"Trafficking in Women"
Speech by Sally Moyle, Director, Sex Discrimination Unit at the Stop the Traffick Symposium: Addressing Trafficking in Women for Prostitution, RMIT, 25 February 2002
Introduction
- Thanks
- I welcome this
opportunity for me to introduce myself and get to know the real experts
on issues around trafficking in women in Australia, it is indeed a privilege.
- I am the director
of the Sex Discrimination Unit of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission at a very interesting time.
- I work for the
Sex Discrimination Commissioner, who is chartered by Government under
the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (the SDA) to prevent discrimination
and promote the principle of the equality of men and women.
- The SDA makes
it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of gender, marital status,
pregnancy and potential pregnancy. It also prohibits dismissal on the
basis of family responsibilities, sexual harassment and victimisation.
- We utilise the
SDA as our legislative 'backbone'. It requires that we undertake public
education in order to increase compliance and raise awareness. It also
empowers the Commissioner to apply to intervene in discrimination cases
heard by the Federal Court and the Federal Magistrates' service, or
in other industrial case where appropriate.
- Underlying our
work is a belief that, for a society to function productively, efficiently
and fairly, it must embrace and respect the diversity of its population.
To deny certain members of our society access to opportunities, to treat
some people in a discriminatory manner because of prejudice, bias, assumption
and stereotype, can only be an impediment to the full and proper functioning
of a society.
- The achievement of equality and the elimination of discrimination in various areas of public life, does not involve the removal of any existing human rights. There is no trading off one person's rights to give to another. Human rights and the principles of equality are not exclusive. Neither should any areas of public life be.
Human Rights Background
- Internationally,
there is a growing awareness of the seriousness and complexity of issues
regarding trafficking of women and children and an understanding that
the problem needs co-ordinated international responses.
- While there has been a Convention in place since 1949 (The Convention on Trafficking in Persons) and relevant provisions in the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (Article 6), the issue has been receiving attention for less than a decade. I will mention a few of the most relevant international developments to our discussion today.
Transnational Organised Crime Convention
- The Transnational
Organised Crime Convention emerged from the 2000 Conference on Transnational
Organised Crime hosted by the United Nations Office for Drug Control
and Crime Prevention.
- It spells out
how countries can improve cooperation on such matters as extradition,
mutual legal assistance, transfer of proceedings and joint investigations.
- The Convention
arose from growing recognition on behalf of the international community
that previously unknown forms of transnational co-operation between
organised criminal groups emerged in the closing decades of the 20th
Century.
- It is the first legally binding UN instrument in the field of crime. However, it must be signed and ratified by 40 countries before it comes into force. Unfortunately, to date, it has been signed by 140 countries and ratified by only seven, and is thus not in effect. Australia is one of the countries yet to ratify it.
The Optional Protocol to the Transnational Organised Crime Convention
- Of particular
relevance and use to those battling trafficking in women is the Optional
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially
Women and Children. This Protocol makes it an explicit crime to traffick
in people, giving the Convention a pointed human rights focus, and its
existence must be attributed to the tireless efforts of NGO's to ensure
its focus.
- Essentially,
the Protocol is intended to "prevent and combat" trafficking
in persons and facilitate international co-operation against such trafficking.
It provides for criminal offences, control and co-operation measures
against traffickers. It also provides some measures to protect and assist
the victims.
- It is interesting
to note that trafficking is defined as the "...recruitment, transportation,
transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons..." if this uses improper
means, such as force, abduction, fraud, or coercion, for an improper
purpose, such as forced or coerced labour, servitude, slavery or sexual
exploitation. These are three elements of the definition, transfer,
improper recruitment means, and illegal or exploitative end use.
- In using this
definition, the protocol takes a different approach to trafficking from
that contained in the 1949 Convention, which focused only on prostitution
and considered all prostitution, voluntary and forced, to be trafficking.
- Australia has
neither signed nor ratified the Optional Protocol to Prevent, Suppress
and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.
- As at 20 February,
101 countries have signed the protocol registering in principal support,
but only 4 countries have ratified the document. As with the head convention,
this Protocol can only enter into force for any country after the fortieth
ratification.
- At this stage, it remains an aspirational document, one that can be referred to as a benchmark, rather than a binding document.
Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Article 34 of
the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CROC) states:
States Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. For these purposes, States Parties shall in particular take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent:(a) The inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity;
(b) The exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices;
(c) The exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials." - Article 35 states:
"States Parties shall take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent the abduction of, the sale of or traffic in children for any purpose or in any form."
- An Optional Protocol
to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children,
Child Prostitution and Child Pornography supplements CROC.
- This Optional
Protocol gives special emphasis to the criminalization of serious violations
of children's rights - namely sale of children, illegal adoption, child
prostitution and pornography.
- Similarly, the
text stresses the value of international cooperation as a means of combating
these transnational activities, and of public awareness, information
and education campaigns to enhance the protection of children from these
serious violations of their rights.
- This Optional Protocol has received enough international support to enter into force on January 18 2002. Australia has signed, but not yet ratified, this instrument.
Yokahama
- The Second World
Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was held
in Yokohama, Japan from 17 to 20 December.
- The Congress
aimed to draw attention to the plight of children in the world sex trade,
review progress made since the first World Congress Against Commercial
Sexual Exploitation of Children and devise further methods to protect
children from sexual exploitation.
- The text of the
Yokohama Global Commitment 2001 was adopted in consensus. As well as
welcoming positive developments, visible in a number of countries, since
the First World Congress, the participants in the second World Congress
recognised that much more needed to be done to protect children, and
made recommendations to that end, including that the root causes that
put children at risk of exploitation be addressed. These are noted as
including poverty, inequality, discrimination, persecution, violence,
armed conflicts, HIV/AIDS, dysfunctioning families, the demand factor,
criminality, and violations of the rights of the child.
- The ASEAN has identified the fight against trafficking in women and children as a priority area for action.
Hanoi Plan of Action
- The 1998 Hanoi
Plan of Action, adopted by ASEAN leaders in 1998, commits ASEAN countries
to actively pursue efforts "to implement policies and initiatives
both at national and regional level to fight growing trends in trafficking
of women and children" A draft statement on trafficking was developed
by Thailand and considered by the ASEAN Sub-Committee on Women in November
2000.
- The Hanoi Plan
of Action indicates a growing awareness that trafficking is not a national
problem, and that regional social, political and social co-ordination
is necessary.
- The Australian
Government is participating in a regional forum in Bali, Indonesia,
on 25-27 February 2002: the Regional Conference on People Smuggling,
Trafficking in Persons and Related Trans-national Crime.
- The outcome of
this participation remains to be seen.
- So there is, at an international level, a significant body of work undertaken on trafficking, much of it from a rights perspective.
What is a rights perspective?
- A human rights
perspective proceeds from an awareness of the complex dynamics of trafficking.
- It aims to ensure
rights of victims of trafficking - to avoid brutalising or further traumatising
the victims or survivors.
- Responses to
trafficking should do no further harm.
- It seeks to ensure
the rights of victims or survivors to non-discrimination, access to
natural justice -including involvement in decision making to the extent
of being informed and able to comment, and the right to be dealt with
on the individual circumstances or merits of their case. Above all,
it proceeds from a recognition of the right to be treated with dignity
as a holder of rights.
- One of the sad
realities of trafficking is that it depends for its perpetration on
the greed and corruption of those who encounter it - obviously on the
part of the traffickers, but also, more tragically, on the part of too
many public officials.
- However it is
also true that too often rights are breached not because of any malice
or ill will on the part of the State or its officials, but because of
carelessness, lack of training of those dealing with a person or because
jurisdictional and bureaucratic arrangements mean that the person's
range of concerns are unable to be addressed.
- It is mundane
and all too usual a problem, particularly for something as complex and
multi-faceted as trafficking, that a person is dealt with variously
as a law enforcement head ache, an immigration problem, or a welfare
cost to the state, even sometimes as merely a victim of violence, coercion
or breach of contract, rather than a person with complex needs and problems
enmeshed in circumstances too broad for any one agency to deal with.
- For me, part
of the challenge of human rights is to ensure that each person, whatever
their issues, is dealt with by the State as a whole person, not as a
sliver of a law enforcement problem here, a piece of a victim of violence
there, a person with particular welfare or housing needs somewhere else.
It is not up to the person to divide themselves into separate neat boxes
for the government agencies but it is the challenge for all governments
to ensure they are able to meet the needs of all people with legitimate
claims against it.
- In this regard,
trafficking is like many other issues with which government must deal,
it is not unique. But it is certainly an illustration of how problems
are at risk of being rendered invisible because of a lack of a co-ordinated
approach. Ensuring that we deal with the whole person without adding
to the problem, is the challenge of importing a human rights perspective
into trafficking issues.
- This conference is a great recognition of this- congratulations to Kathleen and RMIT for bringing together people across a range of sectors and services.
A gendered approach
- As I have emphasised,
trafficking is multi-dimensional and complex.
- It involves trafficking
for sex and prostitution, but also trafficking for labour to all parts
of the world, including:
- sending little
boys to parts of the Middle East to race camels;
- a recruiting
children to beg or sell flowers on the streets of major South East
Asian cities;
- recruiting
young men to work on dangerous building sites or fishing boats;
or
- recruiting
young women as brides or household labourers.
- sending little
boys to parts of the Middle East to race camels;
- Trafficking may
be carried out by international, well organised transnational crime
rings. More usually, trafficking is limited in scope, involving a handful
of women -although of course, it is no less a major crime for that.
Often it is something like a family business or cottage industry - recruitment
is by people known to a person and her family, by "aunties"
or village members. It may be a one-off or regular recruitment drive.
- Trafficking often
involves vulnerable - that is poor, unskilled and uneducated, men and
boys; but more often it involves women and girls.
- Trafficking may
involve actual kidnapping or coercion; it may involve trickery, as where
women are told they will be working in a bar and are in fact prostituted;
it may involve women entering into an arrangement with their eyes open
as to the nature of the work, but unaware that they will be in debt
bondage or servitude; or it may involve women entering into arrangements
knowingly but believing themselves to be under an obligation to the
family who sold them to remain in the situation.
- What do these
complex dynamics of trafficking have in common?
- We can refer
again to three elements of trafficking: the recruitment for an illegal
or exploitative end purpose, the transfer and the end use.
- What all trafficking
has in common is that it is enabled by the power imbalances that allow
people to dehumanise their fellows and to deal with them as commodities.
- As we know, in
terms of South East Asian sex tourism, we will be likely to have trafficked,
tricked and exploited women to service that industry so long as rich
men think it is ok to continue exploiting young women.
- At the heart
of these power imbalances lie class, race and gender. I would argue
that, generally, gender lies at its heart.
- Race issues are
certainly embedded in any consideration of trafficking. However, these
issues are flexible - they can change with opportunity. Look at the
monstrous increase in trafficking of women from Eastern Europe over
the last decade while those who exploit those trafficked women are able
to 'racialise' them - to use their race or culture to disadvantage them.
I would argue it is opportunistic to an extent, adopted as a result
of economic inequalities.
- So is economic
inequality or disadvantage the driving cause of trafficking?
- Many people argue
that poverty is inextricably linked to trafficking. Again, it is true
but I take issue with the contention that it is the cause of trafficking.
- Yes, it's true
that those who are economically deprived - poor - are more vulnerable
to trafficking. However, not all equally poor people are equally vulnerable
to trafficking. Some studies in South East Asia show that the 'pull'
factors for young women are greater in one village than in its neighbour.
And it is not always the poorest that are most likely to be trafficked.
I don't mean to underestimate global, national and regional economic
inequalities - these are appalling and contribute to trafficking.
- However, I contend
that even if we addressed the worst of these economic inequalities (somehow),
while we might see the problem of trafficking recede, we would still
see sexual slavery, servitude and trafficking in women, so long as we
failed to address the gender inequalities that lie at its heart.
- Even if we could
ensure that everyone had access to a comfortable middle class life,
I contend that women would still be trafficked. They would just be more
expensive. And of course, we are seeing that.
- People are vulnerable
to being trafficked because often they lack education; they more often
have limited job opportunities; they are, and consider their lives to
be, subject to the direction of their families; they often lack self-esteem;
and because they are able to be viewed as commodities - by themselves,
their communities and those along the trafficking chain, and throughout
the world, who would exploit them.
- These are generally
characteristics that apply to women. I believe trafficking is a gender
issue.
- Trafficking in
people is a major human rights and gender issue facing the international
community and each nation.
- Thank you for
giving me the opportunity to share some perspectives with you.
