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Transitional Road for Traffic: Analysing Trafficking in Women From and Through Central and Eastern Europe

2005; Routledge; Volume: 57; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09668130500105118

1465-3427

Chris Corrin,

Gender Politics and Representation

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I am using the regional context loosely for comparative purposes to include all CEE and CIS countries—not only the Central European countries of Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia but also those countries in southeastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosova, Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of), Republic of Serbia and Montenegro—excluding Kosova, Romania), and the Eastern European countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and the CIS (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova (Republic of), Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). It is recognised that these groupings of countries have been labeled variously over time until the twenty-first century changes of EU accession and pre-accession processes. For an in-depth analysis of women's rights in this region see International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), Women 2000. An Investigation into the Status of Women's Rights in Central and South-Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States (Vienna, 2000). Women, and men and children, are also exploited as migrant labourers and for organ harvesting. That women in these societies had endured a ‘double burden’ is recognised and in the now marketised systems women still function as a reserve labour force for both production and reproduction, so that women's ‘worth’ fluctuates in times of war, economic depression and restructuring. For various studies on some of the reasons why women experienced this secondary positioning prior to and immediately following these changes see C. Corrin, Superwomen and the Double Burden: Women's Experience of Change in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (London, Scarlet Press, 1992); C. Corrin, Magyar Women: Hungarian Women's Lives 1960s – 1990s (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1994); B. Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market (London, Verso, 1993); N. Funk & M. Mueller (eds), Gender Politics and Post-Communism (London, Routledge, 1993); S. Gal & G. Kligman, The Politics of Gender After Socialism (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2000); S. Rai et al., Women in the Face of Change (London, Routledge, 1992); T. Renne (ed.), Ana's Land: Sisterhood in Eastern Europe (Oxford, Westview, 1997). Traffic in persons develops for many purposes, including the traffic in children and human organs. See L. D. Long, ‘Trafficking in Women and Children as a Security Challenge in Southeast Europe’, Southeast European and Black Seas Studies, 2, May 2002, pp. 53 – 68. For the full text of Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security 2000 and follow-up Reports by Secretary General and UNIFEM see www.peacewomen.org. See initially Jyoti Sangera, ‘In the Belly of the Beast: Sex Trade, Prostitution and Globalisation’, Discussion Paper for South Asia Regional Consultation on Prostitution, February 1999, Bangkok, http://www.hshp.harvard.edu/Organizations/healthnet.Sasia/repro2/issue2.htm. B. Limanowska, Trafficking in Human Beings in Southeastern Europe (UNICEF, UNOHCHR and OSCE-ODIHR, June 2002), p. 6. Sangera, ‘In the Belly of the Beast: …’; S. Sassen, ‘Women's Burden: Counter Geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival’, Journal of International Affairs, 53, 2, 2000, pp. 503 – 524. On Poland, for example, Leven notes ‘extensive’ social services were provided under the state-socialist regime with three years paid maternity leave and ‘inexpensive’ day care facilities; see Bozena Leven, ‘The Welfare of Polish Women before and during Transition’, in J. Rivers & Y. Mahmood (eds), Economic Dimensions of Gender Inequality: Global Perspectives (Westport, Praeger Publishers, 1997). J. Berman, ‘(Un)Popular Strangers and Crises (Un)Bounded: Discourses of Sex-Trafficking, the European Political Community and the Panicked State of the Modern State’, European Journal of International Relations, 9, 1, 2004, pp. 37 – 86. A. Murray, ‘Debt-Bonding and Trafficking: Don't Believe the Hype’, in Kamala Kempadoo & Jo Doezema (eds), Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition (New York, Routledge, 1998), pp. 51 – 64. Limanowska, Trafficking in Human Beings …, p. xiii. B. Sullivan, ‘Trafficking in Women: Feminism and New International Law’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 5, 1, March 2003, pp. 67 – 91. Radhika Coomaraswamy, ‘Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective: Violence against Women’, Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, on trafficking in women, women's migration and violence against women, submitted in accordance with the UN Commission on Human Rights resolution 1997/44, Fifty-sixth session E/CN.4/2000/68, 29 February 2000. See A. Atkinson & J. Micklewright, Economic Transformations in Eastern Europe and the Distribution of Income (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992). See Gy. Konrad & I. Szelenyi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New York, Brace Harcourt, 1978). Economic Survey of Europe, 2004, 1, p. 163. Ibid. For details of the joint initiative of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Development Bank, attempting to enhance economic growth and reduce poverty among the CIS-7 see www.cis.7.org. J. Gorniak, ‘Poverty in Transition: Lessons from Eastern Europe and Central Asia’, in Alejandro Grinspun (ed.), Choice for the Poor: Lessons from National Poverty Strategies (New York, UNDP, 2004, pp. 145 – 172. A. Marcoux, ‘The Feminisation of Poverty: Facts, Hypotheses and the Art of Advocacy’, in Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Sustainable Development Dimensions, 1997, http://www.Fao.org/sd/wpdirect/wpan. A. Kartusch, Reference Guide for Anti-Trafficking Legislative Review (Berlin, Ludwig Botzmann Institute of Human Rights and OSCE/ODIHR, September 2001), p. 6. International Organisation for Migration, Trafficking and Prostitution: The Growing Exploitation of Migration Women from Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest, Migration Information Programme, 1995); C. Corrin, Women in a Violent World: Feminist Analyses and Resistance Across ‘Europe’ (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1996), pp. 204 – 231; and Limonowska, ‘Trafficking in Human Beings…’. See initially Gal & Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism; J. Heinen & S. Portet, ‘Political and Social Citizenship’, in M. Molyneux & S. Razavi (eds), Gender Justice, Development and Rights (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 141 – 169. UNICEF, The Situation of Children and Women in the Republic of Moldova 2000 – 2001: Assessment and Analysis (Moldova, 2000). Ibid. Limanowska, Trafficking in Human Beings…. B. Bell, ‘Europe's Human Trafficking Hub’, BBC News, 23 May 2003, p.1, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2931646.stm . S. Scanlan, Report on Trafficking from Moldova: Irregular Labour Markets and Restrictive Migration Policies in Western Europe (Geneva, International Labour Organisation, 2002). General figures are impossible to generate here but examples from Ukraine note that from Israel alone, some 1,500 women were deported back to Russia and Ukraine during 1995 – 97 and data from the embassy of Ukraine in Greece showed around 3,000 young women involved in legal and illegal prostitution in Athens and Thessaloniki, and nearly 5,000 in Turkey. For a detailed analysis of Moldovan women migrants in Turkey see L. J. Keough, ‘Driven Women: Reconceptualizing the Traffic in Women in the Margins of Europe Through the Case of Gagauz Mobile Domestics in Istanbul’, Anthropology of East Europe Review, 21, 2, 2003. Author's interviews with women involved in attempting to eliminate the traffic in women from and through Albania, September 2003. Bell, ‘Europe's Human Trafficking Hub’, p.2. Elisabeth Rehn & Ellen J. Sirleaf, Women, War and Peace: The Independent Experts' Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women's Role in Peace-Building (New York, UNIFEM, 2002). Donna M. Hughes, ‘The “Natasha” Trade: Transnational Sex Trafficking’, National Institute of Justice Journal, January 2001, p. 9. Coomaraswamy, ‘Integration of the Human Rights of Women …’. See M. Orphant, Trafficking in Persons: Myths, Methods and Human Rights (New York, Population Reference Bureau, 2004). Author's interviews with women involved in prevention of traffic in women from and through Albania, September 2003. For discussion of tightening Swiss controls on mail-order brides and consequent problems for migrant women workers see Corrin, Women in a Violent World …. R. Cohen, ‘Papers, Please: Europe's Love – Hate Affair with Foreigners’, New York Times, 24 December 2000; S. Erlanger, ‘An Anti-Immigrant Europe is Creeping Rightwards’, New York Times, 30 January 2002. For the text of this protocol, often termed the ‘Women's Protocol’, see www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions. See Kartusch, Reference Guide …, p. 6. See Kvinnoforum, Crossing Borders Against Trafficking in Women and Girls: A Resource Book for Working Against Trafficking in the Baltic Seas Region (Stockholm, Kvinnoforum, November 1999), pp. 8 – 9. Coomaraswamy, ‘Integration of the Human Rights of Women …’, p. 10. Y.A. Vargas (in collaboration with Kamala Kempadoo), ‘International Report Project on Trafficking in Women: Latin American and Caribbean Region’, Utrecht, STV/CAFRA, 1996. C. Offe, Varieties of Transition (Oxford, Polity Press, 1996), p. 31. C. Corrin, ‘Traffic in Women in War and Peace: Mapping Experiences in Southeast Europe’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 12, 2, August 2004. Limanowska, Trafficking in Human Beings, p. xv. Various UN agencies (UNICEF, UNOHCHR and OSCE – ODIHR) contributed to the large study on Trafficking in Human Beings in Southeastern Europe edited by Barbara Limanowska published in June 2002. Numerous feminist NGO reports are included in Rehn & Sirleaf, Women, War and Peace. J. Goodey, ‘Migration, Crime and Victimhood: Responses to Sex Trafficking in the EU’, Punishment and Society, 54, 4, 2003, p. 417. See R. Skeldon, ‘Trafficking: A Perspective from Asia’, International Migration, 38, 3, 2000, pp. 7 – 30. Statistics from International Organisation for Migration, Trafficking in Migrants Quarterly Bulletin, No. 23, April 2001, Special Issue, Fig. 1, Voluntary IOM-Assisted Returns of Trafficked women from the Balkans and Western Europe in 2000. I use the simplistic dualism of push/pull factors as descriptive shorthand only. In reality so-called ‘push’ factors of destitution become reinterpreted in some contexts as pull factors—the lure of ‘the West’—when there are no other options. However, that many women make the (often limited) choice to migrate for work does highlight women's agency. See initially Rehn & Sirleaf, Women, War and Peace. C. Corrin, ‘Le Trafic des femmes dans l'Europe du Sud-Est. Particularités locales, généralités internationales’, Travail, Genre et Sociétés, 20, 2003, pp. 83 – 106. See Limanowska, Trafficking in Human Beings. Specific discussion of this development is contained in the Final Report of the Commission of Experts of the United Nations established to analyse evidence of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia (1995 Report, p. 60, para. 251). Feminist analyses of these policy developments are contained in J. Peters & Andrea Wolpe (eds), Women's Rights Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives (New York, Routledge, 1995). R. Wareham, No Safe Place: An Assessment of Violence Against Women in Kosovo (Prishtina, UNIFEM, 2000). C. Enloe, The Morning After:Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993). See initially L. Mladjenovic & Divna Matijasevic, ‘Dirty Streets’, in Corrin, Women in a Violent World, pp. 119 – 132. There have been many studies of war violence and prostitution of women in this context, including Enloe, The Morning After, and the International Organisation for Migration 1995 Study. On Kosova see Wareham, No Safe Place…, pp. 79 – 101. Rehn & Sirleaf, Women, War and Peace. Ibid. Sunila Abeyesekera, ‘A Women's Human Rights Perspective on War and Conflict’, WHRnet, February 2003, http://www.whrnet.org/docs/perspective-abeyesekera-0302.html. Amnesty International, ‘So Does That Mean I Have Rights?: Protecting the Human Rights of Women and Girls Trafficked for Forced Prostitution in Kosovo’, 2004, www.amnesty.org/actforwomen p.2. Belma Becirbasic & Dzenana Secic, ‘Invisible Casualties of War’, Balkan Crisis Report, No. 383, 19 November 2002. C. Corrin, ‘Engendering Citizenship: Feminist Resistance to Male Violence in “Europe”’, in V. Ferreira, T. Tavares & S. Portugal (eds), Shifting Bonds, Shifting Bounds: Women, Mobility and Citizenship in Europe (Coimbra, Celta Editora, 1998). For various European perspectives on these issues see Corrin, Women in a Violent World. Amnesty International, ‘So Does That Mean I Have Rights?’ See I. Skhelsbaek, ‘Sexual Violence in Times of War: A New Challenge for Peace Operations?’, in L. Olsson & T.L. Tryggestad (eds), Women and International Peacekeeping (London, Frank Cass, 2001), pp. 69 – 84. See C. Rathgeber, ‘The Victimization of Women through Human Trafficking—An Aftermath of War?’, European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, 10, 2 – 3, 2002, pp. 152 – 163. D. McGregory, ‘Woman Sacked for Revealing UN Links with Sex Trade’, The Times online, 7 August 2002. Report of Regional Office of the International Organisation for Migration for Council of Europe, 2004. International Organisation for Migration, 2001 Survey, www.iom.org. A. Henderson, ‘Time to Put the Breaks on Sex Trade’, Stop-Traffic Digest, 11 April 2003. A full analysis of migrant women's situations can be found in United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons: Guidelines for Prevention and Response, with foreword by Ruud Lubbers, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (New York, UNHCR, May 2003). This is true of local and international police (in Kosova there are both). Evidence related in various surveys cited here from victims of trafficking highlights the complicity of police and other officials, not only in the abuse of prostituted women but in the collection of profits from their traffic. See initially C. Corrin, Feminist Perspectives on Politics (London, Pearson Education, 1999). In February 2004 Tony Blair warned of potential migrants that: ‘If they can't support themselves, they will be put out of the country’, BBC News, 24 August 2004. In 2003 increasing numbers of ‘asylum seekers’ languished in goals and detention centres across Western Europe, often without rights or representation. Excluded from refugee status under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention are all who cannot prove that they face persecution as individuals, as well as those fleeing economic conditions and political upheavals. See http://www.osce.org/odihr/docs/ap-traffic.htm, p.2. For a full analysis of Stability Pact developments within the context of reconstruction developments in south-eastern Europe see C. Corrin, ‘Gender Audit of Reconstruction Programmes in South Eastern Europe’, http://www.womenscommission.org. See http://www.osce.org/odihr/attf/index.php3?sc = Action_Plan. See Berman, ‘(Un)Popular Strangers and Crises (Un)Bounded’. For a full consideration of these issues see J. Barry with Anna Jeffreys, ‘A Bridge Too Far: Aid Agencies in Humanitarian Response’, London, Humanitarian Practice Network for Overseas Development Institute, January 2002. Ibid., pp. 124 – 125. For the full text of Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security 2000 and follow-up Reports by Secretary General and UNIFEM see www.peacewomen.org. UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General, Women, Peace and Security, 2002, para 45. Rehn & Sirleaf, Women, War and Peace, p. 72.