I want to begin by thanking you for the invitation to appear. I do not intend to repeat what is said in the paper that has already been distributed in French and English, in which it is estimated that human trafficking internationally affects between 700,000 and 4 million people, and probably more like 4 million people a year. That may in fact be an underestimation, because part of the trafficking is legal. Last year, for example, Japan delivered 77,000 dance artist visas to people in the sex trade. And that is not included in the figures on human trafficking, because it's legal, and often trafficking is only considered insofar as it involves criminal activity.
Over the last three decades, countries in the southern hemisphere have seen a spectacular rise in prostitution and the trafficking of women and children for purposes of prostitution. And for more than a decade now, that has also been the case in former socialist countries, such as the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. However, the growth of the sex industries and, hence, increased trafficking, is affecting countries in Western Europe and the Southern Pacific that legalized prostitution in the 1990s and 2000.
Victims of international human trafficking for purposes of prostitution are far more numerous than persons trafficked for the purposes of domestic exploitation or as cheap labour. International organizations, such as the ILO, or International Labour Organization, estimate that 92 per cent of the victims of trafficking are used for prostitution, and that 98 per cent of them are young women and girls. The remaining 2 per cent are boys and transvestites.
The greater the expansion of the prostitution industry, the younger the prostitutes, whether or not they are victims of human trafficking -- in other words, recruited abroad or locally. According to the International Organization for Migration, these days victims are younger than previously and children are more and more involved in the process.
Prostitution and trafficking for purposes of prostitution are nothing new. What is new, however, is the international and industrial scale of these phenomena. As a result, the demand for women and children in the sex industries is expanding practically everywhere in the world.
Legalization or regulation of the prostitution industry, including procuring, is resulting in a major expansion of the sex industries and thus an expansion of trafficking for purposes of prostitution. The Netherlands is a good indicator of the expansion that has taken place in the sex industry and the growth of trafficking for purposes of prostitution.
In 1981, there were 2,500 prostitutes; in 2004, the government estimated there to be 30,000 of them. In 1960, 95 per cent of prostitutes in The Netherlands were Dutch. In 1999, only 20 per cent were. In other words, 80 per cent of the prostitutes there are foreigners, and 70 per cent of them are undocumented.
The same phenomenon can be observed in Germany. In the mid-1990s, the number of prostitutes in Germany was estimated to be about 200,000; nowadays, the government estimates that there are 400,000 of them. So, in just a few years, the number of prostitutes doubled. In Germany, between 85 and 90 per cent of prostitutes are foreigners, and thus are victims of human trafficking for purposes of prostitution.
Human trafficking is one of the consequences of the prostitution system. Institutionalization -- in other words, legalizing sex markets -- boosts procuring activity and organized crime, but most importantly, it legitimizes gender inequality.
In those places where the industry has been legitimate for decades, we are seeing what might be called the “prostitutionalization” of the social fabric. I don't believe that word exists in English; so I wish the interpreter good luck.
I want to use the example of Thailand. In the late 1950s, and more specifically in 1957, there were estimated to be 20,000 prostitutes in Thailand. Today, there are more than 2 million, at least one third of whom are children, especially young girls. Just as a point of information, when I use the term “child”, I am using the international definition, which is a person under the age of 18. In that country, almost all the young women and young girls who are prostitutes, whether or not they have been victims of trafficking for purposes of prostitution, and whether or not they are foreigners, were brought into the industry when they were minors. Seventy five per cent of men occasionally or regularly use prostitutes. For the 5.4 million sex tourists that travel to Thailand every year, there are now 450,000 local clients per day.
Among northern tribes there, the birth of a baby girl is celebrated because her anticipated entry into prostitution promises future income. This society has become extensively “prostitutionalized”, becoming one of the most significant destinations in the world for sex tourists of all kinds. Thailand is an important destination and transit point for human trafficking. In fact, this country has turned into a sexual haven for international and local johns, procurers and traffickers, but a sexual nightmare for women and children, not only from there but also from countries adjoining the Mekong region. At this time, more than a third of all women and girls in Northern Thailand have AIDS.
Prostitution and trafficking for purposes of prostitution are the traditional activities of organized crime groups, and the massive expansion of sex markets is largely controlled by organized crime. One cannot imagine human trafficking -- including the type that has a legal character to it, such as the practice of providing artists or exotic dancer visas, which is common in many countries, including ours -- being anything other than a criminal activity. Women and children are bought, sold, and resold through these organized crime networks on local, regional and international markets, and at every stage of their transit from one country to another, they are rented out to clients. These women and children are bought, sold and shipped illegally or, depending on the circumstances, quite openly and legally both inside and outside national borders to the sex markets of the world, from the poorest countries to less poor countries, and finally to the richest countries.
This kind of global trafficking is not some sort of ad hoc operation. It requires paying bribes, and thus relies on corruption from the lowest to the highest levels of society. It also requires that one have the necessary means, which range from buying women and children under false pretences to kidnapping, trickery and forged identity papers. These are international procuring rings that operate this extremely well organized trade. These rings have the benefit of political collusion and access to economic resources, both in the country of origin, those used for transit and the countries of destination.
On a global scale, prostitution and trafficking of women and children for purposes of prostitution simply cannot be spontaneous. Population movements involving hundreds of thousands, indeed, even millions of persons annually, necessarily rely on well-structured organizations operating internationally, with extensive collusion on the part of authorities, huge financial means, and of course a whole host of recruiters, procurers, escorts, warders, “trainers” -- I'll explain what that means -- brothel keepers and killers. Criminal networks recruit women and children on site, provide visas and forged documents and organize their transportation.
Recruitment methods vary, but traffickers almost always resort to deception and violence. The most common method involves putting ads in the papers proposing jobs in another country as a hairdresser, caregiver, domestic worker, waitress, au pair, model or dancer.
Another method involves recruiting them through placement agencies, travel agencies or dating and matrimonial agencies, which are often nothing more than a front for procurers.
Victims of trafficking have also been sold by their family, their boyfriends or institutions such as orphanages.
Once someone has been recruited, that person is kept in a situation of dependency throughout the period that she is trafficked. She is passed from one person to the other until her arrival in her country of destination.
A whole succession of traffickers handle the victims as they are shunted from one place to the next, but the fate of the girls themselves never varies. Rape and other forms of servitude are often used, even for the minority of young women who know why they're being trafficked -- in other words, for purposes of prostitution.
As soon as they arrive in their country of destination, their documentation is confiscated by the traffickers and they are immediately placed on the sex markets. In Canada, that means prostitution, nude dancing, and so on. Those that resist end up in a training camp. There are a number of well-known camps in Europe -- in Italy, but also in France. There they are raped by procurers, and forced to turn 50, 60 or even more tricks a day, until they are psychologically broken.
Human trafficking for purposes of prostitution is a very considerable source of income for criminal organizations who, according to a variety of international police sources -- Interpol, Europol, etc. -- have all become involved in this highly lucrative trade. The profits, which are often laundered by being channeled into legal activities, result in the creation of dummy corporations and, in countries that have legalized prostitution, these dummy corporations carry on their business in the sex industries, although the laundered profits are also used for legal activities.
In the country of destination, the trafficking victims, whether or not they were already prostitutes in their own country, will see their passport and other papers confiscated by the people organizing the prostitution. They will have to repay their travel debt. To that are added fees for room and board, clothing, make-up, condoms, and other items that are all deducted from their income. Once all the costs have been paid, there is practically nothing left for them. A recent investigation by the International Labour Organization determined that prostitutes who are victims of trafficking end up keeping only about 20 per cent of generated income, with the rest going to the procurer.
If the prostitute does not bring in enough money, she will be threatened with sale to another procuring ring, to whom she will again have to repay her debt. She will frequently be moved from one place to another, be threatened with reprisals against her family back home, be subject to psychological, physical and sexual violence, and if she manages to escape her procurer, she runs the risk of being deported as an illegal immigrant. She is completely vulnerable, and rare are the countries that provide services to such persons and protect them from the procurers.
A further report produced by the International Organization for Migration pointed out that deporting prostitutes who are victims of trafficking to their country of origin, because they are illegal immigrants, only made the trafficking problem worse. So, that is not the answer.
And what is the situation here in Canada? Well, we really don't know much. There were two major commissions of inquiry in the 1980s on prostitution and pornography, and another on children working in the sex industries, for example.
However, none of these commissions of inquiry has been able to assess the magnitude of the prostitution and pornography industries and, consequently, the human trafficking industry. We really do not know why. Statistics Canada, which can tell us what colour of underwear immigrants from Sicily were wearing in 1951 or to carry out major assessments of the country's underground economy, has never been able or willing to tell us what the current state of the prostitution industry here in Canada actually is. As a result, we know neither how many prostitutes there are, nor what kind of income the industry generates.
I would also like to address a couple of facts we have been able to gather some information on. We know that, as regards human trafficking for purposes of prostitution and pornography, Canada is a country of both destination and transit, as well as being an originating country, something that few analysts actually talk about. In 1999, for example, the Government of British Columbia disclosed the existence of a ring involved in the trafficking of children for purposes of prostitution from its base in that province to cities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the western United States. In 2001, the report of the U.S. State Department on Human Trafficking stated that some minors of Canadian origin had been victims of trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation. The destination was the United States.
A criminal group in Vancouver, the West Coast Players, was known for being involved in trafficking for purposes of teenage prostitution. In that case, the destination was Los Angeles. In September of 1997, we learned that every week, 12 young Asian women aged from 16 to 30 and with tourist visas were being trafficked for purposes of prostitution in Canada. They were sold to brothel keepers in Markham, Scarborough, Toronto and Los Angeles. They were enslaved because of a $40,000 debt.
In 1999, the U.S. State Department's Human Rights Report stated that young girls from Costa Rica, shunted across Central America and Mexico, were engaged in prostitution in the United States and Canada. The same source reported that Malaysian women had been victims of trafficking to become prostitutes in Canada. In its 2003 report on human trafficking, the U.S. State Department pointed out that young girls and girl children from Honduras, Slovenia and Malaysia had been trafficked for purposes of prostitution here in Canada.
In the late 1990s, the Chinese and Vietnamese mafias expanded their operations in brothels in Toronto and recruited women and girls into the trade from across Southeast Asia. The women who fell victim to this trafficking were purchased by recruiters for $8,000 or less and were sold for $15,000 to procurers. Several dozen Asian women were “freed from their sexual slavery” following a series of raids by the Toronto police which, at the time, resulted in the closure of 10 brothels. The police estimated that this procuring ring was providing between 30 and 40 women to about 15 brothels in Toronto on a quarterly basis.
The Canadian police also arrested more than 40 people with links to an international prostitution and trafficking ring that sold hundreds of Asian women in North America. However, the exact number of victims is unknown. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, approximately 800 people, primarily women and children, fall victim every year to trafficking for purposes of prostitution in Canada. However, non-government organizations estimate the number to be 15,000. As you can see, there is quite a gap between 800 and 15,000. But already in 1998, according to a report submitted to the Solicitor General of Canada, between 8,000 and 16,000 persons -- which was already a very large gap -- were estimated to be entering Canada every year with the help of smugglers.
So, to conclude, the unbridled growth of the sex industries means that fundamental human rights are increasingly being violated, particularly the rights of women and children who are treated as sexual merchandise.
One could even say that the status of women and children internationally has suffered a serious setback. In many countries, under the impact of structural adjustment policies, women and children have become what is known as new raw resources -- in other words, resources that can be exploited and exported as part of the effort to develop national and international trade. Globalization of the sex industries considerably strengthens a system of oppression and enslavement of women to the sexual pleasures of others -- that is, men.
By reducing women and girls to the status of merchandise that can be bought, sold, rented out, appropriated, exchanged or acquired, prostitution and trafficking for purposes of prostitution affect women as a group. They reinforce the connection between women and sex, established by a macho society, reducing women to a lesser form of humanity and thereby relegating them to inferior status.
The struggle against human trafficking can only succeed if it tackles the root cause of the trafficking, which is prostitution. That struggle is part of the more general goal of fighting for equality between women and men. And that equality will remain out of reach as long as men can buy, sell and sexually exploit women and children by forcing them into prostitution.
Thank you.