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Human trade, slave markets, the buying and selling of people – these are words and phrases that to many people echo a brutal and distant time in our past. But to the countless women, men, and children trafficked every year, these words coldly define the horror of their lives.

Trafficking is modern day slave trading. It involves transporting people away from the communities they live in by the threat or use of violence, deception or coercion so they can be exploited as forced or enslaved workers. When children are trafficked, no violence, deception or coercion needs to be involved: simply transporting them into exploitative conditions constitutes trafficking.

Trafficking is a fundamental abuse of human rights.

Trafficking is a worldwide phenomenon. Victims are trafficked into a range of hazardous labor including forced prostitution and forced or bonded labor and servitude and subjected to sexual abuse and other forms of violence.

Trafficked women come from and are sent to every part of the world. Rich and poor, East and West.

Trafficked women and girls are literally sold into forced prostitution and forced labor all over the world. And while there is irrefutable evidence that the introduction of peacekeeping forces into post-conflict zones (such as NATO & UN forces in Kosovo, Bosnia and Cambodia) has dramatically increased the numbers of women and girls trafficked into those areas and forced to work in prostitution, it is by no means a problem confined to recent war zones.

"Eventually I arrived in a bar in Kosovo, [and was] locked inside and forced into prostitution. In the bar I was never paid, I could not go out by myself, the owner became more and more violent as the weeks went by; he was beating me and raping me and the other girls. We were his ‘property’, he said. By buying us, he had bought the right to beat us, rape us, starve us, force us to have sex with clients." - 21 year old Moldovan woman

And although in some cases, women and girls are abducted, kidnapped or coerced by traffickers, many start their journeys from their home countries voluntarily.

Deception and lies * An ad in a local paper. * An employment website on the internet. * A flyer on a community billboard. * Each offering attractive employment as nannies, waitresses, secretaries, models or dancers. All with the promise of desperately needed money.

"I was desperate, and not because I was having problems with my parents as I heard from other girls, but because we were so poor... My grandmother had a very small allowance, and my mother has only the state allowance for my three brothers. We should have the alimony that my father is supposed to give us, but he is just ignoring us and not helping us at all.... I couldn’t live any longer on my grandmother’s pension, so I said that I’d better go somewhere else where I could work hard and earn some money to help my family and my brothers." - Woman trafficked into Kosovo

Sometimes it’s a boyfriend who promises to help them find work in the ‘glittering’ west. A friend who offers to help escape a desperate situation. A promise of marriage betrayed. Or a desperate economic exchange by a parent. This is how countless thousands of women and girls are trapped in the chilling world of trafficking.

"A friend introduced me to a woman in Chiinu, she offered me a job abroad and said she would prepare a passport for me, for free. I asked if the job was sex related and she promised that it was not." - 24 year old trafficked woman from Moldova.

Violence and threats

For most of these women and girls, as soon as their journey begins, so does the systematic abuse of their rights, in a strategy that reduces them to dependency on their trafficker, and later their "owner". The realization grows that the work they have been offered is not what was promised; their documents are taken away from them; they may be beaten; they will - almost certainly if they start to protest - be raped.

Although some women are not aware until they reach their destination that they have been sold, other have seen money change hands, or have been raped by buyers when they “try the merchandise”. Women are often sold several times before reaching their destination.

Escape is almost impossible. Without her travel documents, a woman is likely to be arrested for immigration or other offences. But probably more pertinently, trafficked women are usually trapped by threats, coercion, or literally being locked inside.

Trafficked women are repeatedly subjected to psychological abuse, including intimidation and threats, lies and deception, emotional manipulation and blackmail in order to keep them trapped.

"If I refused [to have sex with clients] I was threatened. He was pointing the gun to my head, and he was saying.. ‘If you don’t do this in the next minute, you will be dead’. He has the gun, he was just saying do this or you will be dead."

Many trafficked girls and women report being told that their families and their children would be harmed or murdered if they tried to escape or tell anyone. Others report being told that their families have found out what they’re doing and that they don’t want anything more to do with them.

“I always tried to open the door, but the men were always outside the door. I was scared. I always hear their voices” - woman from Nigeria, now 22, trafficked by an international ring using terror tactics on young people.

“[The traffickers] took my clothes off. I was screaming. They then started to rape me in turn. I was a virgin before then. I fell unconscious. I was kept in a room with no toilet, I would just go on the floor. The three men who had raped me the first time would come into the room and do what they wanted to me. I stopped screaming as I thought that no-one would hear me. After a month, two men that I hadn't seen before came to the house. They paid money to the other men and took me with them. The exchange of money took place in front of me. When we arrived I was raped by them. While I was staying there they would bring friends who would rape me” - woman from Albania, now 21.

“I was raped and abused by hundreds of men in every imaginable way. Every time I close my eyes, I see something from my past. I am afraid to sleep on the bed because it makes me think of all these things. I don't feel safe. I feel frightened hearing footsteps”. - girl from DR Congo, now 18.

The problems trafficked women and girls face do not disappear when they claim asylum. In many cases, applicants are penalized for having initially avoided telling the truth about being trafficked - even when they have been forced by their traffickers to do so. This can result in the finding that they are 'not credible', despite objective evidence which shows that victims of trafficking are often too terrified to speak out.

Another problem is that trafficking victims may still not be safe once they escape. In 2003, AI in the UK was aware of a case in which several attempts were made by traffickers to abduct a previously trafficked child from social services, by posing as relatives.

What can you do?

Write to your President/Prime Minister, to your State Department/Foreign Ministry/Foreign Office and Home affairs ministry/Home Office

and write to your local Congressperson/ Member of Parliament to act to take this issue seriously.

Say that if Governments are serious about tackling trafficking and forced sexual exploitation, any legislation must be part of a wider anti-trafficking strategy.

Call for the trafficking of women and children to be seen a global problem and one that cannot be solved just by making the act illegal. Call for stronger international co-operation and more help to poorer countries.

Call for Social Services/Welfare officials to have all the resources and training to provide the high levels of support and assistance that trafficked women and children require.

Call for centrally funded care for trafficked women and children through the provision of safe houses, counselling and education. This should be offered whether the victim participates in the prosecution process or not. Call for a trafficked person to be allowed a reflection period of at least three months, allowing them to remain in the country legally while they recover from their ordeal. A trafficked persons should have access to a full range of assistance, protection and support, to enable them to make an informed decision about their future.

A trafficked persons should not be held criminally liable for their illegal entry into a country or involvement in unlawful activities that are a consequence of their situation as trafficked persons.

Risk assessments should be carried out by trained officials before repatriation of any trafficked person.

There should be rights to residence or asylum for those victims involved in legal proceedings or at risk of abuse, stigmatisation or re-trafficking if repatriated.

Call for more active measures, international co-operation and increased resources to combat child pornography and child 'sex tourism'

Call for more support for projects educating women in danger of being trafficked.

If in Europe Call on the government to raise the issue of the trafficking of women and children on the European agenda. Call for greater European co-operation on this issue. Call for greater European assistance for countries like Moldova and Russia as well as outside Europe to tackle corruption, poverty, associated with the trafficking of women and call for increased EU resources to support projects educating women in danger of being trafficked. Call for a European Convention on Trafficking that goes beyond existing international standards and puts the human rights of trafficked people at the heart of European efforts to combat trafficking, regardless of whether trafficked individuals co-operate with prosecutions. If you are in the UK, call on the UK to make this issue a priority when the UK takes over the EU presidency in 2005.

Research the issue in your country and write to the press to highlight this.

Send them some of the articles that highlight this problem

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/sextraffic/

Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/

Campaigns http://hrw.org/campaigns/index.html

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.

Further information

http://hrw.org/about/projects/traffcamp/intro.html

What you can do

Write to the State Department Office (or the equivalent in your country) to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

Stop Child Trafficking in West Africa

Child trafficking is a global human rights tragedy. It is estimated that over one million children worldwide, including thousands in West Africa, are recruited from their homes each year by individuals seeking to exploit their labor. Extreme poverty, sometimes combined with the death of one or both parents, makes children highly vulnerable to false promises of education, vocational training or paid work. Upon their recruitment, trafficked children often travel long distances without adequate food and shelter, in some cases suffering severe injury or death on the way. At their destinations, they work long hours in homes, markets, fields, and factories. In many cases, they undergo extreme forms of physical and mental abuse, including beatings, death threats, and the prospect of never seeing their families again.

Governments have an obligation under international law to protect children from these appalling abusesÑindeed, from all practices similar to slavery. Whether working as sex workers or in other forms of work, trafficked children may be vulnerable to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Even if they are lucky enough to escape, they may find themselves living on the street and forced into hazardous work, including begging and sex work, to survive. Providing basic protections to victims of child trafficking, as well as prosecuting traffickers to the full extent of the law, are the responsibility of all governments. Preventing the recruitment and transport of children through improving access to education (especially for girls), stepping up border patrols and educating parents are crucial. Multilateral agreements on the prevention and prosecution of child trafficking, as well as the repatriation and protection of trafficked children, cannot be negotiated too soon.

Further info and how you can help

http://hrw.org/campaigns/togo/

Amnesty International

http://www.amnesty.org/

http://www.amnestyusa.org/

http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/actions

http://www.amnestyusa.org/children/

Protect the Rights of Trafficked Women and Girls in Post-conflict Kosovo

Trafficked women often are abducted, kept in conditions that amount to slavery, beaten and raped. In a recent report, Amnesty International raises concerns about the increase of trafficking in Kosovo since the July 1999 deployment of a NATO-led international peacekeeping force (KFOR) and the establishment of a United Nations civilian administration (UNMIK).

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=10927