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EDITOR’S
NOTE: Kate O’Beirne wrote the piece below just prior to
being named a U.S. Delegate to the U.N. Commission on the Status
of Women. She has spent the last few weeks at the United Nations
at the commission's 46th session. “Of Human Bondage” appeared
in the March 11, 2001 issue of National Review.
 very
year, at least 700,000 human beings are traded for profit like so
much property. In his battle against this international human trafficking,
Chris Smith — a Republican congressman from New Jersey —
has undertaken retail rescue operations as well as wholesale policy
reforms. Two years ago, La Strada, a Ukrainian group that assists
victims of traffickers, appealed to Smith to help eight young women
from Ukraine who had been recruited to work as waitresses in Montenegro.
They were actually being forced to work in local brothels and were
fearful of the local police — who were apparently complicit
in the operation, which was run by one of their former colleagues.
He held the girls' passports after they were "sold" to
him. Smith immediately contacted Montenegro's prime minister, who
ordered a raid of the brothel that freed seven of the Ukrainian
girls as well as a young woman from Romania. The eighth Ukrainian
had disappeared, having reportedly been "resold" to an
individual in Albania.
Hoping to rescue
the tens of thousands of women held in similar sexual bondage, Smith
wrote landmark legislation to pressure countries to end this barbaric
practice. In the past, Smith's efforts were dismissed by a complacent
international community, and opposed by the Clinton administration.
But in 2000, when Smith's bill passed unanimously in the Senate
(with the indispensable help of Kansas senator Sam Brownback), and
nearly unanimously in the House, President Clinton took credit —
characteristically — for the legislation his administration
had strenuously opposed. Clinton's Interagency Council on Women
(honorary chairman:Hillary Clinton)had lobbied unsuccessfully to
narrow the definition of prohibited sexual trafficking to exclude
"consensual" prostitution. The Clinton view that prostitution
is a legitimate career option for women reflected the position of
some feminists, notably Ann Jordan, director of the International
Human Rights Law Group's Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons.
Last year, Jordan offered an analogy, quoted in The American
Prospect: "We don't support a woman's right to choose because
we think abortion is a great thing, but because we believe fundamentally
that women should have control over their own reproductive capacity.
The same argument can be made for prostitution. Women who decide
for whatever reason to sell sex should have the right to control
their own body."
The Clinton
administration's position — pro-choice on prostitution —
met a firestorm of criticism from William Bennett and Chuck Colson,
but also from Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland, and Eleanor Smeal.
Critics on both right and left agreed that desperate women were
unable to give meaningful "consent" to their own sexual
exploitation, and would (in the words of an angry letter anti-prostitution
feminists wrote to President Clinton) "shield many traffickers
in the global sex trade from prosecution."
And the trade
is thriving. The U.N. estimates that human trafficking reaps $7
billion a year. Even the watchdogs themselves bear watching: Members
of the U.N.'s International Police Force in Bosnia, where sexual
trafficking has become an international scandal, have been accused
of transporting young girls from Eastern Europe to local brothels.
And the traffickers are a domestic as well as an international problem:
An estimated 50,000 trafficking victims, overwhelmingly women and
children, are brought to the U.S. every year. In February 1998,
there was a raid of brothels in rural south Florida where Mexican
girls, some as young as 13, were forced to have sex with dozens
of men a day. The evidence of beatings, drug addiction, and forced
abortions prompted one federal judge to call this trafficking case
"one of the most base, most vile, most despicable, most reprehensible
crimes" he had ever encountered. A trafficking ring in Atlanta
imported nearly 1,000 women from Asia who were forced to work in
debt bondage as prostitutes.
Over President
Clinton's objections, the 2000 law mandated a yearly assessment
of countries' anti-trafficking efforts, and provided for sanctions
against both destination and source countries that fail to meet
minimal standards in discouraging trafficking. Last July, secretary
of state Colin Powell released the first of these annual reports.
Countries are rated according to their records on prosecuting traffickers
and protecting victims. Among those on the "Tier 3" list
of countries that fail to meet even minimal standards are Greece,
Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea.
(Vietnam and Cambodia were inexplicably spared Tier 3 status, despite
the widespread corruption in both countries that contributes to
widespread trafficking.) In two years, Tier 3 countries will be
denied non-humanitarian aid unless President Bush grants a "national
interest" waiver. The next list is to take into account opinions
from human-rights groups in assessing whether countries that meet
minimal legal standards, like Germany and Japan, are making real
progress in reducing the incidence of trafficking within their borders.
Laura Lederer,
now a deputy senior adviser to Powell, published the first comprehensive
report on human trafficking when she directed the Protection Project
at Johns Hopkins University. Lederer documented the sale of thousands
of young Vietnamese women to agents in China, where men have trouble
finding wives. (Congressman Smith points out the reason for the
shortage of women in China: the regime's one-child policy, combined
with the social prejudice against girls.) In Cambodia, the sex industry
has grown along with the tourist trade, and girls are commonly sold
into prostitution; studies have found that up to 40 percent of "sex
workers" in Cambodia test HIV positive. Last year, Lederer
reported that the number of children in prostitution in Cambodia
has rapidly increased. The price tag for children in the sexual
marketplace, however, rapidly decreases: A young virgin is sold
to rich clients for between $400 and $700 a week, then quickly winds
up in the open red-light district where the now-damaged goods command
only $1.50 to $2.50 per client.
Administration
officials note that the first annual report on trafficking is having
its desired effect, with Tier 3 countries eager to take the necessary
steps to avoid showing up on the sanctions list. According to Paula
Dobriansky, under secretary of state with responsibility for a new
anti-trafficking office, "the report has been one of the most
significant tools we have used in elevating this issue internationally."
Other recent
developments will help. Changes in U.S. law that increase prison
terms for traffickers and provide new protections for their victims
are being cited as a model for other countries. And in January,
attorney general John Ashcroft announced that special "T visas"
will be provided for those who suffer the most serious trafficking
abuses, to protect them from deportation so they are available to
testify against their captors.
Despite the
laudable work of Powell and Ashcroft, the administration's human-rights
allies believe that the new team hasn't moved aggressively enough
to counter the legacy of Clinton-era policies in the bureaucracy.
Meetings with the career diplomat who heads the State Department's
anti-trafficking office have raised doubts about her experience
with the issue and her commitment to the cause. In congressional
testimony last fall, Dobriansky told wary lawmakers that, unlike
its immediate predecessor, the Bush administration opposes all forms
of prostitution; but career bureaucrats who enthusiastically promoted
the Clinton administration's policies remain in key staff positions,
grants continue to be awarded to groups that support "consensual"
prostitution, and Ann Jordan remains a federally funded speaker
on the international anti-trafficking circuit.
President Bush
helped to rally support for the war in Afghanistan by highlighting
the Taliban's oppression of women. While the toppling of the regime
has liberated women from the burka, Bush has yet to speak out against
the sexual bondage that enslaves tens of thousands of women around
the world. The campaign to end all international trafficking in
all forms of prostitution is supported by the feminist Left as well
as the Christian Right. This is an effort Bush should be leading
— by forcefully and unambiguously declaring his support for
the principle that women are not to be sold.
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