Women have been bought and sold for thousands of years. It is believed that from one to two million women and children are trafficked each year. More than two million children are enslaved in the global commercial *** trade, and most of us would be shocked to learn that US tourists account for quarter of child *** tourists worldwide.
The traffic is that of poor women to richer men. In Nigeria, trafficking has been increasing since the International Monetary Fund imposed structural adjustment programs on Nigeria during the second half of 1980s. Women and girls leave Nigeria with the promise of jobs on farms or as secretaries in offices. Even when women are aware that they are being transported into prostitution, they do not know that they will become sexual slaves, subject to violence if they do not comply. Thousands of young women and girls are sent from Nepal to India and from Burma to Thailand. Women from Latin America and Africa are now turning up in Thailand and Europe, just as those from Latin America and the Caribbean are shipped to the U.S. Women also migrate willingly to Middle-east countries to work as domestic servants, nurses, cookers, cleaners etc but end up in sexual slave situations.
During the 1991 conference of Southeast Asian women’s organizations, it was estimated that 30 million women have been sold worldwide since the mid-70s. Over 100, 000 women are shipped each year to Japan to serve in indentured servitude in bars and brothels. In the past year 200,000 women have been sent from Bangladesh to Pakistan and the children are being sold at younger and younger ages. As well as the threats from poverty, disease, violence and war, children face commercial exploitation by adults. Sex-trafficking is not limited to under-developed nations. It’s not just the destruction of women and children’s lives that makes this such an important issue; it’s also what it does to all the cultures and societies where it takes place. Throughout world history, patriarchy has valued women not as persons but as things, pieces of property to be bought and sold. Several international treaties have condemned trafficking as a gross violation of human rights, but there is no international instrument in existence which explicitly stipulates that it is a human right to be free of sexual exploitation. In order to impose and to maintain what is the oldest and most persistent system of exploitation and oppression, violence, or the threat of violence, is used as a tool of control and punishment for disregarding the patriarchy’s established rules (hierarchy, submission, obedience, etc.)
Women are now organizing against *** trafficking, and are confronting the view of themselves as objects and commodities. They are finally saying “Enough”. It’s gotten to the point now, where entire villages in northern Thailand and southern Burma are being decimated of girl children. In a strange twist, some parent’s are welcoming, for the first time, the birth of a girl child rather than that of a boy; because they know they have a guaranteed wage earner. It is estimated that 20 to 30 percent of all child *********** are HIV-positive. This goes along with the belief that the younger the child is, the more likely she or he won’t have slept with anyone and therefore won’t be infected with AIDS.
Most of our society, denounces the system that, for thousands of years has imposed inequality, exploitation, discrimination, values, standards, and policies, based on the presumed natural inferiority of women as human beings and on a hierarchy of social roles assigned to women and men. Congress did pass The Protection Act of 2003 that made it illegal to sexually exploit children overseas and several international treaties have condemned trafficking as a gross violation of human rights. For example, Nepal and Thailand have passed laws curbing *** trafficking and women’s literacy rates in Nicaragua, Jordan and Egypt are increasing. Some of CEDAW’s provisions have been incorporated into the constitutions of Brazil, South Africa and Uganda. New leaders say they want to tackle women’s health, educational equity and *** trafficking. Items on the list of hopeful changes include women’s health, educational equity, *** trafficking, women in business, women in prison and international domestic violence. Without increased resources to support their efforts to identify and prosecute perpetrators, *** trafficking of children will continue.
In closing, I would like to remind anyone who takes the time to read this article that we can all do our part in stopping the trafficking of women and children by giving our support to organizations that are put together to help them. When faced with the problems of others, no matter how horrified they are by the matter, there are still people who tend to leave the problem to others to deal with. Please remember that no action will always go hand in hand with no results.
By: Joy Gill
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