In any given year, many thousands of young women and girls around the world are lured, abducted or sold into forced prostitution and involuntary marriage. They are bartered at prices that vary depending on their age, beauty and virginity, and exploited under conditions that amount to a modern form of slavery. Women and girls who have been trafficked can rarely escape or negotiate the conditions of their employment or marriage. In countries where Human Rights Watch has investigated the problem of trafficking, we have found that many police officers and other local government officials facilitate and profit from the trade in women and girls: for a price, they ignore abuses that occur in their jurisdictions; protect the traffickers, brothel owners, pimps, clients and buyers from arrest; and serve as enforcers, drivers and recruiters. If a woman is taken across national borders, immigration officials frequently aid and abet her passage.
The burgeoning trade in women and girls is linked fundamentally to women's unequal status. On the supply side, adverse socioeconomic conditions in many regions increase the likelihood that women and girls will be lured into forced prostitution or involuntary marriage. In most parts of the world, most notably in rural areas, women and girls have fewer educational and economic opportunities than males. The attraction of a big city, better-paying jobs, and a better life cause women and girls who have few options at home to accept alleged job or marriage offers far away. Moreover, even if the woman or girl herself is not tempted, the preference for sons in many societies (both to carry on the family name and as social insurance in old age) and the promise of immediate payments often lead families to sell their daughters.1 Because many agents are local people familiar with local conditions, they strategically recruit in the lean period before harvests or target families with financial difficulties. The recruiters' timing, coupled with the traditional responsibility of women to care for their families, make offers of employment or marriage difficult to resist.
On the demand side, the growth of sex tourism has in some cases accelerated the forced trafficking in women and girls. Our research found, however, that local demand for prostitutes or wives is at least as important as tourism, if not more so. Additionally, in countries such as Thailand and India, which have a high prevalence rate of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the clients' fear of infection has led traffickers to recruit younger women and girls, sometimes as young as ten, from remote areas perceived to be unaffected by the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic, in order to ensure their "purity" or virginity.2
Although the traffic in women and girls possesses distinct characteristics in each country or region where it occurs, certain patterns have emerged that cut across geographical boundaries. In a typical situation, a woman or girl is first recruited by an agent with promises of a good job in another country or province. For instance, Bangladeshi and Nepali women and girls are promised the opportunity to escape poverty at home to the relative prosperity of Pakistan and India, respectively. Women and girls have also been abducted outright, as some testimonies from southern Thailand indicate. Yet another mode of recruitment is through false marriage offers, with the "bride" later sold off to a brothel. If the women are taken across national borders, immigration officials frequently abet their illegal passage.
Once recruited or abducted, virtually all women and girls trafficked into forced prostitution are controlled through debt bondage. The initial debt is usually a payment to the woman's family at the time of recruitment, which she must repay, with interest, by working in a brothel. This "debt" mounts as the brothel owners add on the costs of food, clothes, medicine and other expenses. Escape is virtually impossible without repaying the "debt," since leaving the brothel puts the woman at risk of punishment by the brothel owner, his employees or the police, retribution against her parents and other relatives for defaulting on her debt, and/or arrest as an illegal immigrant. Women trafficked or sold into forced marriage are also held captive through financial obligations. Distance from home, lack of familiarity with the local language or dialect, and inability to find local support networks further reinforce the women's and girls' dependence on the brothel owners, pimps or "husbands."
Victims of forced prostitution in particular are exposed to health risks, especially sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), because they are not allowed to negotiate the terms of sex. Aside from risk of infection through sexualintercourse with many clients, the growing popularity of contraceptive injections in brothels also contributes to the spread of disease, since brothel owners often use the same and possibly contaminated needle several times. For women who develop AIDS, forced prostitution is ultimately fatal. Other women have become infertile due to other STDs and, thus, unmarriageable in cultures where the primary purpose of marriage is procreation. Shunned by their own families and communities, many of these women must return to prostitution in order to support themselves.3
Because prostitution is illegal in most countries, and prostitutes are scorned in virtually all, victims of forced prostitution face legal and moral isolation. Human Rights Watch takes no position on prostitution per se. However, we strongly condemn laws and official policies and practices that fail to distinguish between prostitutes and victims of forced trafficking, treating the latter as criminals rather than as persons who deserve "temporary care and maintenance" in accordance with international human rights standards. We also oppose laws and policies that punish women who engage in prostitution but not the men who operate and profit from prostitution rings and who patronize prostitutes: such policies are discriminatory on the basis of sex. Moreover, we are extremely concerned that absent effective law enforcement and social services for the victims, such attitudes toward prostitutes exacerbate the problem of trafficking. Out of fear of social ostracism, women are reluctant to speak about their experiences of abuse and thus to warn others who might also be vulnerable.
Although trafficking in women and girls has become a lucrative and expanding cross-border trade, it routinely escapes effective national and international sanctions. Trafficking for the purposes of forced prostitution has frequently been mischaracterized by governments and human rights organizations alike as a voluntary act, presuming the women's consent, even when ample evidence exists to the contrary. Both forced prostitution and coerced marriage also have largely been dismissed as crimes perpetrated by private individuals for which states have no responsibility under international human rights law. In fact, governments do have specific international legal duties to take steps to eradicate trafficking and related abuses.
1 Report of South Asia Regional Workshop on Protecting the Rights of Women and Children with Special Reference to International Trafficking and Labour Migration (Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 2-4, 1992), p. 3.
2 Marlise Simons, "The Sex Market: Scrouge on the World's Children," The New York Times, April 9, 1993.
3 Preliminary Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, U.N. Document E/CN.4/1995/42, (Geneva: United Nations, November 22, 1994), p. 50.
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