The trafficking of women and children into the sex trade is one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative forms of international crime.  Every year, millions of women and girls are lured, abducted, sold or coerced into forced prostitution and bonded labour. The cost of communications is now so low that millions of people travel around the world in search of sex.  Prostitution, which used to be limited by tradition and custom, has become a global market – as has pornography. In the new global age, borders have opened up, trade barriers have fallen and information speeds around the world at the touch of a button. 

Transnational organised crime has increased dramatically as those dealing in drugs and illegal arms turn to the even more profitable smuggling of human beings. The crumbling state control in countries of the former Soviet Union has been an open invitation to organised crime.  Criminal groups have been quick to reap profits from struggling democracies, shaky or non-existent laws and ill-equipped police forces.  Traffickers know that throughout the world they can reap large profits while facing a relatively low risk of prosecution.  The United Nation’s 1999 Global Report on Crime and Justice noted: “From the perspective of organised crime in the 1990s, Al Capone was a small-time hoodlum with restricted horizons, limited ambitions and merely a local fiefdom.”
 

According to Pino Arlacchi, executive director of the UN Drug Control Programme, “trafficking is the world's biggest violation of human rights."  Trafficking involves the recruitment, transport, harbouring, transfer, sale or receipt of persons through coercion, force, fraud or deception for the purpose of placing persons in situations of slaves or slavery-like conditions such as forced prostitution, domestic servitude, bonded sweatshop labour or other debt bondage.
 

The current levels of trafficking in persons are a violation of human rights on such an immense scale it has led former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright and 13 other female Foreign Ministers to write to UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, urging the UN to speed up action. Their letter was blunt: “On the edge of the 21st century,” it said, “it is unacceptable that human beings around the world are sold into situations such as sexual exploitation, domestic servitude and debt bondage that are little different from slavery. After all, if we believe in zero tolerance for those who sell illegal drugs, shouldn't we feel even more strongly about those who buy and sell human beings?”
 

UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has stated “Women and children are not property, but human beings. The international community should declare, loudly and more strongly than ever, that we are all members of the human family. Slavery simply has no place in a world of human rights”. 
 

As transnational organised crime becomes increasingly sophisticated more and more nations are agreeing that action is necessary at the international level for no country can combat organised crime on its own. So what is being done about it?  The world is not short of international standards and treaties against human trafficking as several Declarations and Conventions have provisions that can be used to combat trafficking in women and children. What has been missing is effective implementation. A major advance in the battle against traffickers is the attachment of a ‘Protocol’ against human trafficking to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, adopted by the world community in Palermo, Italy, last year.
 

The Protocol calls for closer law enforcement cooperation between countries and allows confiscation of criminal profits and provision of compensation to victims.  The status of victims is to be given greater attention.  This is to be welcomed, according to Pida Ripley, “as those who are ‘rescued’ become ‘victims again’ as they are generally treated as criminals due to their ‘illegal status’. Unaware of their legal rights, such women are usually deported, given no financial, medical or psychological support or protection from the trafficking gangs and are likely to be sucked back into the cycle of sex slavery elsewhere.”
 

STOP TRAFFICKING Support for WomenAid’s anti-trafficking work will provide protection and could save the lives of many vulnerable women and children.  Send a donation or write to:  WomenAid International, 3 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EL.  Telephone  020 7839 1790.   http://www.womenaid.org

For more on this story contact WomenAid Press Office:  Tel:  020 7976 1032     Fax: 020 7839 1790 Email: press@womenaid.org www.womenaid.org

WOMENAID INTERNATIONAL: BACKGROUND NOTE 

Established in 1987 as a humanitarian aid and development agency, WomenAid International was the first UK agency to focus on empowering women worldwide.  Dedicated to assisting women and children in distress caused by war, disaster or poverty, it also campaigns for human rights and supports development of civil society by addressing the social, political, economic and health needs of women, their families and communities.  WomenAid supplies relief assistance in conflict zones and implements development projects providing resources and training which lessen the burden of poverty, unemployment and ill-health.

Supported by the public, European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO), UN agencies and UK Department for International Development (DFID), WomenAid has provided over 30,000 tonnes of food, medical and other aid valued at £12 million, to more than 1.5 million vulnerable women and children.  Proactive partnership is a key approach as is organisational capacity building and facilitating networking opportunities. The organisation has campaigned on behalf of the rape victims in the former Yugoslavia war and continues to campaign for Afghan women whose basic human rights are denied by the Taleban. Currently active in promoting prevention and protection anti-trafficking strategies, the organisation is researching appropriate victim assistance services.