“Most Victims Are Trafficked into the Sex Industry”
No. Trafficking of women and children (and, more rarely, young men) for prostitution is a vile and heinous violation of human rights, but labor trafficking is probably more widespread. Evidence can be found in field studies of trafficking victims across the world and in the simple fact that the worldwide market for labor is far greater than that for sex. Statistics on the “end use” of trafficked people are often unreliable because they tend to overrepresent the sex trade. For example, men are excluded from the trafficking statistics gathered in Thailand because, according to its national law, men cannot qualify as trafficking victims. However, a detailed 2005 study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) found that, of the estimated 9.5 million victims of forced labor in Asia, less than 10 percent are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. Worldwide, less than half of all trafficking victims are part of the sex trade, according to the same report.
Labor trafficking, however, is hardly benign. A study of Burmese domestic workers in Thailand by Mahidol University’s Institute for Population and Social Research found beatings, sexual assault, forced labor without pay, sleep deprivation, and rape to be common. Another study by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) looked at East African girls trafficked to the Middle East and found that most were bound for oppressive domestic work, and often raped and beaten along the way. Boys from Cambodia and Burma are also frequently trafficked onto deep-sea commercial fishing boats, some of which stay at sea for up to two years. Preliminary research suggests 10 percent of these young crews never return, and boys...
GRACE CHANG
UC Santa Barbara
KATHLEEN KIM
Loyola Law School Los Angeles
Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007
Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2007-47
SUMMARY:
Scholars and advocates across several movements have attempted to develop approaches to human trafficking that would best serve the needs and support the rights of all migrant workers and survivors of trafficking. ... This Article also evaluates U.S. policies and practices across multiple sectors that relate to human trafficking including prostitution, labor migration, and sexual and reproductive health rights. ... " A similar restriction applies to international organizations receiving governmental funding to combat HIV/AIDS, requiring organizations, as a condition of receiving funding, "to have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking. ... The antiprostitution pledge restricting grants to anti-trafficking organizations also limits funding to domestic and international SRH organizations focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention, women's health and family planning. ... The Trafficking Act and the U.S. government's "s Global AIDS Act of 2003 both forbid funding to any group that does not explicitly oppose prostitution and sex trafficking. ... Such groups include public health advocacy organizations, grassroots organizations that encourage migrant worker organizing, formal and informal unions of domestic workers, sex workers and agricultural workers, and anti-border enforcement groups that advocate for safe migration across international borders for all individuals. ... Certainly more work is needed to counter these divisions and facilitate the critical and logical links between immigrant rights, labor rights, sex worker rights, sexual and reproductive health, and anti-trafficking advocacy, organizing and scholarship.
Using statistical estimations based on actual counts, Steinfatt, Baker, and Beesey (2002) estimated the number of sex workers in Cambodia in 2002 as 20,829 with 5,250 in Phnom Penh. They also estimated that 2,488 women and children had been sexually trafficked in Cambodia. Since the late 1990s, a much higher figure of 80,000 to 100,000 trafficked women and children in Cambodia has been circulating in Phnom Penh. This paper reports the results of a detailed count of trafficked persons in Cambodia conducted throughout the country, both in terms of underaged workers and those working by force, fraud, or coercion. It investigates the figures of 80,000 to 100,000 and follows them to their sources. It offers recommendations on U.S. policy toward trafficking in women and children in Cambodia and Southeast Asia, based on the observations of trafficking venues, the motivations of the individuals involved, and the methods used in trafficking.
A commonly held and oft repeated belief is that it is difficult or impossible to know the extent of trafficking throughout the world. Such statements are often followed by pronouncements of the "estimated" numbers of persons trafficked. If the numbers are difficult or impossible to obtain, then where did these “estimates” come from? In attempting to trace the "estimates" back to the methods that produced them, it appears that many and perhaps most may be little more than wild guesses, or even pure fabrications. Once published, this initial publication of the “estimate” is cited by other publications as the source, and the numbers, whether fabrications or valid measurements, take on a credibility of their own.
This is the first in a series of articles stemming from Project Hope International’s month long visit to Thailand in June 2002. Thailand undeniably deals with serious problems of child sexual abuse and exploitation, as well as trafficking of children into the sex trade. However, the sex trade in Thailand today is not the same as it was thirty years ago. There has been a gradual decrease in the numbers of Thai women and girls in the sex trade, and an increase in the numbers of females from neighboring countries in the Mekong sub-region, as well as non-citizen, hill-tribe girls from Northern Thailand. The goals of our research trip to Thailand were threefold: first, we wanted to learn about the current problems of the sex trade and how they have changed over the last ten years; second, we wanted to visit the child welfare centers, and meet the most prominent activists in Thailand who are targeting the political, social, and economic problems surrounding the child sex trade in Thailand; and, finally, we wanted to be able to bring the information we acquired to dispel myths promulgated by many nearsighted NGOs who work on trafficking issues.