This course focuses on women’s health and human rights issues from infancy through old age, including information about positive interventions relating to those issues. Learners are encouraged to interact with each other through interactive discussions. It is important to us that this course be available to all learners. We encourage you to apply for Coursera's financial aid (see link to left) if the cost of the course certificate is difficult for you to afford. Please note that you may view all materials in this course, and participate in it, without purchasing a certificate. The course was co-created by Consulting Professor Anne Firth Murray and Kevin Hsu. Anne Firth Murray is the Content Director of the course; Kevin Hsu is the Design Director of the course.
Katherine Jolluck on Human Trafficking
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From the course by Stanford University
International Women's Health and Human Rights
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From the lesson
Women's Quest to Escape Poverty: Sex Work & Sex Trafficking
Meet the Instructors
Anne Firth Murray
I'm from the history department, which may seem strange
for someone who is going to be talking
to you about human trafficking.
But I came to it, just very briefly,
because I work particularly on women in Eastern Europe, women
in war, women in Communism.
And basically, when I saw what was happening after 1989,
the collapse of Communism which was supposed to be so great.
And when I saw what was happening to many women,
I was just disgusted, outraged, disappointed.
And that sort of led me on this new issue of sex trafficking.
So let me start by expressing or articulating
the most widely definition of human trafficking.
It comes from the United Nations, the so-called Palermo
protocol, and it has three elements.
I've broken it down because it's a very dense definition.
Three elements-- the act, which includes the recruitment,
transportation, transfer, harboring,
or receipt of persons.
The means, which includes the threat or use of force, fraud,
deception, the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability,
or the giving or receiving of payments.
And then the purpose, which is exploitation.
And you see the UN definition includes
various forms of exploitation; what's important
for us today is sexual exploitation.
So in other words, sex trafficking
is when individuals profit from the sexual exploitation
of others.
These trafficked people are kept in slavery-like conditions.
They're subjected to grave human rights abuses.
And they typically suffer severe physical and psychological
consequences, which I hope I can touch on at the very end.
Now this definition that I put up on the slide
comes from the United Nations in the year 2000.
That is the first time that human trafficking
was defined in the international arena.
Does not mean that it's a new phenomenon.
It's not a phenomenon that started
at the end of the last century.
Sex trafficking has a very long history.
In fact, there's evidence of a trade
in women as far back as the time of the Sumerians
and the Babylonians, in the second and third millennia--
third and second millennia BC.
So this is not anything new.
I can't go into much in terms of historical detail,
but the issue of trafficking in women
became a political and a legal issue
only in the 19th century in Victorian England,
where by late century, it engendered a real moral panic.
There also by the end of the 19th century,
came to be an international movement
to stop the trafficking of women for sex.
And it's only in the early 20th century
that we saw the very first international agreements
to end what was first called white slavery
and what was then, by 1921, called
the traffic in women and children.
Now after the UN was formed in 1945,
it consolidated several early 20th century agreements
into the 1949 Convention for the Suppression
of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation
of the Prostitution of Others.
Now nothing really was done between this 1949 convention
and the year 2000 Palermo protocol that I began with.
And that doesn't mean that sex trafficking wasn't
an issue in that half century after 1949.
What it means is that the 1949 convention was ineffective,
and sex trafficking was basically
ignored until the 1990s.
And it was in the 1990s that it became apparent
that sex trafficking is now a globalized phenomenon.
It's not concentrated in one area of the world.
You may be surprised to hear that virtually every country
on the planet is now either a source, transit, or destination
country for trafficked women or a combination.
And in many cases, a country is all three--
a source, transit, and destination country.
And sex trafficking occurs across national boundaries
as well as within individual countries.
Now since it's an illicit activity,
there are no reliable statistics.
You can find all kinds of statistics,
particularly if you look online.
None of them are reliable.
No one can say, we've got it.
It makes sense.
It's an underground activity.
Traffickers and the clients of the women, of course,
try to keep these activities hidden.
But victims are also reluctant to speak
about what happens to them for many reasons.
Fear of reprisal from their traffickers and the networks
of these traffickers.
Fear of arrest for illegal activities,
because prostitution is illegal in most countries.
They don't want to speak because of shame.
And they also have very little or no expectation of help,
particularly from authorities because, you've probably
seen in this course, the exploitation of women
is rarely a priority for governments.
And in the case of sex trafficking,
it's very often dismissed as a matter of simple prostitution,
accepted, the women considered simple whores.
What's the problem?
I'm going to show you some statistics, not to endorse them
but to show you the wide range of statistics that are offered.
These are just a few of the estimates
of the scale of global sex trafficking.
The United Nations has estimated 12 million women
are in sexual slavery.
You probably know the book by Nicholas Kristof
and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky.
Their conservative estimate is that 3 million women
are in sexual slavery.
The International Labor Organization
has put out the figure of 1.39 million victims
of commercial sexual servitude.
And the United States State Department
estimates that every year between 500,000 and 600,000
women are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation.
That would be one woman or girl every minute being trafficked.
The last thing I'll say about prevalence
is that one researcher has found that Asian countries have
the highest levels of sexual slavery,
and southeastern Asia is a great hub of sex trafficking.
But on a per capita basis, Europe now
has the highest levels of sex slavery in the world.
Sexual slavery is growing in the Mideast,
and it's assumed to be flat in North America,
in the United States.
Doesn't mean it's decreasing or that it doesn't exist;
it's just flat.
Why is the problem of sex trafficking and sexual slavery
an issue in the 21st century?-- a question
that we all have to ask.
I'll try to do this briefly; we could talk the whole session
on this one question.
I've written here some supply-side side factors.
One way to talk about this issue,
even though we're dealing with human beings,
is economics, supply side and demand side.
And so here are some of the more critical supply-side factors.
Continued poverty.
Income disparity-- and I mean that both within countries
and then between various countries and regions
in the world, because this income disparity
fuels trafficking from low income areas
to high income areas.
And that tends to be from east to west, from north to south.
And then within individual countries, from rural areas
to urban areas.
Of course another reason is gender discrimination.
I'm sure you've seen in your course
that women throughout the world are denied access
to education and job opportunities.
And it's this lack of opportunity
that drives women into migration so they
can search for better economic opportunities.
And it makes women extremely vulnerable to traffickers
who prey on people who are looking for a better future
and are vulnerable.
We also have to take into account cultural notions,
particularly patriarchal mindsets, which
emphasize women's roles as sex objects with no concern
whatsoever for their human rights.
They're very deeply rooted cultural ideas and practices
across the globe which render females
basically male property.
And there's another way that this plays in,
and that is-- particularly in countries in Asia--
where there is an expectation that some member of the family
will probably have to work in demeaning or exploitative
conditions in order to provide for the welfare of the family.
What that often means is that the family will sell a member
that they can't afford to feed.
Typically it's daughters.
And very often it's daughters sold into sexual slavery.
Another sort of realm of factors on the supply side
includes war; military; and civil conflict,
which of course leads to dislocation, social breakdown,
and leaves women particularly vulnerable.
Along the same lines, lawlessness and corruption--
not only in areas of conflict but also in failed states.
The breakdown of the Communist regimes
in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
is an example, which resulted in lawlessness and corruption
and fed human trafficking.
And finally, one of the themes that you're
dealing with in this course, globalization.
Globalization has meant the opening
of borders, an increase in migration
for economic opportunities, lowering transportation costs,
and also the spread of truly global crime networks.
Let me switch then to demand-side factors.
And here we have to start with male attitudes and perceptions
of women, which very often includes
a male demand for commercial sex--
particularly a demand for cheap and compliant sex
workers, which seems to be rising.
There's a continual demand for new and young,
even younger, females or women because
of fear of HIV infection.
For one example, the age of Nepalese girls
forced into the sex industry has been decreasing continually.
In the 1980s, the average age was
14-- the low end I should say was 14 to 16.
Today it's 10.
10-year-old girls being forced into the sex industry.
Another factor on the demand side
is the use of sex tourism as a development strategy, which
is becoming more common, particularly now.
We know it's been an issue in Southeast Asia for a long time.
It's becoming more common in South America
and now also Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Another factor is the deployment of peacekeeping forces.
This very ugly aspect of sending international peacekeeping
missions is that it provides a ready market
for trafficked females.
We've seen this in Bosnia, Kosovo, Liberia, Haiti,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone.
It's a common problem.
And then finally the trade in women
is extremely attractive to organized crime networks
because it provides immense profit
with very, very little risk.
The sex industry, sex trafficking in particular,
is a booming business.
Women now represent the second most profitable commodity
for organized crime after illegal drugs.
It nets for organized crime networkers
more than illegal weapons do.
Estimates are that maybe the profits from sex trafficking
are $32 billion a year.
Unlike narcotics which are sold and used once,
women are very profitable because they can be used,
and are used, over and over and over.
Now let me shift and talk about what
it looks like-- the phases of human trafficking
and the patterns that we see.
I'll start with recruitment, the main ways
that women and girls are recruited
into the sex industry.
Probably the most common is deception.
And that includes women-- Again, they're
seeking to improve their economic situation-- very often
to support children, elderly relatives.
And they accept offers which prove
to be false to travel to another place
where there are better economic opportunities.
And this includes a range of false offers
from jobs as nannies and waitresses
and hotel cleaners, models, dancers.
Also false opportunities for education, and fake marriages.
Fake marriages are particularly common in South Asia,
East Asia, and now also the former Soviet Union.
That's one whole category, this deception.
It's also a deception.
But I put it separately because it's a deliberate strategy,
and that I've listed here as romance and seduction.
It's also known as the lover boy approach where
a young man-- particularly, this is really common
in the US-- will befriend a runaway, a young woman who
seems to be disoriented or on her own-- pretend
to be her boyfriend and then sell her for sex.
Another very common method of recruitment is sale by family.
This is particularly common in Asia, prompted
by poverty, dislocation, desperation,
and the low status of females.
Families often sell their daughters, typically in Asia,
for initial payment.
And then they get small remittances
as the girl or the woman works in the sex industry.
One woman, who was able to get out of this,
referred to this as girls being slot machines
for their families.
Also recruitment by former slaves is common.
And that happens for a number of reasons.
One is very often, especially when
girls age six, seven, eight, are taken into the sex industry,
they become accustomed to it.
That's all they know.
At some point, they become allies of the brothel owners
and move into sort of a management position and recruit
others.
This is very common in India, for example.
Another reason that former sex slaves will recruit others,
this is very common today in Eastern Europe,
is that they're told by their traffickers,
after a while you can go if you replace yourself.
If you don't replace yourself, they
threaten them with violence.
This is sometimes known as happy trafficking.
And also women in various places will get a commission
if they recruit new victims.
And then finally there's abduction,
which is generally less common these days.
Second phase is the transportation or transit
phase.
And I'll just stress a couple things here.
An individual doesn't have to be trafficked
across international borders in order
to be considered trafficked.
Trafficking happens within individual countries as well.
And again, women seem to be taken
from richer areas to poorer areas,
and it typically involves the use of false documents
or bribery at borders.
And now the phase of exploitation.
I want to point out this is really important in assessing
whether someone has been trafficked.
It doesn't matter if someone isn't taken across a border.
Exploitation is the key.
It's the absolute essential element, I think,
of human trafficking.
And consent also doesn't matter because a woman may initially
consent, say to go work in the sex industry in Italy,
without knowing the slave-like exploitative conditions
that she will be forced to work in.
And that woman would still be considered traffic.
So in sex trafficking, of course, the exploitation
is coercive of sexual services.
And within this, women have no control whatsoever.
They have no control over the type of clients,
the number of clients that they have
to serve each day, the type of acts that they're subjected to.
Some women and girls report being
forced to serve as many as 40 clients a day
without any vacation.
Very, very often they are forced to submit
to abusive, degrading, and violent sex acts.
They have no choice in the use of condoms.
And of course they're not free to leave.
That's part of the slavery aspect.
Often sex slavery is operated as a form of debt bondage
where the young woman or woman is told by her quote unquote
"owner" that she owes him for her transportation
and her purchase price.
And then as she works, they also charge her for her food,
for her lodgings, for her clothing, for her makeup
and arbitrarily add fines.
You know, she's not satisfying the clients,
or someone complained about her; she's fined.
And very often when the woman is close to paying off
her supposed debt, she's simply sold to another person
and the whole cycle begins again.
Let me just say a little bit about the settings in which sex
trafficking occurs.
It's everywhere.
It's all around us.
Here is a list of the common settings.
Street prostitution, brothels-- particularly brothels,
if you've been to Amsterdam, Mumbai,-- nightclubs,
massage parlors.
Fake massage parlors are particularly a common form
of sex trafficking in San Francisco and Los Angeles,
for example.
It also occurs in private apartments;
that's very common in Europe and the United States.
In hotels-- there was less than a year ago,
a bust at the Holiday Inn at SFO for sex trafficking.
Also takes place-- strip clubs and escort services.
Also in the United States, truck stops
are a big setting for sex trafficking.
And, of course, the internet is becoming increasingly used.
The internet is used, first of all,
to advertise women and girls.
It's a way that clients can schedule meetings and arrange
for payment.
It's also a way to distribute pornography of trafficked women
and girls.
And, I think more troubling, is it's a way that traffickers
can provide sex slaves who can be used and tortured by clients
in real time through web cameras and through chatting programs.
It means that the clients and the victims
could be at various parts of the globe.
And it's very difficult to chase and to stop
because of encryption technology.
That means it's very low risk, both for the clients
and the traffickers.
And finally as far as settings go,
I'll just add that many women who
are trafficked for forced labor, particularly
domestic servitude, also become subject to sex
trafficking or sexual abuse.
I'll say-- I know my time is running
short-- I'll say a little bit about methods of control.
Once women and girls fall into the hands of traffickers,
how are they kept there?
Isolation-- they are very often moved
to communities where they, first of all, have no ties whatsoever
and often don't speak the language.
So they have no way of trying to get help.
The traffickers routinely confiscate the passports
of their victims.
They restrict their freedom of movement
by locking them in apartments.
In some cases, women and girls are
chained to radiators so that they can't leave.
They use violence, torture, and murder of anyone
who causes problems in order to break victims.
But this doesn't only happen at the beginning
of the trafficking cycle, but continues throughout.
Traffickers work very hard to force the women and girls
to become dependent on them.
They're dependent on them.
They break them psychologically so
that they feel dependent on their traffickers for, oddly
enough, their security, for their food,
for their continued existence.
And finally, another method of control
is forced addiction to alcohol and drugs, which for many women
then becomes the only way to cope with this situation.
And finally, I just wanted to make a few comments
on the health risks and consequences
for trafficked women.
First of all, I want to point out
that many women and girls are medically and psychologically
compromised when they're recruited.
Some surveys have shown that 38% to 60%
of victims of sex trafficking were violated sexually,
were assaulted sexually, before they were trafficked--
very often by family members.
They come from dysfunctional homes
and often are runaways because of this very situation.
It primes them to then fall to the hands of traffickers.
Women, almost as a rule, experience violence
at the hand of their traffickers.
Again, it's designed to break them in.
The traffickers use rape, beating,
torture-- particularly cigarette burns-- coerced substance
abuse, to make them compliant.
And women and girls also suffer from violence
from their clients.
Many, many men exhibit a sense of ownership for the women--
a sense of I paid for her, I can do whatever I want in the time
that I have her.
And it's coupled very much with misogyny
so that very often women are tortured.
Women suffer a huge risk of HIV infection
as well of high rates of all the STDs, which
can result in infertility.
They of course have a high risk of pregnancy.
And very often, women who become pregnant
in the course of their exploitation
are forced to undergo backroom abortions which
have a whole host of other consequences to their health
that I've listed here.
And finally, I wish I could and unhappy note.
But I just want to say something, continue
with the risks and consequences.
Once women get out of their situation
of sexual exploitation, they show extremely high rates
of addiction, depression, anxiety, hostility, even post
traumatic stress disorder.
Some of them have a sense of learned helplessness, even
psychosis.
And they also very often face a stigma
that is attached to them because they're seen as prostitutes.
And no one cares whether or not they agreed to it or the extent
to which their human rights have been violated.
And all of these consequences and then the stigma
makes it very, very difficult for these women
to reintegrate into society.
So they need a great deal of very focused attention and care
in order to come back.
So I'll end there, and I'll be available to answer questions.
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