Kathryn McMahon, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Women's Studies and International Studies, California State University, Long Beach
Director of Research, Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, Los Angeles

Paper for the Workshop: The Traffic in Women Revisited: Women Speak Out from WWII to the Present
1999 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women
University of Rochester, June 3-6, 1999

Trafficking in women may be understood in the context of the subordination of women, globalization, a gendered international labor market, and the world-wide feminization of labor migration. Women are denied equal access to formal, regulated labor markets. In countries of origin, employment possibilities for poor women are generally found in the informal, unprotected labor sector. Women increasingly migrate to cities or across international borders to support families, and women usually migrate alone. Organized crime fills the gap between diminished possibilities for legal labor migration and the demand for foreign labor in informal sectors of destination countries, including unregulated factory work (sweatshops), domestic work, prostitution and the commercial marriage market (often commercial marriages are little more than unpaid domestic work, homecare and sexual service arrangements). The semi-legal or illegal character of these informal work sectors, lack of adequate legislation, standards or enforcement of existing laws create the conditions for abusive recruitment practices and exploitative working conditions, ranging from inadequate pay, humiliating treatment, poor living and working conditions, to forced labor, violence and slavery or slavery-like practices.

Developments within the context of globalization which contribute to expansion of trafficking include increases in economic inequalities between countries and between social classes within countries; increased landlessness and debt in rural areas; development related environmental degradation (for instance deforestation, erosion of soil, strip mining, etc.) which increases rural poverty and displacement; growing concentration of land ownership due to expansion of agribusiness and reliance on export crops; increased reliance on tourism as a development strategy, and militarism. As populations are displaced as a result of war, political repression and/or economic displacement, women become particularly vulnerable because of poverty, lack of access to education and training and lack of political power or legal protection. Most poor women have no knowledge about trafficking or working conditions in cities and other countries, and traffickers profit from women's desire to find paid work and their willingness to take risks in order to gain access to well paying work.

In the context of social change and historical displacement, women migrate seeking to fulfill increasing responsibilities for the economic survival of their families including children, siblings and parents. They also migrate seeking escape from extreme poverty, domestic abuse, or the shame of sexual assault. Women follow recruiters who promise well paying jobs in factories, as domestic workers, or in restaurants (often fronts for prostitution) or as "entertainers" as part of sex-entertainment and tourist industries. Young women may be openly recruited, or they may be coerced, or kidnapped, or tricked and sold for work in the sex industry. A small minority of young women and girls from rural villages are sold by parents or other relatives to agents and recruiters in order to pay family debts.

The Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, based in Los Angeles, was formed in 1998 to address the issue of trafficking as a local, national and global issue. Through our alliance of representatives from community groups, student groups, and nonprofit human service agencies we advocate on behalf of trafficking victims, including legal and policy advocacy, public education and fundraising. We have organized a Community Care Network of human service providers who can accept trafficked persons as clients. We work closely with government agencies in order to coordinate release of trafficking victims from detention to community care and to get protection and legal status for victims including visas and work permits. Members of the Community Care Network include shelters, legal centers, health care centers, and community based centers which provide long term housing, translation and other community based support services. Our working definition of trafficking is consistent with that included in the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) document "Human Rights Standards for the Treatment of Trafficked Persons," which can be downloaded from the GAATW website. The Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) website is: URL: http://www.trafficked-women.org.

In Los Angeles we have recent cases of trafficked women from China, Thailand, Korea, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Romania, the Czech Republic, Russia (we expect many more cases from Russia and Eastern Europe), Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Canada. There are also numerous cases of young women and girls trafficked from rural areas in the United States. This detailed list of countries of origin is provided in order to emphasize the breadth of the local problem of trafficking in its global dimensions. And those specific countries I have listed only account for cases reported to our coalition by local Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) authorities. The largest number of trafficked women come to southern California from Asia. Other U.S. cities which have become receiving centers for trafficked women include San Francisco and the Bay Area, Seattle, San Jose, Fresno, Reno, Las Vegas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, D.C., New York, Boston and Philadelphia. The U.S. has become a major receiving country for trafficked people, especially women.

Women trafficked to Los Angeles have been subject to exploitation as domestic workers, factory workers, restaurant workers and in prostitution. Treatment of victims by traffickers has included confiscation of passports and visas; slavery; slavery-like practices including debt bondage; forced labor; rape; beatings; torture; restriction of access to food; restriction of access to medical and dental care even in cases of serious illness and extreme physical pain. Victims have suffered severe mental abuse, including shaming and humiliation; threats of violence; death threats to themselves and their family members; forced confinement; restricted movement and isolation, and forced tatooing as a visible sign of appropriation of the victim's body and personal identity. Many women have been trafficked through deceit and false promises, some have been trafficked through physical assaults and abduction. Even women we have worked with who have been terribly abused are not necessarily passive or helpless. Many left their countries of origin because they were strong, enterprising and had the courage and initiative to try to change their situations. Their strength helps them survive and their courage aids recovery from the traumas many of them suffer at the hands of their traffickers. Many women have chosen to act as witnesses against their traffickers, in spite of fear of retaliation.

Local trafficking cases have included the well publicized El Monte slavery case involving over 70 Thai garment workers who were kept in a situation of confinement and forced labor for up to 7 years. One of our coalition members, Thai Community Development Center, was the main service provider and liaison in the El Monte case, and the women from that case still require community support and legal services. A more recent case involves two Thai women kept in slavery-like conditions as domestic servants for years. In addition to domestic work, they were also forced to work in the restaurant owned by their employer. The women were forced to work seven days a week sometimes up to 18-20 hours a day. They were denied medical and dental care, and one of them was in such pain at one point that she resorted to pulling her own teeth with toenail clippers. They were sometimes forced to crawl on their knees while serving their employer and to sleep on the floor outside her door at night in order to be available should she want something from them. The women finally received help from a person who knew of their situation and they managed to escape. The two women and their families in Thailand have been threatened, should they testify against their exploiter. Nevertheless, they have chosen to testify.

Another case involved a young woman from the People's Republic of China who was abducted from her home village, taken by boat to Mexico, and then by plane to New York. While in New York she was beaten, raped and tatooed with the insignia of the gang which claimed to own her. Then she was taken to Los Angeles where she was forced to work in various brothels for six years. At one point she managed to escape, but did not speak any English and did not know where to go for help. She was apprehended by her traffickers, beaten on the street, dragged into a car and taken back to the brothel. She escaped a second time and found a Chinese grocery store where employees could understand her pleas for help and called police. Subsequently she participated in a sting operation which resulted in the arrest of two of her traffickers, and she also testified in court against them. After the trial she received legal status and left the state out of fear for her safety. The INS estimates that there are currently between 4,000-5,000 trafficked women from the PRC in Los Angeles.

Trafficking victims suffer from serious physical and emotional effects of their treatment, including both acute and long term problems such as STD's including untreated syphilis, HIV+ and effects of forced and/or unsafe abortions, tuberculosis and other untreated diseases, injuries from assault, malnutrition and painful dental problems. Post traumatic stress disorder is common as are intense feelings including fear, guilt, anger, shame, betrayal, depression, disorientation and lack of trust in ability to make judgements and in others, including those offering assistance. An extensive network of service providers is required in order to meet the urgent medical and mental health needs of trafficking victims; the availability of appropriate care is complicated by cultural differences, linquistic needs and their often illegal status.

Policy change and legislation is necessary in order to provide appropriate treatment of trafficked persons and offer them legal protection as victims of criminal human rights violations. At present, local law enforcement and immigration officials need both training and guidelines concerning trafficking. Often victims of trafficking are treated as criminals rather than as victims of crime, and such treatment leads to further victimization and plays into the hands of traffickers, including members of international criminal networks and/or crime syndicates. For instance, if even a locked brothel is found, trafficked women are typically taken into custody by local police, who turn them over to immigration authorities, then usually a bond of approximately $5,000 is posted. Inevitably, those "friends" who post bond are associates of the traffickers and the women are never heard from again, making it next to impossible to prosecute the traffickers, since there are no witnesses available to testify. The women are cycled back into the same situation of bondage, and since bond was forfeited it is most likely added to the sum of the debt bondage, which is usually a baseline of $40,000 for a woman trafficked from Asia to the United States. Alternatively, the victims of trafficking may be held in detention idefinitely while serving as designated witnesses in criminal cases against traffickers.

Current legislation is being proposed in the form of Senate Bill S. 600, the "International Trafficking of Women and Children Victim Protection Act of 1999," introduced by Senator Wellstone. Though it provides humanitarian aid and temporary nonimmigrant status to trafficking victims while in the United States seeking asylum or pursuing civil or criminal action against traffickers, it does not explicitly provide for legal status should the safety of trafficked persons be in jeopardy upon return to country of origin. Realistically, the bill as is will be tough to pass given the anti-immigrant climate of the country, and it provides for important changes, including the release from detention of victims of trafficking. The bill provides 1) training of law enforcement and immigration officials in identifying and responding to trafficking victims; 2) that trafficking victims should not be jailed, fined, or otherwise penalized due to having been trafficked, or nature of work; 3) that trafficking victims have access to legal assistance, information about their rights and translation services; 4) that trafficking victims should be provided protection if susceptible to further victimization; 5) that consideration of the safety and integrity of trafficked persons be taken into consideration in investigating and prosecuting traffickers. The bill also provides for a task force which will identify those governments which tolerate or participate in trafficking, abuse victims and fail to cooperate with international efforts to prosecute traffickers. Those governments will be denied police assistance. The bill also refers to trafficking in terms of a "violation of fundamental human rights" finding trafficking to be primarily a human rights issue. (Please see the handout concerning the bill, which is currently in the Committee on Foreign Relations.)

While we need better legislation and policy change at the national level, we simultaneously need policy change at the international level. The issue of trafficking is complex and global in dimension and necessarily our responses must involve cooperation between non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations (IOs), and whenever possible governmental agencies. While we work to provide advocacy, safe housing and medical care to individual women at the local level, we must work simultaneously for respect of their human rights at the national and international levels. While trafficking is a human rights issue, it is also a socio-political and economic issue, and cannot be separated from issues of national, gender and class inequalities. The Beijing Conference called on governments to provide better protection of the rights of trafficked women and girls, to address the root factors that put women and girls at risk to traffickers, and to dismantle the national, regional and international networks of trafficking.

NGO's, IO's, academics and human rights workers all have important roles to play in efforts to hold governments accountable to international human rights standards, and to produce the necessary research and documentation which will help us better understand trafficking patterns in order to strategize more effectively across national boundaries. NGO's in both sending and receiving countries are working together, and we must work together even more effectively to address the needs of trafficking victims for protection and safe repatriation to countries of origin. While respecting our complex ethnic, national and class differences, we must find better ways to work together across boundaries in order to address those issues which continue to put women and girls at risk of being trafficked, including the subordination of women in the context of militarism, environmental degradation linked to the displacement of people from adequate means of subsistence, and the exploitation of women in the international division of labor, including tourism and sex industries.