Human Trafficking and Prostitution in the Developing World

Dreams and Despair: The World Women Flee

The world can be a harsh place, especially if you live in a developing nation, and especially if you are a woman. Lack of food and adequate housing, lack of access to good educational and medical facilities, an oppressive and often male-dominated social system — these are just some of the problems faced by millions of women each and every day of their lives. For most, there is no hope of escape. Each new dawn brings with it the same sense of despair, the same feeling that one is a prisoner of one's fate.

Change is slow in the developing world. Progress, if it comes at all, comes only very gradually, painfully, and often at a high price. Many of the nations of the Third World were only recently communist, or were colonies of the Western powers. Many still have one foot in the Middle Ages or even earlier. Women wash their clothes in rivers as they have done for centuries. They trundle off to work in the fields or labor long hours in unsafe factories. Whatever they do, they earn less than their male counterparts, and almost certainly less than a living wage.

Yet as they hurry through the streets of their village or down the avenues of their decaying cities, they sometimes catch glimpses of another world. It comes in a fast-moving blur — a shiny piece of metal racing past them at top speed. Maybe they have a television, and through its images see into another place, a wondrous place where the streets are filled with fast cars, and women come home from work in expensive suits and pop ready-made meals into the microwave, while fresh-scrubbed children with Walkmans throw their schoolbooks down in front of brand-new computers. These women of the Third World know that a better place exists. They know that if they could only get there, their lives would be completely different. But who has the money? You scrimp and save, but what about that man who says he can bring you to Italy or France or Germany? It won't cost you anything. And when you get there, there'll be a nice family waiting for you. You'll be their maid, or maybe their au pair. Sounds great, doesn't it? Like a dream.

Too often, however, this dream is nothing more than a nightmare. According to the Human Rights Law Group, more than 700,000 people each year — mostly women and children — are smuggled across international borders. Promised good jobs and a better life, they find themselves instead working in a sweatshop, on a farm, or even in a brothel. The nice house or apartment they were planning on moving into turns out to be a filthy hole in some slum, or a rusting shed at the edge of a muddy field.

The Scale and Mechanics of Human Trafficking

Many trafficked individuals answered advertisements promising them a good job and a good salary. Others were literally sold into this life by "friends" or relatives. Their captors threaten them with violence if they try to speak out, telling them that terrible things will happen to their loved ones back home if they go to the authorities.

Root causes of trafficking include greed, moral turpitude, economics, political instability and transition, and social factors. Many traffickers are involved in other transnational crimes. Criminal groups choose to traffic in human beings because it is high-profit and often low-risk. Unlike other "commodities," people can be used repeatedly, and trafficking does not require a large capital investment. Traffickers have little respect for the rights or dignity of their victims.

This modern-day slave trade not only deprives millions of people of their basic human rights; it also hurts millions more by driving down wages and preventing improvements in working and living conditions. With such cheap labor readily available, factory and farm owners have no incentive to put money into improving conditions or methods of production. Domestic laborers are thrown out of work, further exacerbating the social and economic situation inside the countries that serve as destinations for traffickers.

Furthermore, many of these unfortunate women end up in occupations that are inherently dangerous or otherwise illegal. To be forced into a life of prostitution is to be denied one's human dignity. Such an outcome represents a very real violation of the individuals who are forced to endure it. Women who are forced into prostitution are subjected to the fullest range of abuse and degradation. Even those who freely choose this path often fall victim to the whims of procurers. They are beaten, purposely addicted to narcotics, and prevented from making contact with their families.

How much worse these conditions must be for the thousands upon thousands of women who are torn from their homelands and forcibly brought to places where they know no one. Alone in a strange country, unable to speak the language, fearing arrest should their status as undocumented immigrants be discovered, these women are in the worst position of all. People who had formerly considered themselves religious and morally upstanding find their lives turned upside down. Compelled by the sheer brutality of this trade to perform acts that are reprehensible to them, they are stripped of even a modicum of self-worth. Emotionally healthy young women come to feel revulsion for their way of life and even for themselves. A great number of the forms of employment these female slaves are made to endure bring with them injury and disease. Prostitution presents the threat not only of physical assault — or in the worst cases, loss of life — but also the threat of infection with a sexually transmitted disease, or possibly even AIDS. Even those who manage to escape risk permanent damage to their health and general well-being as a result of the time they spent in bondage.

The Balkans: A Global Epicenter of the Trade

The Balkans is one of the global hotbeds of illicit traffic in human beings. The collapse of communism and the resulting breakdown of local economies have created a chaotic situation in which law and order have little place. The region's multitude of ethnic and religious groups are in conflict with one another, and crime in general is rampant. Since the demise of the old order, powerful crime syndicates have emerged that do a thriving business in both the drug trade and the trade in human souls. These activities not only line the pockets of gang kingpins but also provide funds for the purchase of munitions, which are then funneled to various rebel groups. In an average year, the Balkan crime syndicates make billions of dollars from these enterprises.

An estimated one million women each year are sold as sex slaves, with the Balkans being the single biggest marketplace. Every year, two hundred thousand women pass through this region — some destined for Western Europe, others for the small brothels scattered across Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo. Many Albanian sex slaves end up in Italy; their numbers grew from 100 in 1991 to more than 33,000 by the time this paper was written. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is estimated that there are at least 2,500 sex slaves in the country at any one time. Large numbers of these women are employed at brothels strategically placed near NATO bases.

Conclusion: Greed Feeding on Hope

While countless thousands of women and girls around the world slave their lives away in brothels and other degrading and dangerous places of employment, there are those who are working to save them. Laws are being passed, and governments in both the developed and the developing world are getting involved. Western countries are cracking down on immigrant smuggling, and developing nations are working to put their houses in order, devoting greater energy and resources to the enforcement of the law and to the protection of people's basic human and civil rights. Police raids and NATO and UN crackdowns rescue more and more women and girls each year.

However, the blight of this traffic in human souls will never be rooted out as long as the conditions that gave rise to it remain in place. Poverty, war, and ethnic dissension provoke the rampant crime and political corruption that make the operations of traffickers possible. Poverty, crime, and war create the conditions that make so many millions of women and girls willing to attempt anything just to escape from their circumstances. Despair and lack of education render them vulnerable to the sweetest and most cynical of promises. As long as nothing is done to fundamentally change the situation in the developing world, there will always be a trade — there will always be greed feeding on hope.

Works Cited

Binder, David. "Country Report: Albania — Country Sends Its Own to Europe and Beyond." MSNBC News. MSNBC.com, 2002.

Binder, David. "Country Report: Bosnia — In a Post-War Zone the Sex Trade Flourishes." MSNBC News. MSNBC.com, 2002.

Binder, David. "Country Report: Yugoslavia — After Milosevic, Country Still Mired in Crime." MSNBC News. MSNBC.com, 2002.

Binder, David, and Preston Mendenhall. "Sex, Drugs, and Guns in the Balkans." MSNBC News. MSNBC.com, 2002.

Haskell, Janet. "Shared Hope Testifies before the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee." Shared Hope International Media Release. Shared Hope, 14 June 2002.

"The Principal Activities of La Strada-Ukraine." La Strada-Ukraine. Brama, Inc., 2002.

"Situation Report — February 2000 to September 2002." Return and Reintegration Project. United States Association for International Migration, 2002.

"Trafficking in Persons Report." Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. Human Rights Law Group, July 2001.