Scholars, Activists Condemn Trafficking of Women

In honor of International Women's Day, the Women and Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) held a panel discussion on "Global Trafficking: The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls" last night at the KSG's ARCO Forum.

Samya Burni, director of the trafficking program for Human Rights Watch of New York; Laura Lederer, research director of the Kennedy School's Protection Project of the Women and Public Policy Program; Marsha Liss, trial attorney for the child exploitation and obscenity section of the criminal division in the U.S. Department of Justice; Frederick Schauer, academic dean of the Kennedy School and principal investigator for the Protection Project and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) spoke at the panel.

The panelists discussed several issues regarding the sexual exploitation of women and girls, including the relevant legal statues, the victims' human rights and the legalization of prostitution.

According to Burni, trafficking involves the abduction and trickery of women into prostitution, domestic service and sweatshop labor.

Examples include instances when girls are sold into prostitution by their parents and when women are tricked into leaving their homeland to work as slaves in a sweatshop or as pimps' prostitutes in a brothel.

Combating trafficking involves two dimensions, Burni said. Increasing police power alone ignores the other dimension--the human rights of the trafficking victims, she said.

Burni called for national legal systems to put in place rights for victims that would allow them to redress their victimizers. "The laws in place now result in the victims getting treated like returnable goods--sending them back to where they came from--instead of human rights victims," she said.

Because trafficking victims are sometimes transported across borders, law enforcement within countries fails to fight trafficking, Lederer said. "One example of this problem is the varying ages at which girls are considered women in different countries," Lederer said. "In some countries girls are considered women at the age of 12 rather than 18."

The Protection Project aims to create an International Legal framework that protects victims of trafficking. Lederer said project coordinators are currently in the process of surveying the laws connected to the trafficking of 222 countries, and over 160 countries have responded.

"The Protection Project is translating, collecting, analyzing and studying laws to yield a model of laws dealing with trafficking," Schauer said.

Liss emphasized the presence of trafficking in America. She cited instances that resulted in two men receiving 20-year sentences for exploiting two girls in Las Vegas and a Massachusetts man found guilty on 18 counts of trafficking.

Slaughter focused on the condition of women in relation to trafficking.

"Women have been considered so cheap," Slaughter said. "In order to combat trafficking the value of women needs to be instilled."

According to Slaughter, $7.5 billion is made each year in the trafficking of women and girls in America and 250,000 women are trafficked across Europe daily.

Following the speakers' presentations, panel attendees asked the speakers about other strategies to combat trafficking. One member of the audience asked about legalizing prostitution as one strategy.

"The illegality of prostitution adds to the marginalization of trafficked women," Burni answered.

Some of those who attended the panel said they were doubtful about the possibility of successfully defeating trafficking.

"The Mafia runs a lot of the trafficking circles and they have ways of getting around the law," said Heather L. Feldman, a Brandeis graduate student and coordinator of the Lubin Symposium, which will address trafficking this year.