Sex Trafficking

Sex trafficking refers to the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation in forced marriages and forced prostitution. Generally, the trafficking flows from poorer countries to countries where the average person's living standard is relatively higher. Women are typically tricked and recruited with promises of well-paid legitimate work elsewhere and delivered to the employers through agents and brokers. Upon arrival, they quickly discover that the work they are expected to do is very different from what they had been told. Traffickers deceive, intimidate, threaten, and/or use physical force to control these women and children. It is extremely difficult and dangerous to escape the abusive situation they find themselves in.

Debt bondage is often used to maintain control of women. This entails women being made to work without wages until they have fully reimbursed their employers. This debt typically exceeds their travel costs and routinely increases with arbitrary fines and deceptive accounting. In some cases, it can never be fully repaid. Some indebted women are resold by employers; others are eventually released when their debt is paid, but this can take years. Women and children face constant surveillance, threats of retaliation, confiscation of passports and other documentation, and are often handicapped by their inability to speak the local language, unfamiliarity with the local surroundings, and fear of arrest and mistreatment by police.

The United Nations estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children annually are trafficked across international borders. Approximately 80 percent are women and girls, and up to 50 percent are minors. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reports that in West and Central Africa, up to 200,000 children are trafficked annually. Estimates by the International Labor Organization indicate that 200,000 to 250,000 women and children are trafficked each year in Southeast Asia alone and more than a million children are affected globally every year.

Many countries facilitate trafficking by issuing false documents to brokers and agents, ignoring immigration violations, and gleaning bribes from employers. Police are often bribed with access to the women in the brothels. Even in the cases where some trafficked women are freed by police raids, women [Page 843]are often mistreated by the authorities and do not have access to services or redress. When confronted with evidence of trafficking and forced labor, officials tend to focus on immigration violations and anti-prostitution laws rather than on the human rights violations committed against trafficked victims. Women are thus punished as illegal migrants and prostitutes, while the traffickers routinely either escape entirely or face only minor penalties.