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Campaign against the Trafficking of Women and Girls
Trafficking in persons — the illegal and highly profitable recruitment,
transport, or sale of human beings for the purpose of exploiting their labor — is
a slavery-like practice that must be eliminated. The trafficking of women and
children into bonded sweatshop labor, forced marriage, forced prostitution,
domestic servitude, and other kinds of work is a global phenomenon. Traffickers
use coercive
tactics including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use
of physical force, and/or debt bondage to control their victims. Women are
typically
recruited with promises of good jobs in other countries or provinces, and,
lacking better options at home, agree to migrate. Through agents and brokers
who arrange
the travel and job placements, women are escorted to their destinations and
delivered to the employers. Upon reaching their destinations, some women learn
that they
have been deceived about the nature of the work they will do; most have been
lied to about the financial arrangements and conditions of their employment;
and all find themselves in coercive and abusive situations from which escape
is both difficult and dangerous. (Last updated June 5th, 2006)
The U.S. State Department releases yearly reports assessing
whether countries have taken steps to eliminate trafficking in persons.
Key Human Rights Watch Documents:
2006
2005
2004
- Malaysia: Mass Expulsion Puts Migrants at Risk
Press Release, November 23, 2004
-
Asia's Migrant Workers Need Better Protection
Commentary, September 1, 2004
- Saudi Arabia: Condemn Abuses, Not Their Exposure
Press Release, July 29, 2004
- Workers’ Hell in Saudi Arabia
Commentary, July 24, 2004
-
Indonesia/Malaysia: Household Workers’ Rights Trampled
Press Release, July 22, 2004
- Help Wanted:
Abuses against Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Indonesia and Malaysia
Report, July, 2004
- Online Chat: Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia
Online Forum, July 19, 2004
- Saudi Arabia: Foreign Workers Abused
Press Release, July 15, 2004
- BAD DREAMS:
Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia
Report, July 2004
- Trafficking in Women and Girls in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Backgrounder, June 14, 2004
-
Child Domestics: The World's Invisible Workers
Backgrounder, June 10, 2004
2003
- Trapped by Inequality: Bhutanese Refugee Women in Nepal
Report, September 24, 2003
- Letter to Colin Powell on the Trafficking in Persons Report 2003
Letter, June 27, 2003
- U.S. State Department Trafficking Report Undercut by Lack of Analysis
Press Release, June 11, 2003
- West Africa: Stop Trafficking in Child Labor
Press Release, April 1, 2003
- Borderline Slavery: Child Trafficking in Togo
Report, April 2003
- Uganda: Child Abductions Skyrocket in North
Press Release, March 28, 2003
- Stolen Children: Abduction and Recruitment in Northern Uganda
Report, March 2003
2002
- Bosnia and Herzegovina: Traffickers Walk Free
HRW Press Release, November 26, 2002
- Hopes Betrayed: Trafficking of Women and Girls to Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina for Forced Prostitution
HRW Report, November 26, 2002
- China: Protect Rights of North Korean Asylum-Seekers
Press Release, November 19, 2002
- The Invisible Exodus: North Koreans in the People’s Republic of China
Report, November 2002
- Letter to Secretary Powell regarding the U.S. State Department's Trafficking Report
June 18, 2002
- U.S. State Department Trafficking Report Missing Key Data, Credits Uneven Efforts
HRW Press Release, June 6, 2002
- A Human Rights Approach to the Rehabilitation and Reintegration into
Society of Trafficked Victims
Oral Statement at Conference, May 15-16
- Greece: Recommendations Regarding the Draft Law
Briefing Paper, March 8, 2002
2001
2000
See also Human Rights Watch’s “Stop Child Trafficking in West Africa” campaign at http://hrw.org/campaigns/togo/
BACK TO: Women's Rights
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HRW Report Cover from Maid to Order: Ending Abuses against Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore
A street in the Kabuki-cho district of Tokyo where many women are employed in the adult entertainment industry. Kinsey Dinan/© Human Rights Watch, 1999
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