Investigation’s Next Focus Will Be Sexual Exploitation in the Americas

It is the third most lucrative international criminal activity after drug and arms trafficking. It is the trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation and it is one of the worst human rights abuses that the international community presently faces. An estimated two million women and children are held in sexual servitude throughout the world.

The International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI) at DePaul University, which has been studying the problem for the past three years, recently released a progress report that begins to illustrate the global reach and severity of the issue.

“The patterns of trafficking from Africa to Europe differ from those within Southeast Asia or the Indian sub-continent,” said M. Cherif Bassiouni, IHRLI president, who is heading the investigation. “The first step in stopping the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation is to obtain and analyze data that more fully address the scope and nature of the problem.”

Using information collected from such sources as media and law enforcement reports, non-government organizations and actual cases, the IHRLI compiled statistical estimates on the trafficking in women and children for commercial sexual exploitation. Among the findings are:

· 800,000 women and children from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and China have been sold into Thailand’s sex industry since 1990.

· 45,000-50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe have been trafficked for sexual exploitation into the United States. The going rate for a woman or child sold to the U. S. sex trade is between $12,000 and $18,000.

· Between 5,000 and 7,000 Nepali girls are trafficked into the “red light” districts of India annually. Some 200,000 Nepali girls have been trafficked into India in the past decade.

· 300,000 women were trafficked into the Western European sex trade in the last decade.

· Several cities in Central and Eastern Europe have become attraction points for sex tourism from Western Europe because of the influx of women from the former Republics of the USSR.

The investigation will include a region-by-region, systematic, fact-finding survey to gauge the phenomenon’s extent. It will begin with a 14-month investigation in 14 Latin American countries and include:

· A diagnosis of each state’s recognition, definition and reaction to the problem.

· An assessment of national legislation on trafficking to determine the extent to which the practice can be prosecuted in each country and whether current legislation complies with the country’s international obligations.

· An evaluation of national enforcement policies and practices.

· A compilation of data from all available sources of the patterns and practices of trafficking and exploitation.

· A comparison of results to produce a national diagnosis of the phenomenon in each of the 14 countries, and in America.

· A set of recommendations to combat the phenomenon.

“Providing empirical data will make it impossible for governments and international organizations to continue their ignorance and denial of this problem and the terrible toll it takes on the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people,” said Bassiouni. “This investigation will lay the groundwork for an effective, national, regional and international means to combat the phenomenon and to put an end to this cruel form of human slavery.”

Established in 1990 by DePaul’s College of Law, the institute has engaged in a range of investigative projects involving human rights violations. Its work has included leading the data-gathering and analysis initiative for the investigation of human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia; interviewing witnesses to an alleged massacre of peasants in Guatemala in 1995; and preparing recommendations on how best to prosecute those responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The IHRLI is working on the project in the Americas in cooperation with the Inter-American Commission of Women and the Inter-American Children’s Institute of the Organization of American States.

Note to Editors: Bassiouni can be reached at 312/362-8332.