Forced prostitution, also known as involuntary prostitution, is prostitution or sexual slavery that takes place as a result of coercion by a third party. The terms "forced prostitution" or "enforced prostitution" appear in international and humanitarian conventions such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court but have been insufficiently understood and inconsistently applied. "Forced prostitution" refers to conditions of control over a person who is coerced by another to engage in sexual activity.
Forced prostitution is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation.
Legal situation
Forced prostitution is illegal under customary law in all countries.
This is different from voluntary prostitution which may have a
different legal status in different countries, which range from being
fully illegal and punishable by death to being legal and regulated as an occupation.
While the legality of adult prostitution varies between jurisdictions, the prostitution of children is illegal nearly everywhere in the world.
In 1949, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others.
This Convention supersedes a number of earlier conventions that covered
some aspects of forced prostitution, and also deals with other aspects
of prostitution. It penalises the procurement and enticement to
prostitution as well as the maintenance of brothels. As at December 2013, the Convention has only been ratified by 82 countries.
One of the main reasons it has not been ratified by many countries is
because it 'voluntary' is broadly defined in countries with a legal sex
industry. For example, in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Greece, Turkey, and other countries some forms of prostitution and pimping are legal and regulated as professional occupations.
Child prostitution
Child prostitution is considered inherently non-consensual and
exploitative, as children, because of their age, are not legally able to
consent. In most countries child prostitution is illegal irrespective
of the child reaching a lower statutory age of consent.
State parties to the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography
are required to prohibit child prostitution. The Protocol defines a
child as any human being under the age of 18, "unless an earlier age of majority is recognized by a country's law". The Protocol entered into force on 18 January 2002, and as of December 2013, 166 states are party to the Protocol and another 10 states have signed but not yet ratified it.
The Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (Convention No 104) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) provides that the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution is one of the worst forms of child labor. This convention,
adopted in 1999, provides that countries that had ratified it must
eliminate the practice urgently. It enjoys the fastest pace of
ratifications in the ILO's history since 1919.
In the United States, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000
classifies any "commercial sex act [which] is induced by force, fraud,
or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not
attained 18 years of age" to be a "Severe Form of Trafficking in
Persons".
In many countries, especially poorer countries, child
prostitution remains a very serious problem, and numerous tourists from
the Western World travel to these countries to engage in child sex tourism. Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico have been identified as leading hotspots of child sexual exploitation.
Human trafficking
Human trafficking, especially of girls and women, often leads to
forced prostitution and sexual slavery. According to a report by the UNODC, internationally, the most common destinations for victims of human trafficking are Thailand, Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United States. The major sources of trafficked persons are Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine.
Following the first international conference on the prevention of
trafficking of women in Paris in 1885 a series of initiatives to
restrict the trade of women into the sex trade were initiated. Both the League of Nations and the United Nations have addressed the issue.
A 2010 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
report estimates that globally, 79% of identified victims of human
trafficking were trafficked for sexual exploitation, 18% for forced
labor, and 3% for other forms of exploitation. In 2011, preliminary European Commission
in September 2011 similarly estimated that among human-trafficking
victims, 75% were trafficked for sexual exploitation and the rest for
forced labor or other forms of exploitation.
Due to the illegal nature of prostitution and the different
methodologies used in separating forced prostitution from voluntary
prostitution, the extent of this phenomenon is difficult to estimate
accurately. According to a 2008 report by the U.S. Department of State:
"Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in
2006, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders,
which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries.
Approximately 80% of transnational victims are women and girls and up to
50% are minors, and the majority of transnational victims are
trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation." A 2014 European Commission report found that from 2010 to 2013, a total of 30,146 people were registered as victims of human trafficking in the 28 member states of the European Union; of these, 69% were victims of sexual exploitation.
In 2004, The Economist claimed that only a small proportion of prostitutes were explicitly trafficked against their will.
Elizabeth Pisani
protested against the perceived hysteria around human trafficking
preceding sport events like the Super Bowl or World Cup of Soccer.
The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (also referred to as the Palermo Protocol) is a protocol to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime
and defines human trafficking as the "recruitment, transportation,
transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or
use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of
deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of
the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent
of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of
exploitation."
For this reason, threat, coercion, or use of force is not necessary to
constitute trafficking, the exploitation of an existing vulnerability –
such as economic vulnerability or sexual vulnerability – is sufficient. Sigma Huda,
UN special reporter on trafficking in persons, observed that "For the
most part, prostitution as actually practiced in the world usually does
satisfy the elements of trafficking." However Save the Children
sees explicit trafficking and prostitution as different issues: "The
issue [human trafficking] however, gets mired in controversy and
confusion when prostitution too is considered as a violation of the
basic human rights of both adult women and minors, and equal to sexual
exploitation per se. From this standpoint then, trafficking and
prostitution become conflated with each other".
Voluntary vs involuntary prostitution
With regard to prostitution, three worldviews exist: abolitionism (where the prostitute is considered a victim), regulation (where the prostitute is considered a worker) and prohibitionism (where the prostitute is considered a criminal). Currently all these views are represented in some Western country.
For the proponents of the abolitionist view, prostitution is
always a coercive practice, and the prostitute is seen as a victim. They
argue that most prostitutes are forced into the practice, either
directly, by pimps and traffickers, indirectly through poverty, drug addiction and other personal problems, or, as it has been argued in recent decades by radical feminists such as Andrea Dworkin, Melissa Farley and Catharine MacKinnon, merely by patriarchal social structures and power relations between men and women.
William D. Angel finds that "most" prostitutes have been forced into the
occupation through poverty, lack of education and employment
possibilities. Kathleen Barry
argues that there should be no distinction between "free" and
"coerced", "voluntary" and "involuntary" prostitution, "since any form
of prostitution is a human rights violation, an affront to womanhood
that cannot be considered dignified labour".
France's Green Party
argues: "The concept of "free choice" of the prostitute is indeed
relative, in a society where gender inequality is institutionalized".
The proponents of the abolitionist view hold that prostitution is a
practice which ultimately leads to the mental, emotional and physical
destruction of the women who engage in it, and, as such, it should be
abolished. As a result of such views on prostitution, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland have enacted laws which criminalize the clients of the prostitutes, but not the prostitutes themselves.
In contrast to the abolitionist view, those who are in favour of
legalization do not consider the women who practice prostitution as
victims, but as independent adult women who had made a choice which
should be respected. Mariska Majoor, former prostitute and founder of
the Prostitution Information Center, from Amsterdam,
holds that: "In our [sex workers'] eyes it's a profession, a way of
making money; it's important that we are realistic about this ...
Prostitution is not bad; it's only bad if done against one's will. Most
women make this decision themselves."
According to proponents of regulation, prostitution should be
considered a legitimate activity, which must be recognized and
regulated, in order to protect the workers' rights and to prevent abuse.
The prostitutes are treated as sex workers who enjoy benefits similar to other occupations. The World Charter for Prostitutes Rights (1985), drafted by the International Committee for Prostitutes' Rights, calls for the decriminalisation of "all aspects of adult prostitution resulting from individual decision". Since the mid-1970s, sex workers across the world have organised, demanding the decriminalisation of prostitution, equal protection under the law, improved working conditions, the right to pay taxes, travel and receive social benefits such as pensions. As a result of such views on prostitution, countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand have fully legalized prostitution. Prostitution is considered a job like any other.
In its understanding of the distinction between sex work and forced prostitution, the Open Society Foundations
organization states: "sex work is done by consenting adults, where the
act of selling or buying sexual services is not a violation of human
rights".
Legal discrimination
Sexual discrimination happens to those who work both in sex work and forced prostitution. Historically, crimes involving violence against women and having to do with prostitution and sex work have been taken less seriously by the law. Although acts such as the Violence Against Women Act
have been passed to take steps toward preventing such violence, there
is still sexism rooted in the way that the legal system approaches these
cases. Gender based violence is a serious form of discrimination that
has slipped through many cracks in the legal system of the United
States. These efforts have fallen short due to the fact that there is no constitutional protection for women against discrimination.
There is often no evidence, according to police, that when men
are arrested for soliciting a prostitute that it is a gender based
crime. However, there are large discrepancies between the arrests of
prostitutes and the arrests of men caught in the act. While 70% of
prostitution related arrests are of woman prostitutes, only 10% of
related arrests are men/customers.
Regardless if the girl or woman is either underage or forced into the
exchange, she is still often arrested and victim blamed instead of being
offered resources. The men who are charged with engaging in these
illegal acts with woman who are prostitutes are able to pay for the
exchange and therefore are usually able to pay for their release while
the woman may not be able to. This generates a cycle of violence against
women, as the situation’s outcome favors the man. In one case, a
nineteen-year-old woman in Oklahoma was charged with offering to engage
in prostitution when the woman was known to have previously been a
victim of human sex trafficking.
She is an example of how the criminalization of prostitution often
leads to women being arrested multiple times due to the fact that they
are often punished or arrested even when the victim of a situation.
Young women and girls have a much higher likelihood of getting arrested
for prostitution than boys in general, and woman victims of human
trafficking often end up being arrested upon multiple occasions, being
registered as a sex offender, and being institutionalized. The lack of
rehabilitation given to women after experiences with human sex trafficking contributes to the cycles of arrests that most woman who engage in prostitution face.
The ERA or Equal Rights Amendment is a proposed amendment to the U.S Constitution that has not yet been ratified. It would guarantee that equal rights could not be denied under the law on account of sex.
With this amendment in place, it would allow for sex workers and
victims of human sex trafficking to have legal leverage when it comes to
the discrepancies in how men and women (customers and prostitutes) are
prosecuted. This is due to the fact that there would be legal grounds to
argue the unequal legal treatment on account of sex, which is not
currently outlawed by the U.S constitution. Although there are other
acts and laws that protect against discrimination based on a variety of
categories and identities, they are often not substantial enough,
provide loopholes, and do not offer adequate protection. This connects to liberal feminism
and the more individualistic approach that comes with this theory.
Liberal feminists believe that there should be equality between the
sexes and this should be gained through equal legal rights, equal
education, and women having "greater self value as individuals".
This theory focuses on equality at a more individual level as supposed
to rethinking legal systems themselves or systems of gender, just as the
ERA works for the equality of sexes within an existing system.
Global situation
Europe
In Europe, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the former Eastern bloc countries such as Albania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine have been identified as the major source countries for trafficking of women and children.
Young women and girls are often lured to wealthier countries by the
promises of money and work and then reduced to sexual slavery.
It is estimated that two thirds of women trafficked for prostitution worldwide annually come from Eastern Europe and China, three-quarters of whom have never worked as prostitutes before. The major destinations are Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey, the Middle East (Israel, the United Arab Emirates), Asia, Russia and the United States.
Americas
Mobster Charles "Lucky" Luciano was convicted of compulsory prostitution and running a prostitution racket in the USA in 1936
In Mexico, many criminal organisations lure, and capture women and
use them in brothels. Once the women become useless to the
organisations, they are often killed. Often, the criminal organisations
focus on poor, unemployed girls, and lure them via job offerings
(regular jobs), done via billboards and posters, placed on the streets.
In some cities, like Ciudad Juárez,
there is a high degree of corruption in all levels on the social ladder
(police, courts, ...) which makes it more difficult to combat this
criminal activity. Hotels where women are kept and which are known by
the police are often also not raided/closed down by police. Nor are the
job offerings actively investigated. Some NGO's such as Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa A.C. are trying to fight back, often without much success.
In the US, in 2002, the US Department of State repeated an earlier CIA
estimate that each year, about 50,000 women and children are brought
against their will to the United States for sexual exploitation. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that "[h]ere and abroad, the victims of trafficking toil under inhuman conditions – in brothels, sweatshops, fields and even in private homes."
In addition to internationally trafficked victims, American citizens
are also forced into prostitution. According to the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, "100,000 to 293,000 children are in
danger of becoming sexual commodities."
Middle East
Eastern European women are trafficked to several Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Until 2004, Israel was a destination for human trafficking for the sex industry.
A high number of the Iraqi women fleeing the Iraq War
turned to prostitution, while others were trafficked abroad, to
countries like Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates,
Turkey, and Iran. In Syria alone, an estimated 50,000 Iraqi refugee girls and women, many of them widows, had become prostitutes. Cheap Iraqi prostitutes helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists before the Syrian Civil War. The clients come from wealthier countries in the Middle East. High prices are offered for virgins.
Asia
In Asia, Japan is the major destination country for trafficked women, especially from the Philippines
and Thailand. The US State Department has rated Japan as either a ‘Tier
2’ or a ‘Tier 2 Watchlist’ country every year since 2001, in its annual
Trafficking in Persons reports. Both these ratings implied that
Japan was (to a greater or lesser extent) not fully compliant with
minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking trade. As of 2009, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 people are trafficked through Southeast Asia, much of it for prostitution. It is common that Thai women are lured to Japan and sold to Yakuza-controlled brothels where they are forced to work off their price. Further in Japan, prejudice and the absence of anti-discrimination acts often drive a trans woman into forced prostitution. In Cambodia at least a quarter of the 20,000 people working as prostitutes are children with some being as young as 5. By the late 1990s, UNICEF estimated that there are 60,000 child prostitutes in the Philippines, describing Angeles City brothels as "notorious" for offering sex with children.
For the last decade it has been estimated that 6,000 - 7,000
girls are trafficked out of Nepal each year. But these numbers have
recently risen substantially. Current numbers for girls trafficked out
of the country are now 10,000 to 15,000 yearly. This is compounded as
the US Central Intelligence Agency states that most trafficked girls are
currently worth, in their span as a sex-worker, approx $250,000 (USD)
on the sex-trades market.
North Korea
The North Korean state engages in forced prostitution. Girls as young as 14 years old are drafted to work in the kippŭmjo. Not all kippŭmjo
work as prostitutes; the source used is unclear as to whether only
adult women are assigned to prostitution, or whether there is prostitution of children. Other kippŭmjo activities are massaging and half-naked singing and dancing. According to the same source from April 2005, "60 to 70% of [North Korean] defectors [in the People's Republic of China]
are women, 70 to 80% of whom are victims of human trafficking." North
Korean authorities severely punish or even kill repatriated prostitutes
and kill their Chinese-fathered children, born and unborn alike.
History
Forced prostitution has existed throughout history.
Nazi Germany
German military brothels were set up by the Third Reich during World War II throughout much of occupied Europe for the use of Wehrmacht and SS soldiers. These brothels were generally new creations, but in the West, they were sometimes set up using existing brothels as well as many other buildings. Until 1942, there were around 500 military brothels of this kind in German-occupied Europe. Often operating in confiscated hotels and guarded by the Wehrmacht, these facilities used to serve travelling soldiers and those withdrawn from the front.
According to records, at least 34,140 European women were forced to
serve as prostitutes during the German occupation of their own countries
along with female prisoners of concentration camp brothels.
In many cases in Eastern Europe, the women involved were kidnapped on
the streets of occupied cities during German military and police round ups called łapanka or rafle.
In World War II, Nazi Germany established brothels in the concentration camps (Lagerbordell) to create an incentive for prisoners to collaborate, although these institutions were used mostly by Kapos,
"prisoner functionaries" and the criminal element, because regular
inmates, penniless and emaciated, were usually too debilitated and wary
of exposure to Schutzstaffel
(SS) schemes. In the end, the camp brothels did not produce any
noticeable increase in the prisoners' work productivity levels, but
instead, created a market for coupons among the camp VIPs. The women forced into these brothels came mainly from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, except for Auschwitz, which employed its own prisoners. In combination with the German military brothels in World War II, it is estimated that at least 34,140 female inmates were forced into sexual slavery during the Third Reich.
Comfort women
Rangoon, Burma. 8 August 1945. A young ethnic Chinese woman from one of the Imperial Japanese Army's "comfort battalions" is interviewed by an Allied officer.
Comfort women is a euphemism for women working in military brothels, especially by the Japanese military during World War II.
Around 200,000 are typically estimated to have been involved, with estimates as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars and estimates of up to 410,000 from some Chinese scholars,
but the disagreement about exact numbers is still being researched and
debated. Historians and researchers have stated that the majority were
from Korea, China, Japan and Philippines but women from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, East Timor and other Japanese-occupied territories were also used in "comfort stations". Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then Malaya, Thailand, then Burma, then New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and what was then French Indochina.
Young women from countries under Japanese Imperial control were
reportedly abducted from their homes. In some cases, women were also
recruited with offers to work in the military. It has been documented that the Japanese military itself recruited women by force. However, Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata stated that there was no organized forced recruitment of comfort women by the Japanese government or military.
The number and nature of comfort women servicing the Japanese
military during World War II is still being actively debated, and the
matter is still highly political in both Japan and the rest of the Far East Asia.
Many military brothels were run by private agents and supervised
by the Korean Police. Some Japanese historians, using the testimony of
ex-comfort women, have argued that the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy
were either directly or indirectly involved in coercing, deceiving,
luring, and sometimes kidnapping young women throughout Japan's Asian colonies and occupied territories.
Religious attitudes
Hinduism
In Southern India & eastern Indian state of Odisha, devadasi is the practice of hierodulic prostitution, with similar customary forms such as basavi,
and involves dedicating pre-pubescent and young adolescent girls from
villages in a ritual marriage to a deity or a temple, who then work in
the temple and function as spiritual guides, dancers, and prostitutes
servicing male devotees in the temple. Human Rights Watch
reports claim that devadasis are forced into this service and, at least
in some cases, to practice prostitution for upper-caste members.
Various state governments in India
enacted laws to ban this practice both prior to India's independence
and more recently. They include Bombay Devdasi Act, 1934, Devdasi
(Prevention of dedication) Madras Act, 1947, Karnataka Devdasi
(Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1982, and Andhra Pradesh Devdasi
(Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1988. However, the tradition continues in certain regions of India, particularly the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
