Gulf states – a practice commonly known as ‘sex tourism’ – are the result of poverty among large Yemeni families, mostly in rural areas.

“Girls as young as 15 are exploited for commercial sex in hotels and clubs in the governorates of Sanaa, Aden, and Taiz,” says the U.S. Department of State’s 2012 trafficking report.

“The majority of child sex tourists in Yemen originate from Saudi Arabia, with a smaller number possibly coming from other Gulf nations. Yemeni girls who marry Saudi tourists often do not realise the temporary and exploitative nature of these agreements, and some are subjected to sex trafficking or abandoned on the streets of Saudi Arabia.”

A victim of another kind of sex trafficking, Leila, was 15 years old when she finally found refuge at a secret women’s shelter, tucked away in a quiet Sanaa neighbourhood.

Beaten by her family, Leila had run away from home two years before and lived off the streets. An older woman soon picked her up, bringing her to a neighbourhood brothel.

The girls were photographed having sex as blackmail to make them stay, given drugs and forced to service clients at night. The woman pocketed the clients’ cash.

Leila and the female pimp were arrested just before Leila was to be trafficked to Saudi Arabia. Leila served two years in prison for her ‘crime’. Her family disowned her, accusing her of destroying her honour, and her brother issued death threats.

Through a prison visit by staff from the Yemeni Women’s Union, Leila found out about the small women’s shelter – a rarity in Yemen – and was one of their first cases. With psychological help and class work consuming her days, Leila stayed at the shelter until the staff resolved the family dispute.

Yemen’s penal code proscribes ten years’ imprisonment for those engaged in buying or selling human beings. Although acknowledging the country’s ongoing political crisis, the U.S. State Department report stresses the utter lack of government efforts to counter trafficking this year.

“The Government of Yemen was unable to provide law enforcement data to contribute to this report, and it did not institute formal procedures to identify and protect victims of trafficking or take steps to address trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation.”

Nicoletta Giordano, the head of IOM’s activities in Yemen, warns against the inactivity. “There is a flourishing smuggling and trafficking business. It is an international business… Many Western countries are focused on piracy issues and attention to smuggling and trafficking has fallen by the wayside,” she says.

“If we were to look at border management in a more holistic way, so that those that require assistance and protection are referred, and those that might pose a threat are dealt with, this would be in the interest of all countries concerned.”

*Sex trafficking victims’ names have been changed to protect their identity.

The courtroom broke out in angry shouts and cries when judges in Argentina unexpectedly acquitted 13 defendants accused of kidnapping a young woman and forcing her into prostitution in 2002.

The high-profile trial for the kidnapping of María de los Ángeles “Marita” Verón, who is still missing, ended late Tuesday after a four-hour delay by the three-judge panel in the courtroom in the northwest province of Tucumán.

The judges said there was no evidence that the seven men and six women kidnapped Verón.

Susana Trimarco, Verón’s mother, said she would try to get the three judges impeached, and accused them of receiving bribes. “We aren’t going to stop until these crooks are dismissed from their posts,” she said after the verdict was read out.

Susana Trimarco holding a missing persons poster for her daughter, Marita Verón. Credit: Courtesy of Metrodelito.

Trimarco later told a local TV station about a conversation she had after the trial with President Cristina Fernández, who gave her a human rights award on Sunday Nov. 9. “Cristina was shouting; she couldn’t believe it,” the activist said.

The trial began in February in Tucumán, where Verón was kidnapped at the age of 23.

More than 100 witnesses took the stand, including a dozen women rescued from sex trafficking rings thanks to Trimarco’s activism, which emerged from her unflagging efforts to find her daughter.

The women said they had seen and talked to a haggard, drugged Verón in brothels in the nearby province of La Rioja.

Trimarco had hoped that a guilty verdict in the trial would give a boost to the investigation into the whereabouts of her daughter.

The prosecutors were asking for 12 to 26 years in prison for the defendants.

While the accused, with looks of surprise and relief on their faces, hugged each other and cried tears of joys, people watching the trial in the courtroom shouted expletives and sobbed.

Verón’s mother left the courtroom before a summary of the arguments was read out.

“This ruling is a clear indication of the complicity of the judiciary in (sex) trafficking,” said Fabiana Túñez, director of La Casa del Encuentro, an NGO that campaigns against gender violence and has gathered testimony and evidence in 700 cases of girls and young women who have fallen victim to sex trafficking rings in Argentina.

“This sentence validates impunity,” she told IPS. “As nearly always occurs in cases of gender violence, the courts do not believe the victims – women who have been rescued. So we are going to hold a march to demand that they receive the necessary protection.”

Túñez was referring to the former victims of forced prostitution who took the stand in the trial. Trimarco said they now feel despondent and afraid.

Missing

Verón left her home on Apr. 3, 2002 for a doctor’s appointment. She never came back.

Trimarco, who received little help from the police, found out that her daughter had been kidnapped, beaten, raped and drugged, and forced into prostitution in La Rioja. Verón was also apparently forced to change her appearance – one witness said her hair was dyed blond – and reportedly had a baby boy with one of the ringleaders.

Three days after Verón went missing, an anonymous phone caller said she had been seen being forced by two people into a vehicle of the “Cinco Estrellas” car rental service. One of the defendants accused and acquitted of her kidnapping was the owner of the car service.

Trimarco has raised Verón’s daughter Micaela, who was three years old when her mother disappeared.

Marita Verón’s father, Daniel Verón, who searched for her tirelessly, eventually succumbed to depression and died in 2010, “from the pain” according to his widow.

Trimarco started out visiting brothels, posing as a recruiter of prostitutes. Her one-woman campaign grew into a full-fledged movement, and eventually she created a foundation – Fundación María de los Ángeles – that has rescued over 130 women from sex slavery. She was also granted the “Women of Courage” award in 2007 by the U.S. State Department, which provided seed money for the foundation.

The story of the search for her daughter was made into a popular TV series, and was the subject of a documentary film.

She finally managed to bring the 13 defendants to court. But they all declared themselves innocent, and none of them revealed Verón’s whereabouts.

The defendants were not accused of human trafficking because the law cracking down on that crime was not passed until 2008, six years after Verón was kidnapped. Trimarco’s activism played a major role in getting the law approved.

Trimarco brought not only the issue of sex trafficking to light in Argentina, but also the complicity of the police, government officials, and members of the judiciary.

The search for her daughter took her as far as Spain, after a woman rescued from a brothel told her she heard one of the traffickers say she had been sent to that country.

In Madrid, Interpol, the international police, carried out two raids, which led to the rescue of dozens of young Latin American women, Trimarco testified in court. But her daughter was not among them.

Contradictions

As a result of Trimarco’s activism, a number of government policies and measures have been adopted to eradicate sex trafficking.

However, the 2008 law did not have the support of women’s organisations, because it differentiates between victims under and over the age of 18. Women who are not minors are required to prove that they had not willingly practiced prostitution.

“This is barbaric – in our view the women are all victims, whether they are minors or adults,” said Túñez.

In response to such criticism, a new bill was drafted, with the universal support of women’s groups. But it never made it to the floor for debate, and this month it was shelved.

Nevertheless, Túñez said that in the realm of public policy, important progress has been made in rescuing victims. Specific departments against trafficking have been created in the provinces, and awareness has been raised about the gravity of the crime, she said.

But girls, adolescents and young women continue to fall victim to trafficking rings by means of kidnapping, force, deception or coercion, especially in the country’s poorest provinces, in the north, where they are forced to work in illegal brothels masked as bars, known as “whiskerias”.

In September, the case of two girls, ages 14 and 16, made the headlines when they disappeared on their way home from school in the northern province of Jujuy. They were carrying no money or identity documents, and their families, who are still looking for them, suspect that they were kidnapped by a trafficking ring.

“If a ruling like this is handed down in such a high-profile case as that of Marita Verón, what can we possibly expect in the rest of the pending cases?” an anguished Túñez remarked.