As recently as fifteen years ago, the term "human trafficking" was virtually absent from public discourse. Today, it is all the rage, and a huge amount of taxpayer money has been spent fighting it. There is no doubt that, when force or deception is involved in the recruitment or transportation of laborers (the definition of trafficking in U.S. law), trafficking is an evil that deserves robust countermeasures. But there are also many popular myths about trafficking -- frequently voiced in the media and by government officials -- that have distorted proper understanding of the problem and, more importantly, hampered efforts to combat it. What are the chief myths?
Trafficking is a mammoth problem
Interest groups, the media, and the U.S. government have given very high estimates of the number of persons trafficked each year into the sex industry or other labor arenas. In some instances, the numbers appear to be pulled out of thin air, as in a Washington Post editorial (June 28, 2011) declaring that "trafficking is understood today as a global phenomenon exceeding 20 million cases each year." Or consider a November 2005 episode of Oprah, in which it was claimed that "millions" of children are trafficked into prostitution each year. The U.S. Government's figures are lower -- 800,000 worldwide victims (down from an estimated 4 million in 2000) and 14,500-17,500 domestic victims (down from a high of 50,000 in 2000) -- though the sources of these figures have never been disclosed.
There is a stark difference between the official estimates and the tiny number of victims identified and rescued each year or the number of traffickers brought to justice, both domestically and internationally. Worldwide, the State Department reported in 2010 that only 0.4% of the estimated number of victims have been officially located and assisted. No one would claim that the official estimates could possibly match the number of identified victims -- given the obstacles to locating victims in illicit, underground markets -- but the huge disparity between the two should at least raise doubts about the alleged scale of victimization.
Trafficking is growing worldwide
Not only is human trafficking said to be a huge social problem, but also one that it is escalating worldwide. Trafficking does appear to have increased in some parts of the world, especially with the loosening of controls in the former Soviet empire. But the generic assertion that trafficking is growing globally cannot be substantiated. A related claim, by activists and some government officials, is that human trafficking has progressed from the third largest criminal enterprise in the world, behind the drug and arms trades, to number two status, behind drugs. I have yet to see any supporting evidence for this claim. Estimates of the profits -- said to be between $5 and $12 billion annually -- are similarly dubious. We simply have no reliable data on which to extrapolate profit margins in black markets.
Conflating sex trafficking with sex work
While U.S. law distinguishes between human trafficking (use of force or deception) and smuggling (voluntary, assisted migration), the U.S. government has gradually moved in the direction of linking all commercial sex to trafficking. In 2004, the State Department created a "factsheet" called The Link Between Prostitution and Trafficking that defined prostitution as "inherently harmful" and proclaimed that it is intrinsically "brutal and damaging to people." Some prominent activists and officials also claim that many women working in pornography and at strip clubs have been trafficked. The evidence for this is wafer thin.
Activists have fought for years to intensify sanctions against "johns," and the U.S. Government has now embraced this campaign. The focus on clients is evident in recent anti-trafficking laws that contain provisions targeting "the demand." The 2005 and 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Acts, for instance, allocated substantial funds for increased local law enforcement against prostitutes' clients. The crackdown applies to all clients, not just those who may have bought sex from a trafficked person. Some officials have expressed concern about such "federalizing" of prostitution enforcement, the traditional domain of local authorities.
Outcomes
We are left with a set of farfetched claims about trafficking, claims that hardly lend themselves to evidence-based policy-making. The available evidence does not allow us to draw any conclusions about the magnitude of the problem. There are no reliable statistics on trafficking in any one nation, let alone worldwide. Even ballpark estimates are guesswork, given the clandestine nature of the sex trade. But precisely because the asserted numbers, trends, and proceeds cannot be verified, they can easily gain a life of their own and a veneer of credibility when repeatedly cited by the media and in government reports. And such grandiose claims certainly have shock value. They alarm the public, generate sensationalized media coverage, and are used to justify huge government expenditures to fight a problem that may have been blown way out of proportion.
And a ton of money indeed has been thrown at the problem -- funding dubious "research" as well as enforcement and interventions in the form of raids. In the first four years of the Bush administration alone, $300 million was awarded to international NGOs involved in anti-trafficking work, in addition to what was spent on domestic efforts. In 2010, the U.S. Government spent $54 million funding international NGOs that run anti-trafficking programs, many of which are faith-based. Some very questionable field interventions have been funded. A report in The Nation noted that some leading NGO's, such as the International Justice Mission, have staged interventions in Southeast Asia that make the situation worse for sex workers -- subjecting them to police abuse, deportation, or "long, involuntary stays in shelters."
Beginning with the Bush administration, anti-trafficking policy has largely been driven by interest groups on the far right and left, lobbyists whose mission is the elimination of all types of commercial sex activity. (Much less focus has been placed on other labor arenas.) The State Department's own Inspector General expressed concern about "the credentials of the organizations and findings of the research that the [State Department's] Trafficking Office funded," and called for much greater oversight and accountability.
A superior approach would discontinue the fruitless practice of "estimating" the number of victims and making unverifiable claims about trends and profits, and instead target enforcement efforts to combat unfree labor in all arenas -- prostitution, agriculture, industry, domestic service -- rather than fighting sexual commerce in general.
Dr. David Liepert: Ending Slavery the Sharia Way
“The ILO has estimated that the minimum number of persons in forced labour is 2.5 million.
According to US Govt 2006, approx. 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders annually, WHICH DOES NOT INCLUDE THE MILLIONS TRAFFICKED WITHIN THEIR OWN COUNTRIES. [Note how Weitzer fails to mention this]
NGO Free the Slaves, estimates that there are 27 MILLION SLAVES in the world today.” UN: http://bit.ly/nJIeoe
2008: US government spent $99 Million combating trafficking ($76 Million International, $23 Million Domestic) http://1.usa.gov/oAzYl3
The FY 2008 U.S. Government expenditures was estimated to be $2.9 TRILLION (http://1.usa.gov/q0gK0W ) making the budget for anti-trafficking programs .0003% of the entire budget. So really, .0003% of the budget is TOO much to spend on combating human slavery?
Weitzer whines @ society publishing articles on why sex. comm. should be legal & made readily available, fighting against the so-called “moral crusades.” I’ve seen very little evidence to suggest that any “moral crusade” is a true threat to the liberal society we enjoy in the United States; Mr. Weitzer certainly does not prove this point nor does he prove any point on why legalizing sex. comm. will contribute to civil society.
To the sex workers who have commented on this story: perhaps if you weren't so self-absorbed you would realize that this issue is bigger than you & your experiences don’t reflect the experiences of all sex workers. Not everyone is privileged enough to CHOOSE to be a sex worker, so stop trying to represent sex workers around globe, including those who DID NOT choose this. I also find it hilarious that you buy into Weitzer’s argument @ media distortion, when after reading many of your blogs, I see that you yourselves have fallen into the trap of media’s portrayal of women i.e. finding the need to get plastic surgery so you can further objectify yourself.
FYI I am not a feminist, I am not anti-porn, I am a liberal, former model & current scholar working with human trafficking victims in the Caucuses, where the problem is REAL.
I did not say that trafficking is not a problem, but instead that it "may" be much less of one than is commonly believed. My argument is that there are no "verifiable facts" regarding the magnitude of trafficking or trends over time. We do know, of course, that there are indeed victims and predators, but aside from that the "facts" you are looking for are opaque, given the clandestine nature of trafficking.
http://bebopper76.wordpress.com/
http://sextraffickingtruths.blogspot.com/
Your statement that the forced enslavement of sex workers is rare - fails to be convincing because of a number of circumstances that you fail to mention, in addtion to assuming that everyone has the middle class U.S. perspective that you assume in your statement.
1. The psychological terror that victims are subjected to (beatings, gang rape, other tortures) are designed to 'train' the victim not to escape. The sex trafficking mafias that predominate in Mexico, for example, use this technique with their tens of thousands of victims, especially in the state of Tlaxcala - just east of Mexico City, which is a collection point, 'training ground' and distribution center for women and girls forced into prostitution.
2. One of the main purposes of moving victims from city-to-city, or in moving them between nations is to isolate them from their families, the social context and even their language. Press articles have for years documented the 'circuit' that trafficked women and girls are forced to travel along the entire U.S. East Coast by Mexican based prostition rings. These victims are 'rotated' every two weeks or so to keep them off-base, and to present new 'merchandise' to their [in this case urban/suburban Latin immigrant] client base. These types of brothels exist 5 miles from where I live in suburbia.
3. Minors, who make up a large number of the victims, are easily manipulated.
I appreciate all the feedback on my article.
I am not the first to critique the dominant discourse and U.S. policy regarding trafficking. See the excellent articles by Jerry Markon (Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2007) and Nick Davies (The Guardian,Oct. 20, 2009).
There are also several academic analyses of what can be called the "politics of trafficking," published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
And both the Justice Department and the General Accountability Office published reports that have questioned many of the unverified claims made by certain politicians, newspaper columnists, & anti-prostitution activists.
Some of the Comments here grossly misinterpret my article. Nowhere do I imply that human trafficking is a myth. I condemn trafficking and agree that stiff countermeasures are needed to fight it. But many claims ABOUT trafficking are entirely unsubstantiated. It is your taxpayer money that is being spent here -- about $1 billion since 2000. We should question whether these funds are being spent wisely.
No one questions that trafficking is a serious problem, and that there are many victims worldwide, My article advocated a more focused targeting of resources toward the apprehension of traffickers and support services for victims -- rather than the current, broad attack on commercial sex in general. The latter was the main goal of the Bush adminstration, with the result that many of the victims of trafficking into agriculture, industry, and domestic service were ignored by government-funded enforcement and rescue operations.
The pro-legalization position is strongly advocated by Professor Ann Jordan of the Washington College of Law at American University. See her most recent article, 2011 State Department Trafficking in Persons Report: A need for more evidence and U.S. accountability: http://rightswork.org/.
I do like Ann Jordan’s emphasis on the need to go after the root causes of sex trafficking, which involve gender inequality and its resulting global female poverty.
At a seminar hosted by Prof. Jordan at AU on pro-legalization, a participant from India declared that a number of career prostitutes in Mumbai send their daughters to private schools, which I find to be utterly preposterous. Invariably the pro-legalization folks reject child prostitution, however we know that in major red light districts such as Mexico City’s La Merced tolerance zone, adult prostitutes sell the virginity of their daughters for a premium price of $800 when they reach age 11.
The pro-legalization lobby is, you could say, a counterweight to the pro-abolition faction, which is heavily conservative and Christian Right. Abolition though, as neither left nor right. It is a common sense position that addresses a global emergency.
At www.LibertadLatina.org we try to represent all viewpoints.
And because YOU find it preposterous despite neither being a career prostitute nor knowing any Indian sex workers as friends, that makes you right and them wrong. Got it.
This post is hate speech, no doubt by someone profiting from the anti-trafficking hysteria and the industry it gives rise to. Great to hear Professor Weitzer's clear arguments and depressing to see them misrepresented by the usual chorus.
My statement about the sale of 11-year-old girls by their mothers in prostitution is neither an invention, nor is it exaggerated. Please see here the original statement, which comes from Teresa Ulloa, one of Mexico's first and leading women's rights attorneys, director of the 250 organization Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women for Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC), and an anti-trafficking activist who works directly in the field, and has her hand on the pulse of the facts...
During a November 30, 2010 press conference given by Ulloa, reporter Blanca Valadez of Milenio magazine reported the following statement from Ms. Ulloa:
"Ulloa states in her report, "During the past two decades the age of initiation of females into prostitution has dropped from 15 to 11. The daughters of sex workers in the La Merced prostitution zone n Mexico City, for example, are condemned without exception to engage in prostitution. Normally, the mother sells her daughter's virginity between the ages of 11 and 13, for an average price of 10,000 Mexican pesos (US$800)."
See: http://www.libertadlatina.org/Lat_Mexico_CATW-LAC_Denounces_Widespread_Child_Prostitution_11-30-2010.htm
What is concerning is that progressives have been largely asleep at the switch in regard to human trafficking, except for the activism of people such as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Liberals - who would have fought anti-Mayan genocide in Guatemala and slavery in the 1860’s South - often yawn upon hearing about modern slavery.
While we can debate the statistics involved, the crisis is real for those who are victimized by it. In the context of Latin America, billion dollar drug cartels are retooling their profit engines to move away from drugs and toward human trafficking. There are brothels that use unwilling Latina women and underage girls in virtually every barrio and farm labor camp in the U.S. The law enforcement response to that imported tradition of impunity is inadequate.
Chuck Goolsby
www.LibertadLatina.org
CharlesGoolsby@Yahoo.com
1. Latin Americans today are an estimated 60% of all trafficking victims brought into the U.S.
2. In 1918 the League of Nations examined forced prostitution and found the Latin America was the epicenter of the global problem.
3. Global mafias focus their kidnapping, torture, rape and overseas transport of victims on Latin American, and especially indigenous and other poor victims, because apathetic and sexist law enforcement will not go after them.
4. The Japanese Yakuza began sex trafficking Colombian women in the 1980s. Currently, they hold captive an estimated 3 to 4,000 indigenous underage girls, kidnapped or entrapped in southern Mexico, who are forced to work as Geisha sex slaves in Japan.
5. The NGO Save the Children has identified the southern Mexican border with Guatemala as being the largest region in the world for CSEC (commercial sexual exploitation of children).
6. The International Organization for migration (IOM) has estimated that between 450 and 600 female Latina migrant women and girls are raped each day in their migration through the same region.
7. The U.S. anti-trafficking movement virtually ignored the Latin American crisis for years, favoring instead a focus on European and Asian victims.
Our site examines these issues in depth.
Chuck Goolsby
Founder and Coordinator
www.LibertadLatina.org
CharlesGoolsby@Yahoo.com
No 'services' are being provided for being arrested for prostitution. No harm reduction is offered to address the harassment and discrimination of having to live with a prostitution arrest on your record. Being arrested and going to jail for working is harm, being made to pay for shame based sex negative diversion programs scheme to benefit anti prostitution/traffickers on our backs is immoral!
If these anti prostitution/traffickers were serious about stopping forced labor in my industry, which they are not, they'd be standing beside us demanding the decriminalization of prostitution and they'd be standing besides us demanding decriminalization of immigration and they'd be standing with us demanding equal protection from sexual harassment and discrimination for all workers.
and that's not what they are doing.
What they are doing is demanding the passing of more laws to arrest us under the guise of 'protection'. They are demanding funding for their salaries and their faux advocacy where their voices eclipse ours.
Only rights can correct the wrongs.
And it is the Bush administrtion (not me) that claimed that most sex workers are coercively trafficked. So, you don't need to remind me of the difference between coercively trafficked persons and other sex workers.