Sexual Trafficking: An International Moral Issue
by Swanee Hunt, Scripps Howard News Service
April 10, 2024

"Even if you help one girl, you feel good," says Celhia de Lavarene, the former head of a U.N. program to stop sexual trafficking.

This staggering trade in human life starts with the abduction of a woman or child who is forced into sexual slavery and prostitution. De Lavarene says extreme poverty in developing nations exacerbates the problem. A policeman who hasn't been paid in four months will close his eyes and take a bribe. And traders have an easy time smuggling victims across porous borders in regions torn by civil war.

Sexual trafficking is entrenched globally, with devastating consequences. Languages and customs differ, but the exploitation is strikingly familiar: Unscrupulous traders lure young women to a big city with promises of a good job, education, or marriage. Minors are kidnapped — stolen — even as they walk home from school. At the end of the transport, their passports are confiscated, and the victims are forced into prostitution. If persuasion doesn't work, then intimidation or torture begins. The girls are often locked alone in a room, visited only by an endless stream of "clients."

The cycle of forced servitude and imprisonment is nearly impervious to escape. The few who do run away and find their way home are usually rejected by families and communities, unable to find work or medical care. Abandoned, the girls' captivity may be ended, but their despair continues.

The State Department estimates that four million people, mostly women and girls, are trafficked yearly. This form of slavery is a multinational industry worth an estimated $7 billion a year, run by organized crime. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage says sexual trafficking is so lucrative it will "outstrip the illicit trade in guns and narcotics within a decade." The United States isn't immune to this pandemic: about 50,000 women and children are trafficked into this country each year, with a large portion of those ending up in the sex industry. That's twice the number of people who died of AIDS in the United States, Europe, and other industrialized nations in 2001 alone.

Sexual trafficking is so lucrative it has spawned sex tourism. Human rights groups say these illicit tours are on the rise due to cheaper airfares, and — ironically — the freedom of travel and trade in newly opened states. The Internet fuels sex tours by giving organizers a forum to exchange information, access to underage sex partners and data on countries where laws are weak or nonexistent. American men, along with Europeans and Australians, are reportedly the largest group of sex tourists to Central America and Asia.

The director of Trafficking in Persons at the State Department, John Miller, calls sex tourism a "great moral issue of the century." It's tough to pinpoint the largest areas of abuse, because as one region cracks down, the traders move to a new one. In addition, the officials who should be stopping the trade are often part of the problem. Recent restrictions on sex tourism in Asian countries have not stopped Cambodian officials from promoting their own sex tour industry. In Holland, where prostitution itself is legal, sexual trafficking is now a significant part of the local economy — despite its illegality.

Two years ago a high-ranking U.N. official in Kosovo refused to issue a protocol against servicemen visiting brothels with trafficked women, saying that would amount to "the sexual repression of 10,000 men." Well, if trafficking feeds a sexual appetite, maybe we should suppress it by shaming the men who frequent the brothels. As for the victims, Bosnian trafficking expert Selma Hadzihalilovic says, "You can't combat trafficking without helping victims. Rescued women need more than a few months of shelter." They must have jobs, training and community support.

If we've made any progress at all, it's in heightened public awareness, global sanctions and increased prosecutions. International agencies and individual governments now recognize sexual trafficking as a human rights violation and are sharing critical information. In some countries, including the United States, new laws have been passed. By the end of last year, the Justice Department had 125 open trafficking investigations — nearly double the previous year.

Sexual trafficking strikes at the very heart of our values as a world community. In what ways do we allow a lower side of human nature to grow, unbridled? In what ways do we support forces of empathy, of justice? As globalization offers enormous progress for expanded economies, let's not regress to trading women and children as commodities.

more articles by Swanee Hunt