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The Link between Prostitution and Sex Trafficking by Marko Kananen 2009-03-10 09:15:43 |
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On March 8th the world celebrated International Women’s Day. In order to stress the fact that lot of women around the globe live under circumstances that give no reason to celebrate, the United Nations had chosen “women and men united to end violence against women and girls” as this year’s theme.
Trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation is one of the most outrageous human rights violations of today. It is the third most lucrative activity of organized crime, following trafficking of arms and drugs. It is also an activity that is growing in a rapid pace. According to the Migration Policy Institute, criminal networks traffic each year up to 120,000 women and children into Western Europe for sexual exploitation.
Poverty and lack of prospects force thousands and thousands of women and children from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe to strive for a better future in prosperous West. The lack of choice makes them easy target for the criminal networks, who entice the women to take the hazardous trip to Europe by offering tempting jobs and drawing pictures of a better life. Traffickers promise – against high costs – to organise the trip to Europe with forged documents. After entering Europe women’s passports are taken away and they are kept isolated. Therefore, without documents, legal status or contacts, they are totally dependent on the traffickers. In order to pay back the travel costs, which can amount to up to 60.000 euros, they are forced to engage in prostitution. Possible resistance is broken by violence and threats.
The European Union has taken several measures to fight human trafficking. For example, through financial aid to countries of origin and strengthened control of illegal migration, it aims at stemming the flow of trafficked women. Further, in order to improve the protection of the women forced to work in prostitution it has adopted a directive calling on member states to grant human trafficking victims a short-term residence permit. Because the women have entered Europe illegally and thus live under a constant fear of deportation, the prospect of a legal residence was considered to entice them to cooperate with the authorities and to turn in their traffickers.
Victim protection, co-operation with countries of origin and fight against traffickers are all important measures in tackling the brutal exploitation of women taking place in front of our eyes. However, more attention will have to be drawn into the root cause behind human trafficking – prostitution. It is an undeniable fact that without the male demand for commercial sex, the supply of women and girls would not be neces¬sary and the market would collapse. Because the European Union does not have a common legislation concerning prostitution, it is regulated by a jungle of national laws.
The Netherlands and Sweden are genuinely mentioned as two opposite ways of dealing with prostitution and trafficking. The Netherlands has legalised prostitution and the operation of brothels. It is assumed that through legalisation the sex industry becomes better regulated and therefore the cases of trafficking can be detected and exploitations driven out of the business. Sweden, on the other hand, has prohibited any act involving sex against payment and punishes sex purchasers as a way of reducing the demand and through that decreasing the supply of trafficking.
In the Netherlands the overall sex industry has grown due to the legalisation of prostitution and brothels. This has not, however, meant that trafficking would have disappeared or even decreased. Rather, legalisation has created a façade of legality, behind which traffickers for sexual exploitation can operate. In Sweden, at least the visible prostitution has diminished significantly. This however hides the fact that prostitution now takes place underground, where it is harder to control.
Although neither of these laws has been able to totally abolish trafficking, I am still willing to claim that in a long run only the Swedish model has a chance to be successful. This is because the fight against trafficking can not be win through control of supply. In a world where accumulation of wealth is drastically unequal, and where few countries are therefore economically superior over the many, there will always people trying to get into this market (either legally, illegally, voluntarily or forced) in search of a better future. Hence, the control of supply, whether it means controlling illegal immigration or legal sex industry, can never be tight enough to detect all the misuses. That is why, instead of supply, we have to focus on demand.
However, even the strictest regulation can not abolish the demand and use of prostitution. The only way to achieve a permanent change is to change our attitudes. That is why it is important to be aware of the message that the different laws around prostitution are passing. The Swedish model is based on a presumption that prostitution is always harmful to women and it violates their human rights. The law aims at passing the message that exploitation of women can not be tolerated in any form and that gender equality has to become a grounded norm. It therefore makes prostitution socially unacceptable.
In contrast to that, the model employed by the Netherlands is treating legal prostitution as a normal service industry. But what is the message passed here, what does it say about the relationship between women and men? It is hard to imagine gender equality to be attained in a society where men are considered to have a legitimized right to demand sex from women anytime and any way they want it. As put by Sheila Jefferies, any acceptance of prostitution is an acceptance that certain women (mostly the poverty-stricken ones) can reasonably be set aside as appropriate objects of exactly the harassment and exploitation that other women seek to get out of their workplaces and lives.
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