Paper 2 - Sex Trafficking and Prostitution in Europe – Specifically the Balkans and Northern/Eastern Europe

Bridget Moore

Gender and Women Studies 220 - W

Professor Brown

April 1, 2012

Sex Trafficking and Prostitution in Europe – Specifically the Balkans and Northern/Eastern Europe

            Could you imagine being taken right from your home one day by foreign intruders who may not even speak your language? To only be taken abroad to a run-down neighborhood and sold the next day for sex? How would you feel if you were being brutally beaten and raped for days on end, without proper medication, food, or care? There are more than 2.5 million people forced into this type of labor worldwide, with 1.2 million being children and 150,000 victims in Europe alone who go through that on a daily basis. According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, this amounts to approximately $3.0 billion in profits each year for the given area (Stemple, 2010) (UN.GIFT, 2010). Today, sex trafficking is more or less an epidemic stemming all the way back to the 1800’s and the trend has only increased since. Whether we talk about the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, or South America, there is sex trafficking without a doubt. However, the seriousness of this issue varies around the world. This paper will discuss a number of items such as: factual information as well as background information explaining sex trafficking, the characteristics of each geographical region in regards to sex trafficking, as well as relief programs and government actions to prohibit the increasing trend of sex trafficking.

Focusing on Europe, there are certain areas where sex trafficking occurs more rapidly and easily, such as Germany, Italy, and the Balkan peninsula, which includes the countries of Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bosnia and parts of Croatia. These areas are known to be heavily influenced by sex trafficking and also some areas allow prostitution. In comparison, areas of Europe have well-established laws prohibiting the act of sex trafficking of women and young children, which includes Sweden, France, Iceland, Finland and Norway (UNODC, 2010). But for the majority, it is an occurrence in practically every region.

The definition of trafficking has been dated back to the 1800s as another word for “white slavery” and it was a very strong concern for European girls from Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain, who were trafficked to be put into work in brothels who ended up in prostitution against their own will (Beijer, Breuil, Reenen, Roos, Siegel, 2011). This definition shifted in these areas to mean something completely opposite around the mid-1900s. These regions characterized trafficking and prostitution as simply “forced sex work,” or in the view of some, a legitimate and legal profession. To them, it was just another manner to earn a living. Today, this is still true to some, but more and more countries of Europe are starting to focus on the abolition of sex trafficking and prostitution all together. The majority of trafficking victims fall within the ages of 18-24 and 98% of these victims are women and children (both girls and boys) (UNODC, 2010). 32% are used for forced economic exploitation and many have middle-level education. The majority of the traffickers are male, but surprisingly in specific areas, women are also involved in kidnapping these victims because often times they were previously victims and this is the only available form of employment for their escape(UNODC, 2010).

Human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal activity in the world today, and just a single female held for sexual exploitation yields an estimated $70,000 annually in Western Europe (Transchel, 2010). It seems to be fairly simple to become an entrepreneur in this field because it does not require any prior investment; you just need to find a way to kidnap innocent girls without getting caught. The tricky part is deciding which story to use to con the victim into agreeing and there are many tactics that traffickers use to lure in their victims. These tactics include well-paying jobs, marriage proposals, beauty contests, modeling opportunities, affordable vacations, and study abroad programs (UNODC, 2010), and many victims are recruited by their own family members and close friends. Often times these victims are raped both by their trafficker as well as the males who buy them in brothels or other means as well as drugged to prevent them from resisting or attempting to escape. If they do attempt to escape or run away, they are most often times beat until they are unconscious, or until they die (UNODC, 2010). These victims can be found in brothels or safe houses, as well as massage parlors, strip clubs, spas, and underground venues, such as private homes.

It appears that there is a distinct separation between the regions that prohibit the use of sex trafficking and the regions that legalize it as merely “sex work”. The northern half of Europe with countries listed above (France, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland) have made the extreme effort with the help of Women Feminist groups and organizations to completely ban and abolish the act of trafficking women and children and one goes as far as to criminalize and lock up the men responsible for the wrong doing. France, for example, is currently proposing a brand new law as of February 2012 that states anyone using prostitution in any form could face penalties of either six months of jail time as well as a fine of 3,000 euros. This is due to the fact that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was reportedly accused of raping a maid at a hotel he stayed at as well as using prostituted women from the same agency as former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. This scam was a monumental period of time for the government of France and this is when they made the abolition of sex trafficking a top priority (Raymond, 2012). DSK, as commonly referred to, was forced to resign from the position and he lost all of his support, except from his current (and third) wife, who says she was “proud” of her husband’s sexual behavior because “it’s important to seduce, for a politician” (Raymond, 2012).

Another country on the same track is Sweden, who firmly believes in the abolition of sex trafficking and in an interview between a Journalist working for Rain and Thunder and a radical feminist activist and lawyer, as well as the Co-Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Gunilla Ekberg, they discuss the government actions of Sweden and what Ekberg believes is the solution to this demeaning act of violence against women. Ekberg states that the big push came during the mid-1990’s where the parliament went from being 27% female to 45% female, which helped the feminists reach their goal of bringing sex trafficking to the conversation. They created a Bill on Violence Against Women where they explained that prostitution was a “serious form of male sexual violence” and not “sex work”, also they stated that it is a crime with a perpetrator, who is no different than a rapist. They focused on educating the students because they believed that it was extremely important in order to stop future acts of trafficking. They also made the students watch the film Lilya-4-Ever, which describes personal stories of victims and what the brothels and living/working conditions are realistically like (“Abolishing Prostitution”, 2008). This Bill has proven successful because Sweden reportedly has the lowest number of victims of trafficking in human beings in the European Union. Their belief as to why this has worked has to do with the fact that many of the buyers have stopped purchasing these victims and if the market is down, the pimps and kidnappers go to other areas (such as the Balkans) to make a living. The country supports this law with 79% in favor of it (“Abolishing Prostitution”, 2008).

Similar to France and Sweden in the North-Western part of Europe is the country of Norway, which is known to be more of a tourist attraction than countries of the Balkan Peninsula and it is also safer in regards to illegal sex trafficking. Norway is another country that prohibits sex trafficking and has enforced its own law which has proven to cut street prostitution in half as well as online and through brothels. They started enforcing laws prohibiting the act of trafficking in 1999 after the legislation passed the Violence against Women bill, which was followed by Finland and Iceland likewise (Raymond, 2010). Once the Norwegian law really came into force, records estimate that there were nearly 20% less women prostitutes on the street and also indoor prostitution was down an estimated 16% (Raymond, 2010).. Another factor is advertisement, which went down a notable 60% during this time period. This left Denmark the only outlier in the general region with no legal prohibition against the purchasing of persons in prostitution (Raymond, 2010).

In contrast, there are several countries that are located in south-eastern Europe who are known to allow and legalize sex trafficking, or what they call “sex work”. Albania and Romania are two main countries where it is most prevalent. In Albania, it has gotten to be so popular that most parents are worried so much that they have stopped allowing their teenage daughters to attend school in fear of them being kidnapped on their commute to/from school. There are now approximately 30,000 Albanian prostitutes, out of the 3 million people, which they believe were trafficked into Europe as children (Woodruff, 2011). Also, many of them are reportedly driven to the “epicenter” of this country’s smuggling industry known as Vlore. From there, the traffickers take a boat (which can hold up to 40 people at a time) to the Italian coast, across the Adriatic Sea. And each Albanian prostitute is said to be worth an estimated $10,000, says Degan Ali, from the International Organization of Migration (Woodruff, 2011). Also on the topic of Albania, there was a well-known action movie produced in 2008 called Taken that is based on sex trafficking by a gang from Albanian who in the movie find and kidnap two teenage girls in Paris, France, who are originally from California and bring them to a brothel to be sold into prostitution. This movie gives society simple implications of sex trafficking and the possibility of this situation happening to their own family (Rich, 2008).

Another country alike the rest in the Balkans is Belgium, and this country is known for their “safe houses” which the victims are brought to and stay with other victims, along with the traffickers’ accomplices, who are often times a prostitute as well. Not only do these trafficked victims prostitute, but they are also forced to be “exotic dancers” as well. They are kept in these special “safe” houses where they are allowed more “freedom” (such as leaving to go to the store, etc.), but there is also some violence in the environment if there is a wrong doing of a prostitute. Not only does the victim become beaten for any wrongdoing, but his/her family is in jeopardy as well. In one case, the brother of a victim was brutally beaten and ended up in the hospital (Janssens, Lemans, 2007). Similar to other countries, Belgium traffickers keep all of the profit that the prostitute makes, which forces her to stay from lack of money.

Organizations and relief groups are common in this area to combat the problem of sex trafficking and the goals of each are very similar: to abolish sex trafficking and make aware that it is demeaning towards the female gender and shows inequality as well as proving it unconstitutional to purchase and sell any human being. Of Sweden, there are many organizations such as the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, the National Board of Health and Welfare, the National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings, which publishes annual reports on sex trafficking in Sweden, and in Norway there is the Nordic Baltic Campaign Against Trafficking in Women, who seek to raise awareness of the exploitation of women and children in Norway and focus their studies on the men’s demand of women in prostitution – something that isn’t talked about much. “They wanted to make the men who are responsible for sexually exploiting these women in children to be accountable and visible” (“Abolishing Prostitution”, 2008).

Another important organization which was sited previously is the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT), which was established in 2007 by the International Labor Organization, the Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) along with several others(UN.GIFT, 2010). They aim to encourage and facilitate cooperation and coordination amongst anti-trafficking activities by reducing both the vulnerability of potential victims as well as the demand for exploitation. They raised money for awareness and they believed, “human trafficking is a crime of such magnitude and atrocity that It cannot be dealt with successfully by any government alone(UN.GIFT, 2010). This global problem requires a global, multi-stakeholder strategy that builds on national efforts throughout the world. Part of their mission statement says they urge to promote effective rights-based responses, build capacity of state and non-state actors, and foster partnerships for joint action against human trafficking (UN.GIFT, 2010).

Germany is to the extreme opposite of the spectrum where instead of focusing their attention on abolishing sex trafficking, they are focusing more on legalizing prostitution, or volunteered sex-work, by creating the German Prostitution Act in 2002(Raymond, 2010). They are a part of the region that believes that this can be made into a career as long as the worker is satisfied and okay with what she is being expected of. This law gave women the right to contracts and benefits, like other jobs (Raymond, 2010). This normalized brothels and “whore houses”, which inevitably increased the numbers of illegal sex trafficking in this country as well. Organizations and other countries’ governments have raised concerns regarding this Act because it has failed to reduce crime in the world of prostitution, like they thought it would (Raymond, 2010).

In conclusion, the continent of Europe has had a very broad history in regards to sex trafficking and in some regions, specifically the northern portion, they have made some progress since a century ago, but even with the help of anti-trafficking organizations, they still have a long road to complete gender equality. This region is not the only that is isolated with sex crimes such as this, but with the Balkans being a major contributor, it is a large target on this specific topic. Sex trafficking affects not only the victims themselves, but their loved ones as well. This cannot be fixed and resolved by one region of the world alone; the entire world has to come forth with vigorous effort to combat this horrific problem. It will take extremely intense exertions, but it is possible.

Works Cited

“Abolishing Prostitution: The Swedish Solution. An Interview with Gunilla Ekberg.” Rain and Thunder Collective: A Radical Feminist Journal of Discussion and Activism. Issue 41. Winter Solstice 2008. http://action.web.ca/home/catw/attach/R%26T_ Interview_with_Gunilla_Ekberg.pdf.

Beijer, Breuil, Reenen, Roos, Siegel. “Human Trafficking Revisited: Legal, Enforcement and Ethnographic Narratives on Sex Trafficking to Western Europe.” Trends in Organized Crime. Vol. 14: pp. 30-46. February 1, 2011. http://web.ebscohost.com. ezproxy.mnsu.edu/ehost/ pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&hid=8&sid=f153ee80-90fe-4695-ad05-ebce9ddb328d%40sessionmgr12.

Janssens, Leman. “The Various ‘Safe’-House Profiles in East-European Human Smuggling and Trafficking.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Vol. 33: pp. 1377-1388. November 2007. http://web. ebscohost.com.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/ ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid= 2&hid=8&sid=f153ee80-90fe-4695-ad05-ebce9ddb328d%40sessionmgr12.

Raymond. “Trafficking, Prostitution, and the Sex Industry: The Nordic Legal Model.” Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. July 20, 2010. http://action.web.ca/ home/catw/ readingroom.shtml?x=130078.

Raymond. “Under New Law, France Would No Longer Be Sexual Playground.” Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. February 10, 2012. http://action.web.ca/home/catw/ readingroom.shtml?x=132725&AA_EX_Session=d3bf5c4d403fc70abb20e0d339fe4958.

Rich, Katey. “Taken”. 2008.  http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Taken-3651.html.

Stemple. “Human Trafficking: a Growing Problem in Europe: UN Report.” Jurist. June 30, 2010. http://jurist.org/paperchase/2010/06/human-trafficking-in-europe.php.

Transchel. “Opinion: Behind the Myth of the “Happy Hooker.” Global Post. January 4, 2010. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/091203/moldova-sex-trafficking.

United Nations Global Initiative Fight Human Trafficking. “What is Human Trafficking?” 2010. http://www.ungift.org/knowledgehub/en/about/human-trafficking.html.

United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime. “Trafficking in Persons to Europe for Sexual Exploitations.” 2010. http://www.unodc.org/documents/publications/TiP_Europe _EN_LORES.pdf.

Woodruff. “Albanian Girls Trafficked For Sex.” ABC NEWS. May 21, 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=131011&page=1#.T3oW5DGPWC0.