Preventing Trafficking in Women and Children in Asia: Issues and Options

Published in volume 1, issue no. 2 of FHI's IMPACT on HIV magazine, this article describes how increasing concern about violence against women and the role of commercial sex in HIV epidemics has led to high-profile efforts to understand the forces driving trafficking and to identify the best options for preventing such exploitation.

An age-old problem that has plagued almost every society in recorded history, trafficking in women and children is a grim reality of modern life in many countries. Every day, young people striving for a better life for themselves and their families are routinely deceived and exploited to satisfy a demand for cheap goods and services.

In the past, efforts to prevent trafficking have been few and relatively small-scale. Collusion between families and agents, corruption of law enforcement and border officials, and difficulty in knowing when and where transactions take place have all thwarted prevention efforts. Recently, however, growing concern about violence against women worldwide has put trafficking on the international agenda, and its connection with the sex industry that is such a driving force of HIV epidemics has added urgency to global anti-trafficking efforts, particularly in Asia.

With the leadership of Hillary Rodham Clinton and the President's Initiative on Violence Against Women, human trafficking is also receiving greater attention in Washington. The departments of Justice, Labor, State, and Health and Human Services, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are joining forces against what is seen as a worsening problem with ramifications for the United States as well as nonindustrialized countries. Recent exposés of Thai and Latino workers in Southern California sweatshops and of trafficked labor in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth,¹ are testimony to the fact that trafficking is not just a problem of nonindustrialized countries.

During November 1998 through February 1999, an eight-person, multisectoral team analyzed the problem of trafficking in women and children in Asia through a six-country assessment in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Cambodia and Thailand. Specialists from the U.S. State Department, Department of Justice and USAID combined forces with technical experts in the areas of gender and development economics, public health and HIV/AIDS to design a strategy for intervention in Asia. Asia is seen as the most vulnerable region for trafficking because of its huge population pyramid, growing urbanization, and renewed poverty in the wake of currency devaluations and recession.

Defining Trafficking

Estimates of the number of people trafficked each year vary from tens of thousands to millions. This wide range is hardly surprising given the inherent difficulty of tracking a criminal, clandestine activity, but it is also a result of different definitions of trafficking.

The word trafficking is most often used to describe kidnapping and enslavement of workers -- usually women and girls in the commercial sex industry. But some governments and international agencies have adopted a much broader definition of the term. The President's Interagency Council on Women, for example, defines trafficking as:

All acts involved in the recruitment, transport, harboring or sale of persons within national or across international borders through deception or fraud, coercion or force, or debt bondage for purposes of placing persons in situations of forced labor or services, such as forced prostitution or sexual services, domestic servitude, or other forms of slavery-like practices.

The definition is deliberately broad, addressing working conditions as well as how a person is recruited. This is because not everyone is abducted or enticed away with false promises of good jobs. Others go willingly, seeing the trafficker's offer as the best option for themselves or their families, but later regret the decision when they find themselves trapped by debt and fear in abusive conditions.

In fact, the number of people who are actually kidnapped and enslaved is believed to represent a small percentage of those who are trafficked. A person who is trafficked may have been pushed or pulled or -- more likely -- some combination of the two. These forces are legitimately viewed from both sides of a continuum, with dire poverty and lack of opportunity creating fertile ground for traffickers, while rising aspirations and increasing exposure to mass media lure young people to cities.

Whether someone is "pushed" or "pulled" does not change the fact that she or he has been trafficked. However, an understanding of these factors does influence one's opinion of where prevention resources should be invested. For example, one popular prevention strategy is to educate families about "evil agents" and procurers who snare vulnerable girls for brothel service. Yet other observers of the relationships between trafficker and traveler paint a more complex picture of such trafficking as often being an important service to poor villagers who need a temporary source of ready cash.²

The Response

Anti-trafficking options fall under the three lines of action recommended by the President's Interagency Council on Women: (1) preventing women and children from being trafficked; (2) protecting and assisting victims of trafficking; and (3) prosecuting traffickers and enforcing laws against trafficking.

A number of programs in Asia have already begun addressing the problem of trafficking in women and children. Governments are slowly becoming active, but most programs are carried out by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with a focus on local communities. Other NGOs have regional or even global mandates to combat trafficking. The following examples of anti-trafficking programs at the community, national and global levels illustrate the range of responses to the problem and some of the concerns they raise.

Community action
In Nepal, a woman's maiti is her parent's home -- the place where she starts out before going to her true home with her husband. The award-winning Maiti Nepal program helps women who have been trafficked to India return to their home country, with re-entry centers at the border where they can prepare to reintegrate into life in their former villages or elsewhere. The program also provides viable occupational alternatives to vulnerable young women before they are trafficked and conducts awareness campaigns in the villages throughout Nepal's central plains (Terai) region to counter the information provided by traffickers, agents and other brothel or factory recruiters.

The Maiti Nepal program is based on the overriding assumption that if families and communities knew the true consequences of what happens to girls when they leave home, then trafficking would die out rapidly. Others have questioned whether or not families are indeed aware and are making a calculated risk-benefit choice. Nevertheless, the Maiti program is impressive for the sheer numbers of participants -- hundreds each year -- and their testimonials of life in the brothels of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, which probably have the highest levels of sex worker HIV infection of any large brothel community in Asia.³

National efforts
Thailand is more open than many countries about the extent and nature of its role in human trafficking. It is generally recognized that Thailand is both a sending and receiving country of women and children who are trafficked.

What makes Thailand's response unique is its focus on the source of demand for trafficked services, such as the clients of underage sex workers. Through the impetus and lobbying of the National Commission on Women's Affairs (NCWA), Thailand is the first country in the region to pass laws that impose greater penalties on customers than on sellers for involvement in commercial sex with underage partners. Application of the law has been lax so far, but it is a basis for policy and future action. The NCWA is also trying to change male sexual norms through a national poster campaign with messages showing a child saying (with hope) "my father does not visit prostitutes."

These types of demand-reduction initiatives target the exploitation of young women and children and are not intended to eliminate commercial sex altogether. However, some anti-trafficking groups are concerned that demand reduction will have a harmful impact on women who have voluntarily entered prostitution and who depend on their commercial sex income.

Global alliance

As indicated by its name, the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) takes a global view of the problem of trafficking, with roots in feminist activism. It produces tools and provides training to assist individuals and programs to "empower women rather than treat them as victims." Among its materials include a Practical Guide to Assisting Trafficked Women and Minimum Standard Rules for the Treatment of Trafficked Persons.

GAATW is careful to point out that its advocacy efforts are not intended to reduce migration or occupational options for women. In their recent comments on the Draft Protocol to Combat International Trafficking of Women and Children, GAATW members and others observed that international anti-trafficking efforts should give equal weight to preventing trafficking, punishing traffickers and protecting the human rights of those who are trafficked.⁴ Some in the anti-trafficking field, however, believe that prostitution in any form is trafficking and should be eliminated.⁵

Supply and Demand

Trafficking is driven by both supply and demand. Poverty and gender inequality make it easier for agents to procure young women and children, yet it is the buying power of consumers for submissive women and children that makes trafficking lucrative. Where, then, should the emphasis of prevention be placed: intercepting agents, reducing poverty, penalizing consumers, equalizing gender relationships, or other pressure points? The President's Interagency Council plan implicitly addresses these intervention opportunities but does not offer guidance on where the majority of resources should go.

After hearing the stories of young girls sold into virtual slavery in brothels, the natural response is to focus on protecting them. But many believe that local efforts to reduce the vulnerability of women and children, such as poverty alleviation and job training, will have a limited effect at best on the number of trafficked individuals. As long as demand remains strong, agents and procurers will merely find vulnerable populations from other locations. On the other hand, if vulnerability could be reduced on a region-wide scale, then traffickers would have fewer opportunities to recruit, and the exploitative labor practices would decrease.

Others advocate aggressively enforcing anti-trafficking laws and prosecuting traffickers. Cracking down on trafficking has proved difficult, in part because of the involvement of organized crime in many countries and the informal systems of bribes to law enforcement and immigration officials in others.

Moreover, approaches that focus on prosecuting traffickers can be harmful to the people they are designed to help. In their comments on the draft anti-trafficking protocol, GAATW and its partners emphasized the need to "ensure that states, in their zeal to punish traffickers, do not inadvertently violate the principle of 'do no harm' to trafficked persons." As an example they cited enforcement efforts that increase the risk of exposure to abuse and further marginalize groups such as migrants and people working in the sex industry.⁴

Some would argue that since trafficking is demand-driven, efforts to reduce demand such as those advocated by the NCWA in Thailand are the most effective approach to the problem. This approach, however, does nothing to help vulnerable populations directly or to address the conditions that made them susceptible to traffickers.

Trafficking and HIV

The trafficking of young women into prostitution has a formidable impact on HIV transmission. Studies have shown that brothel sex workers are most likely to become infected during the first six months of work, when they probably have the least bargaining power and therefore have more customers and fewer customers who use condoms.⁶ With the increased prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Asia, some agencies say there is a greater demand for virginal sex workers who are perceived to be a low risk. Ironically, though, it is the newly trafficked woman or child who is at greatest risk of rapidly becoming infected with HIV and then being more highly infectious during the first few months of work.

Conceivably, trafficking into other occupations such as street begging and factory work could increase vulnerability to HIV by heightening the risk of coercive sex and drug use. The direct link between these occupations and HIV, however, has not been well documented.

What is clear is that the anti-trafficking and HIV prevention programs could combine resources in an active partnership to reduce the number of young women and men entering brothel prostitution and to help those already trafficked stay as healthy as possible until they can be safely removed and reintegrated into their communities of choice.

Next Steps

Trafficking is a microcosm of many of the complex social issues facing global society today, including gender disparities, economic inequality, migrants' rights and cultural imperialism. This makes thoughtful discussion of the issues and the needed response difficult.

The discussion of trafficking in Asia is dominated by issues of commercial sex. Yet the anti-trafficking agencies recognize that women and children are coerced, tricked or bonded into occupations and situations other than prostitution. Of notable concern include trafficking into abusive factory labor, rug weaving, street-begging cartels, domestic work and arranged marriage.

This variety presents another dilemma to anti-trafficking programs: given limited resources, how does one prioritize interventions? The International Labor Organization has developed a system whereby work sites can be quantitatively evaluated, scored and classified into more extreme and less extreme labor. Similarly, within the group of occupations that are supplied by trafficked labor, some hierarchy of violence against women and children is needed to help decision makers allocate prevention resources.

One obvious criterion of need is the potential for the work to result in permanent damage to the health or psyche of the trafficked worker. Another criterion clearly should be the age of the individual. Indeed, some make the case that anyone under 16 who is working in prostitution is trafficked. Period.

A combination of short-, medium- and long-term strategies will constitute the most effective response to the problem in Asia. Examples of short-term action (months) include targeting and prosecution of procurers and raising awareness in the communities from which women and children are drawn. In the medium term (years), mass media campaigns to change social norms and reduce consumer demand for trafficked individuals and products are appropriate. Typical long-term solutions (decades) include poverty alleviation and gender equalization. Action on all three levels must begin now, however, because by the time you finish reading this magazine, 30 more Asian girls and boys will have been sold into exploitative labor markets.

-- Tony Bennett

Tony Bennett, senior advisor to FHI's Asia Regional Office in Bangkok, Thailand, was a member of the team that assessed trafficking of women in six Asian countries.

References

1. Global Survival Network. 1999. Trapped: Human Trafficking for Forced Labor in The Commonwealth of The Northern Mariana Islands (a U.S. Territory). GSN Web site, www.globalsurvival.net/pdf/9905cnmi.pdf.
2. J Frederick. 1998. South Asia's sex trade myths. Himal: The South Asian Magazine 11(10):20-23; Deconstructing Gita. Himal 11(10):12-19.
3. S Salunke, M Shaukat, SK Hir, et al. 1998. HIV/AIDS in India: a country responds to a challenge. AIDS 12 (suppl B):S27-S31.
4. Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women. 1999. Commentary on recommendation 2, Recommendations and commentary on the Draft Protocol to Combat International Trafficking in Women and Children Supplementary to the Draft Convention on Transnational Organized Crime. GAATW Web site, www.inet.co.th/org/gaatw/Critique.htm.
5. Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. 1998. Asia Pacific Report 4(2):1.
6. P Kilmarx, K Limpakarnjanarat, TD Mastro, et al. 1998. HIV-1 seroconversion in a prospective study of female sex workers in northern Thailand: continued high incidence among brothel-based women. AIDS 12:1889-1898.