Sex Slaves Around The World

Trafficking is a huge global problem hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked. Women and girls are seized worldwide in the sex trade from Russia and the other former Soviet republics, large parts of Asia and Central, South America and mainly in India. The women and girls, whose passports and identification papers are confiscated by the traffickers, sometimes are "recycled" -- turned over from one brothel to another -- and many return home only after contracting diseases such as AIDS. Some 50,000 people annually -- about half of them in the sex trade -are trafficked into the United States, according to a CIA estimate. "The trafficking in the United States is significant, but it's even larger in some other regions where the borders are not as patrolled and guarded The United Nations, which has no estimate of the number of people trapped in sex trafficking, is fighting to come to grips with the problem. Negotiators from more than 100 countries are working in Vienna on a protocol relating to human trafficking as part of a U.N. convention against transnational crime. Human Rights Watch is set to release a report in September on the trafficking of Thai women into the sex industry in Japan. The activist organization previously has detailed the shipment of thousands of Nepali women into India, women from Myanmar (Burma) into Thailand, and women from Eastern Europe into Bosnia. A Human Rights Watch staffer also previously investigated the trafficking of Russian women into Israel. young women are being trafficked from Russia to 43 countries at the last count -- pretty much every Western European country, Canada, the U.S., Mexico, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand." Women from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are trafficked in large numbers into the Middle East, particularly wealthier nations such as Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and even Saudi Arabia. And she said there is significant trafficking from southern and central Africa to Nigeria, which seems to be a transit point to northern Africa, Spain, and as far north as Sweden and Norway.

A couple weeks ago, in response to my post questioning whether or not it's still hard out there for a pimp, some commenters claimed that the answer to the problem of trafficking was the legalization of prostitution

since, after all, it was "the world's oldest profession."

First of all who started that rumor? I would like to nominate the fashion industry as the world's oldest profession, since someone had to make those fig leaf threads sported by Adam and Eve on their way out of Eden. But the question at hand is: will legalizing prostitution work? Amsterdam Let's take a look at the Netherlands where the welcome mat to publicly available sex and drugs has been out for the entire world to cross. The fame of Amsterdam's Red Light District was such that Thomas Cook Tours (that venerable British tour agency) offered a walking tour of the Red Light District, promising "a fascinating insight into the oldest profession in the world." To woo prospective visitors, Mssrs. Cook offered reduced price tickets to children under 12 years old and free passes for those under three. Following public outcry, the tour is no longer available.

So what about that Red Light District anyway? I have news for you, folks. It didn't work. Several years after lifting the ban on brothels, Amsterdam's Mayor Job Cohen admits that, while the law was created for voluntary prostitution, "these days we see trafficking of women, exploitation and all kinds of criminal activity."

The majority of the women behind the windows are from foreign countries, brought to the Netherlands under false pretenses, enslaved by their pimps, and subject to acts of violence on a daily basis. The proliferation of sex trafficking in Amsterdam has made that city's Red Light District into an enclave of organized crime and corruption that has caused even the socially liberal Dutch to say, enough. From occupying a large enclave in the heart of Amsterdam's historic center, the Red Light district is now being limited to two streets. The numbers of windows are curtailed and the hours of operation are shortened. Far from enabling safe and consenting sexual encounters to take place, the opening of brothels had the opposite effect, opening the door to heightened organized activity with a related increase in sex slavery.

Anyone still thinking that legalizing prostitution is the answer to sex trafficking ought to take a tour through Amsterdam and pay Mayor Cohen a visit. But hurry. The welcome mat is wearing thin.

INDIA India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Internal forced labor may constitute India’s largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children are held in debt bondage and face forced labor working in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories. While no comprehensive study of forced and bonded labor has been completed, NGOs estimate this problem affects 20 to 65 million Indians. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are subjected to forced labor as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups. India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Nepali children are also trafficked to India for forced labor in circus shows. Indian women are trafficked to the Middle East for commercial sexual exploitation. There are also victims of labor trafficking among the thousands of Indians who migrate willingly every year to the Middle East, Europe, and the United States for work as domestic servants and low-skilled laborers. In some cases, such workers are the victims of fraudulent recruitment practices that lead them directly into situations of forced labor, including debt bondage; in other cases, high debts incurred to pay recruitment fees leave them vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers in the destination countries, where some are subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude, including nonpayment of wages, restrictions on movement, unlawful withholding of passports, and physical or sexual abuse. Men and women from Bangladesh and Nepal are trafficked through India for forced labor and commercial

LATIN AMERICA Several countries of the Latin American region have already enacted new legislation criminalizing human trafficking and have taken measures to assist victims of trafficking. Experts stressed the importance of providing victims willing to testify with special protection and support instead of repatriating them immediately to their country of origin. Similar to ongoing practices in the fight against

drug trafficking, regional cooperation in the exchange of information and evidence will be of essence. This includes the need to prosecute immediately in the case of non-extradition of nationals involved in cases of trafficking. Countries have to review their own legislation to harmonise the definition of trafficking in accordance with the United Nations Protocol against Trafficking in Persons, in order to improve criminal prosecution's capacity. The experts also called for the creation of specialized police units and training in special investigative techniques.