The Coalition is an international non-governmental
organization with regional headquarters and networks in Asia, Latin America, North
America, Europe, Africa, and Australia. The Coalition works against all practices of
sexual violence and exploitation, including but not limited to rape, incest, intimate
violence, prostitution, sex trafficking, sex tourism, mail order bride markets, sexual
harassment, pornography, involuntary sterilization and childbearing, female genital
mutilation, and temporary marriage or marriage of convenience for the purpose of sexual
exploitation.
The focus of our work is on sexual exploitation, which we define as the sexual
violation of a person's human dignity, equality, and physical or mental integrity and as a
practice by which some people (primarily men) achieve power and domination over others
(primarily women and children) for the purpose of sexual gratification, financial gain,
and/or advancement. The Coalition recognizes that, in order to carry out their practices
and achieve their goals, sexual exploiters are facilitated by and make use of long
standing social hierarchies, especially the domination of men over women, of adults over
children, of rich over poor, of racial and ethnic majorities over racial and ethnic
minorities, and of and so called "First World "over so-called "Third
World" countries.
We believe that all of the practices I have just described are proper areas of inquiry
for the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. We define slavery as the
domination and control by an individual or group over other individuals or groups through
violence, the threat of violence, or a history of violence. Slavers are motivated by a
desire for sexual gratification, economic gain, or power and domination, or a combination
of these factors. We reference the definition of slavery in the Convention on Slavery,
Forced Labor, and Similar Institutions and Practices: "Slavery is the status or
condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of
ownership are exercised." All of the practices addressed by the Coalition emerge from
the historical reality of the chattel status of women and children and represent an
attempt to revive and maintain it. Moreover, as Professor Bales pointed out, unlike
traditional forms of slave ownership in which the person enslaved was regarded as a
capital investment, to be maintained and guarded over a long period of time, contemporary
forms of slavery often reflect a valuation of the enslaved as a temporary, disposable
commodity, to be consumed and discarded.
For example, prostitution, in the vast majority of cases, represents the ownership of
women and children by pimps, brothel owners, and sometimes even customers for the purpose
of financial gain, sexual gratification, and/or power and domination. Of those women who
appear to work in prostitution voluntarily, many if not most endured situations of
enslavement as children, in thrall to sexually abusive adults, or as adolescents or young
women subjected to the violent subjugation of abusive husbands or boyfriends. That
subjugation is continued in prostitution, whether over the long term by the pimp, who
controls her every movement and confiscates her earnings, or, for a shorter duration by
the customer, who buys her body for a night or week and requires total compliance with his
sexual demands. Female genital mutilation, though not a form of slavery in itself, is
closely tied to slavery-like practices: it is a method by which a male dominated society
ensures the subordination of women and girls to their fathers and husbands; it is a
strategy to destroy a woman's experience of her sexuality and thus the ownership of her
body.
The Coalition urges the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery to encourage
research and study on the way these different practices work together, albeit differently
in different cultures, to perpetuate the chattel status of women and children. The
Coalition also urges the Working Group to continue to address slavery and slavery-like
practices that affect primarily women and children. The Coalition notes that the practices
of slavery affecting these groups may be characterized by different forms, dynamics, and
motivations from the practices of slavery directly primarily against men for purposes of
forced labor. Any definition of slavery that excludes those practices directed against
women and children is overly narrow and is a product of gender bias.
The subject of my remarks concerns the context into which we place and understand the
trafficking of women and girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Over the last five
years, many organizations have addressed the issue of trafficking in women but ignored its
relationship to other practices of sexual violence and exploitation, specifically sex
tourism, military prostitution, sexual exploitation on the internet, and organized
prostitution. Similar distinctions have been made between adult and child sexual
exploitation and between so-called forced and so-called voluntary prostitution. Although
there are many motivations for making these distinctions, the cumulative effect is
organizing efforts and analyses that address only the most severe and obvious abuses while
ignoring the institutionalized sexual exploitation and abuse that is the economic
foundation of the sex industry. Although these distinctions are sometimes made in the name
of the victim, in fact they serve to protect the industry and its customers at the expense
of the victim.
The first distinction that is made is that between sex trafficking and other practices
of sexual exploitation, most notably organized prostitution. This is a distinction that
the drafters of the 1949 Convention considered and rejected, uniting in both title and
text the trafficking in persons with the exploitation of the prostitution of others. The
connections between trafficking and organized prostitution, evident in 1949, are even more
pronounced in the global sex industry of 1998. The fact is that organized prostitution is
the economic and structural foundation of sex trafficking. Although it is not often
recognized, many of the women and girls who are trafficked start out being prostituted to
local men by local pimps and brothel owners. Often when they are deported back to their
countries of origin, they are prostituted again, locally. Coalition representatives have
met with many such women during site visits to the Philippines and Thailand. The survivor
of sex trafficking who testified before the United Nations General Assembly in 1996
started out in child prostitution in Puerto Rico before being trafficked through Honduras,
only to end up back in prostitution in the United States. Sex tourism, a form of
prostitution controlled by local or global economic interests, is often the launching pad
for sex trafficking, but is not considered such as it involves sexual exploitation of
local women in their country of origin.
The fact is that sex trafficking and organized prostitution are inextricably connected
and share fundamental characteristics. The victims who are targeted are the same--poor,
minority, or so-called Third World women and children, frequently with histories of
physical and sexual abuse. The customers are the same-- men with disposable income who
achieve sexual gratification by purchasing and invading the body of a woman or child. The
dynamics of power and control employed by the sex industry profiteers are the same,
whether they take the form of violence and threats of violence, debt bondage, torture,
imprisonment, and/or brainwashing. The harm to the victims is the same--trauma, sexually
transmitted diseases, drug and alcohol addiction, the physical toll of repeated beatings
by customers and pimps, the psychological and physical toll of repeated and unwanted sex,
and the destruction of the sense of self, identity, and sexuality. The harm to society is
the same--the reification of sex- and race-based hierarchies. Whether they purchase women
who are trafficked or those who are otherwise prostituted, sex industry consumers move
from the brothel into the world, that experience coloring their relations to women and
girls in the rest society. Some American men stationed in South East Asia during the
Vietnam War have talked about how their immersion in military prostitution profoundly
damaged their ability to relate to women and girls back home. A few former sex industry
consumers, who have become leaders in the movement against sexual exploitation, have
discussed similar effects of participating as customers of the sex trade. Certainly, the
injuries to their sense of self and sexuality are mild compared to those of the young
women who are reduced to sexual merchandise by the industry. Nevertheless, we must
acknowledge that the sex industry also harms men, impairing their ability to experience
sexual relations that are premised on mutual respect and equality.
The second distinction that is frequently made, to the detriment of victims and the
benefit of the sex industry, is that between the sexual exploitation of children and of
adults. The problem with this position is that by failing to criticize the sexual
exploitation of adults, it legitimizes it. For example, to decry the prostitution of a
fifteen year old girl but to fail to speak out against the prostitution of her seventeen
year old sister is to tacitly sanction the sexual exploitation of the older girl. Many
organizations have organized to end the sexual exploitation of children, a laudable goal,
but have failed to see that the sexual exploitation of children is inextricably connected
to that of adults. Studies show that in the West, at least 70 percent of the adults
exploited by the sex industry were sexually abused as children. They also show that the
average age of entry into prostitution is 16 or younger. It is clear that the sexually
exploited children of today are the prostituted adults of tomorrow, and, as the French
abolitionist organization, Le Nid, declares, "In every whore, there is a little girl
murdered. "Although some sex industry consumers are fixated on sex with young
children, many sexually exploit young girls and young women interchangeably. We will not
be able to end the sexual exploitation of children until we take a stand and develop
strategies against sexual exploitation of all human beings.
The third and most problematic distinction that has recently emerged is that between so
called forced and so called voluntary prostitution. By limiting the pool of people who can
be identified as victims while simultaneously protecting large segments of the sex
industry, this is the best gift that pimps and traffickers could have received. This
distinction creates a vision of prostitution that is freely chosen; a vision that can be
maintained only by ignoring all of the social conditions that force women and girls into
conditions of sexual exploitation. The proponents of this distinction are sending the
following message: "Don't pay attention to the poverty, the familial pressure, the
incest she survived, the battering by her boyfriend, the lack of employment options
available to her. Just ask whether there is a gun pointed at her head or whether she is
being overtly deceived. No gun, no deceit; then no problem; not only is she voluntarily in
the sex industry, she is a 'sex worker.'" Under this analysis, the pimp who recruited
her, the brothel owner who reaps profits by selling her to sex tourists, and the
trafficker who sends her abroad are rehabilitated as so-called "third-party
managers."
What are the consequences of conceptualizing prostitution as free or forced, and the
legitimization of prostitution as "sex work" that inevitably follows? There are
many. First, governments, especially those of poor countries, realize that they can reduce
their unemployment rate and increase their gross national product by moving unemployed
women and girls into organized prostitution. This is most likely to happen in countries
with strong internal sex industries fueled by the profits of sex tourists. In Belize, for
example, the government touts prostitution as work for poor women. Not only does it feel
no shame at doing so, but proudly reports on this approach in its 1996 report to CEDAW,
stating, "Recognized prostitution in Belize is a gender-specific form of migrant
labor that serves the same economic function for women as agricultural work offers to men
and often for better pay." When governments recognizes prostitution as sex work for
poor women, organized prostitution, sex tourism and sex trafficking increase.
Second, when prostitution is accepted by a society as sex work, it becomes even more
difficult for poor women and girls, socialized into an ethos of self-sacrifice, to resist
economic and familial pressures to enter prostitution. As the numbers of prostituted women
and girls expand, growing numbers become infected with HIV and die of AIDS while a smaller
but still significant percentage are murdered by pimps or customers. Those women fortunate
enough to survive sexual exploitation emerge, usually in their 30's, when they are no
longer marketable commodities, with no job skills, traumatized from years of enduring
unwanted sex and violence, and physically debilitated from sexually transmitted diseases
and the substance abuse necessary to endure the sex of prostitution. What is available to
these women? Destitution or a career as a madam or mama san, helping the pimps control the
younger women who are marketable commodities.
Third, when prostitution is recognized as "sex work," legalization follows;
pimps, sex industry cartels, and sex businesses openly flourish, regulated only by the
demands of the marketplace. Fourth, when prostitution is legitimized as sex work, men and
boys are sent the message that purchasing the body of a woman or girl for sex is no
different from buying a pack of cigarettes. With no social stigma attached to buying
prostitutes, the demand for prostitution escalates. At the same time, women and girls
internalize the message that the female body is a marketable commodity. Girls begin to see
prostitution as a career option, unaware that sex work is a trap that will deprive them of
control over their lives..Fifth, when prostitution is legitimized as sex work, the values
and dynamics of prostitution spill over into other areas of society, influencing the
valuation and treatment of women and girls and lowering their status.
Some have argued that since criminal sanctions have clearly not slowed the growth of
the sex industry or lessened the exploitation of victims, the only recourse is to
recognize prostitution as sex work and legalize the sex industry. Criminal sanctions have
not worked it is true, but that is because in most instances they have been directed
against the victims. Few countries invest law enforcement resources in the investigation
and prosecution of sex industry profiteers and fewer still address criminal sanctions
against the customers, who fuel the demand side of the industry. And while some countries
have conducted effective and well funded campaigns against domestic violence and rape,
building networks of shelters for victims and offering counseling and legal services,
women and girls in conditions of sexual exploitation have been deprived of the support
systems and advocacy provided other victims of male violence.
To begin to address the enslavement of women and girls by local and global sex
industries, we must take the following steps:
Recognize that sex trafficking, sex tourism, military prostitution, sexual exploitation
on the internet, and organized prostitution are interrelated practices of gender-based
domination and control that constitute contemporary forms of slavery.
Commission a preparatory group to address the need for an optional protocol to
strengthen the application of the 1949 Convention and explore the need for a new
Convention Against All Forms of Sexual Exploitation.
Call for local, national, regional, and international law enforcement
strategies that depenalize the victims of sexual exploitation while penalizing sex
industry profiteers and customers.
Urge countries to expand and develop shelters and counseling services, medical care
providers, and legal services for all victims of male violence against women, including
sex industry victims and survivors.