Forced prostitution

Forced prostitution is illegal under customary law in all countries.[3] 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[4] 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 penalizes the procurement and enticement to prostitution as well as the maintenance of brothels.[3] As at December 2013, the Convention has only been ratified by 82 countries.[5] One of the main reasons it has not been ratified by many countries is because the legal term 'voluntary' is broadly defined in countries with a legal sex industry.[3] For example, in countries such as Germany,[6] the Netherlands,[6] New Zealand,[7] Greece[8] and Turkey[9] some forms of prostitution and pimping are legal and regulated as professional occupations.

The Thirteen Amendment abolished slavery in the United States of America. "We see forced prostitution and slavery intertwining because they are similar. When slavery was illegal, they were forced into hard labor, and we see women being forced to perform sexual activities for their 'masters' or 'pimps.'"[2]

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,[10] and as of December 2013, 166 states are party to the Protocol and another 10 states have signed but not yet ratified it.[10]

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".[11]

In poorer nations, child prostitution remains a serious issue; 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.[12]

Trafficking of women and children (and, more rarely, young men) for prostitution is a vile and heinous violation of human rights, but labor trafficking is probably more widespread.

Evidence can be found in field studies of trafficking victims across the world and in the simple fact that the worldwide market for labor is far greater than that for sex. Statistics on the "end use" of trafficked people are often unreliable because they tend to overrepresent the sex trade.[13]

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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.[14] The major sources of trafficked persons are Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine.[14] Victims of cybersex trafficking are transported and then coerced to perform sexual acts and or raped in front of a webcam on live streams[15][16][17] that are often commercialized.[18]

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.[19]

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."[20] 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.[21]

In 2004, The Economist claimed that only a small proportion of prostitutes were explicitly trafficked against their will.[6]

Elizabeth Pisani protested against the perceived hysteria around human trafficking preceding sport events such as the Super Bowl or FIFA World Cup.[22]

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."[23] 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."[24][25] However Save the Children see 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".[26]

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.[27] William D. Angel finds that "most" prostitutes have been forced into the occupation through poverty, lack of education and employment possibilities.[28] 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".[29] France's Green Party argues: "The concept of "free choice" of the prostitute is indeed relative, in a society where gender inequality is institutionalized".[30] 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,[7] Norway[31] and Iceland[32] 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."[33] 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".[29] 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.[34] As a result of such views on prostitution, countries such as Germany,[6] the Netherlands[7] and New Zealand[7] have fully legalized prostitution. Prostitution is considered a job like any other.

In its understanding of the distinction between sex work and forced prostitution,[35] 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".[36]

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.[37] 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.[38] 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.[39] 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.[39] 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.[40] 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.[41] 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".[42] 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.

Forced prostitution has existed throughout history. It is said to be the oldest form of slavery.

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.

Main article: Comfort women

Comfort women is a euphemism for women working in military brothels, especially by the Japanese military during World War II.[91][92]

Around 200,000 are typically estimated to have been involved, with estimates as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars[93] and estimates of up to 410,000 from some Chinese scholars,[94] 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[95] but women from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, East Timor[96] 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.[97]

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.[98] It has been documented that the Japanese military itself recruited women by force.[99] However, Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata stated that there was no organized forced recruitment of comfort women by the Japanese government or military.[100]

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.[101]

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.[102]

• ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29)
• ILO Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105)
• ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138)
• ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182)

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• "FACTBOX-Disputes over Japan's wartime "comfort women" continue", Reuters, 5 March 2007, retrieved 5 March 2008
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• Ministerie van Buitenlandse zaken (24 January 1994). "Gedwongen prostitutie van Nederlandse vrouwen in voormalig Nederlands-Indië" [Enforced prostitution of Dutch women in the former Dutch East Indies]. Handelingen Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal [Hansard Dutch Lower House] (in Dutch). 23607 (1). ISSN 0921-7371.
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