Female Sex Slave Trade and Trafficking in Humans

It may be the "world's oldest profession" but for those who are abducted and held captive, duped, sold or otherwise forced into prostitution, it's no "profession" at all - it'slavery. According to the United Nations Population Fund, two million girls between the ages of 5 and 15 are introduced into the commercial sex market each year.¹ An estimate 4 million women and girls worldwide are bought and sold into marriage, prostitution or slavery.² This international traffic in humanshas become a multi-billion dollar industry that reaps huge profits from women's misery. Even those who are aware that they will be sex workers are misled about the type of work, conditions and personal freedom they will experience, only to find that their "job" as an exotic dancer was a ruse to trick them into sexual captivity.³ Life in these brothels is a numbing routine of sexual abuse with 18-hour days common as well as physical beatings.⁴ And this industry is not confined to any particular geographic region, culture, or race of peoples but happens everywhere on the globe. This is perhaps why the trade in humans has been called "the dark side of globalization."⁵ Nepalese girls are lured to India with false promises of employment just as their Mexican sisters are smuggled into the U.S. Eastern European girls fall prey to the Russian mob while poor Thai children are sold to brothels to pay off debts and Zambian girls are secretly transported to Botswana.⁶ American girls are not necessarily safe either: a recent lawsuit by a former Miss USA contained serious allegations of models being falsely lured into forced sexual captivity by the Sultan of Brunei (whose diplomatic immunity completely protected him from justifying his blunt denial).⁷ In addition to the organized crime rings, individual criminals, corrupt family members that sell or otherwise force women into sexual service, there are the horrific military campaigns in which rape and slavery are used as tactics of warfare and encouraged by army leaders.⁸ In the Sudan, young women and children are considered the most profitable war bounty.⁹ And Japan has been reluctant to acknowledge its dark legacy of the thousands of "comfort women" held as sexual prisoners during World War II.¹⁰

But the tacit acceptance of rape and sexual enslavement in war, and otherwise, is coming under increasing international scrutiny and criticism, as suggested by the February 2001 verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which stated that these atrocities are indeed crimes again humanity.¹¹

Actions, Information & Opportunities to Help
Web links to lists, facts, studies, publications, organizations and services related to female sex slavery and trafficking in humans.  

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¹United Nations Population Fund
²UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention
³"Borderless Crime: the Dark Side of Globalization" Beth Day Romulo
⁴The Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation, Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic, Nadine Z. Mendelsohn, Vanessa Chirgwin, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, 1999. ⁵Organization for Society and Cooperation in Europe
⁶UNODCCP "Trafficking in Persons: The New Protocol"
⁷Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
⁸The New York Times, June 14, 1998 An Old Scourge of War Becomes Its Latest Crime By BARBARA CROSSETTE
⁹John Eibner of Christian Solidarity International, Karin Davies, "Slave Trade Thrives in Sudan," AP, 1998
¹⁰Ustina Dolgopol "Comfort Women - The Unfinished Ordeal (Final Mission Report)" published by the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (UN Consultative NGO)
¹¹News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International 22 February 2001

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