Sex-Trade Workers Trafficked around the World
More than 12 Million People Are Exploited by Traffickers
Apr 29, 2009
Women, in many parts of the world, are among the least protected and survive a lowly status in male-dominated societies.
Trafficking for Prostitution
Women from various countries are forced into the sex trade with promises of fake jobs as waitresses, models, or hostesses. It’s impossible to know the exact numbers of women who are victims of sex traffickers, but the U.S. government estimates that about 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. Some 80 percent of trafficking victims are female, and up to half are children.
According to one report (San Francisco Chronicle, October 6, 2006), “Women trafficked for the sex industry are predominantly from Southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union, and South America.” The United States is among the top three destination countries, along with Japan, and Australia.
“Typically,” writes Meredith May in the San Francisco Chronicle, “they are locked inside their place of business, forced to have sex with as many as a dozen men a day. Sometimes victims are forced to live in the brothel, too, where five or six ‘co-workers’ are crammed into one room.”
Sex-Trade Victims Trafficked Globally
Other major destinations for abducted sex-trade workers are Western Europe (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, U.K., Greece), the Middle East (Turkey, Israel, the United Arab Emirates), Asia, Russia, and India. An estimated 500,000 women from Central and Eastern Europe are working in prostitution in the European Union alone.
In 2004, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) estimated that 600 to 800 persons are trafficked into Canada annually and that 1,500 to 2,200 more are trafficked through Canada into the United States. In Canada, foreign trafficking for prostitution is estimated to be worth $400 million annually.
Once they reach their destination, victims are hidden inside homes, massage parlors, apartments, and basements, where they learn they’ve been deceived. But, by then they are trapped. Their travel documents are taken, they are charged fees they will never be able to pay back, and threatened with violence to themselves or their families back home if they attempt to go to authorities. They often are poorly educated, frightened, and unable to speak the local language. Locked in their new dwellings, they are monitored with surveillance cameras.
Forced Labour: The New Slavery
Figures vary dramatically, but the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that at least 2.4 million people are trafficked for the purpose of some form of forced labour around the world. Also, the ILO estimates that at least 12.3 million people are victims of forced labour worldwide; that means that 9.8 million are exploited locally rather than being taken to another location to be forced into usually unpaid work.
Nearly half, or 43 percent, are used specifically for sexual exploitation, 32 percent for labour exploitation, and 25 percent for a mixture of both.
An ILO background paper, “Fighting Human Trafficking: The Forced Labour Dimensions” was published in January 2008. The paper explains, “There are many ways in which a person can be coerced into undertaking work against their free will. Those most commonly associated with the forced labour resulting from human trafficking include the confiscation of personal identity documents, the threat of denunciation of irregular migrants to the authorities in the host country, deception of a trafficked person about the type of work he or she will eventually undertake, and withholding of wages over prolonged periods.”
Several groups, such as HumanTrafficking.org and the International Labour Organization, are battling to stop the trade in humans.
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