This is a blog post by Reem George, whom I recently contacted about this site. This has been featured in Arabisto:

This is my first blog, so I decided to write about a subject I am passionate about, and one I spent months researching and even dreaming about at some point.

Why sex trafficking? Is it an act of desperation by those who sell women and girls around the globe? How does the mind come to a point where it accepts to carryout a crime so heinous, so despicable, and so unjustifiable?

In the mind of a criminal, who is looking to make some money, human trafficking and especially sex trafficking is one that outweighs all the profits made from drug trafficking per say. This is simply because women who are trafficked can be “recycled” over and again and can be bought and sold by one criminal to another.

So what does human trafficking have to do with the Middle East? The problem has always existed in the area, but in deeply religious societies, the problem never gets the attention that it deserves. Human trafficking is caused by political and economic upheavals and instability in the country of origin, widespread poverty, chronic unemployment, lack of economic opportunities, marginalization of women and girls, lack of education, rapid modernization leading to the loss of cultural values, development of materialistic values, break of family ties, and social and cultural practices that devalue women and girls.

Through transnational organized networks, criminals take advantage of declining conditions and prey on poor women, who are often displaced victims of war and lure them by work opportunities abroad. Women are generally bought, sold or auctioned to brothels and private buyers as sexual slaves. The crime of sex trafficking is spreading in countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon and Yemen.

In Tehran alone, there are over 87,000 prostitutes on the streets, most of them forced into the business, with some being as young as nine years of age. Following the invasion and occupation in Iraq, hundreds of Iraqi women as well as Iraqi boys were kidnapped and sold into slavery in Syria and Yemen. In the United Arab Emirates, women are being trafficked from countries in Eastern Europe and Russia, and as far as China, India, and Indonesia.

The pattern of sexual slavery has not changed in the Middle East today, but rather has increased in modern times, especially in the more industrialized nations of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. The business employs modern technology and takes advantage of porous borders and corrupt leadership. This increase resulted as the appeal for the old world desires was coupled with the lures of business and profit-making opportunities in the Middle East. The temptations of “business and pleasure” have attracted tourists, businessmen, criminal gangs and sexual predators alike from around the world.

This is a global phenomenon that is occurring at our doorstep, in every country, in every city, and it is possibly happening in your street at this moment. I live in San Diego, close to the busiest border in the world. I am not worried about “terrorists” crossing these borders. I am worried about girls as young as nine, being kidnapped and brought here against their will and made to lose their dignity and childhood, all for money and power.

In the Middle East, where civil wars are raging on in Iraq and the Sudan, and intense fighting in Palestine is prolonged by the lack of cooperation, the issue of sex trafficking becomes even more difficult to control. But, who is listening? It is terrorism that people are more worried about, this war between powerful men, and not human trafficking. Trafficking is a war between men and vulnerable human beings, most of whom are women. They are our mothers and daughters, sisters and nieces. Are you listening?

An excellent piece. It makes people aware of an issue that should be important to us all, but isn’t. Unfortunately, the majority of us are not listening, simply because there aren’t enough people talking and writing about it.

Domestic servants in some countries of the Middle East are forced to work 12 to 16 hours a day with little or no pay, and subject to sexual abuse such as rape, forced abortions, and physical abuse that has resulted in death.

- World Revolution

In August 2001, soldiers with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Eritrea were purchasing ten-year-old girls for sex in local hotels.

- Before the arrival of 15,000 UN troops in Cambodia in 1991, there were an estimated 1,000 prostitutes in the capital. Currently, Cambodia’s illegal sex trade generates $500 million a year. No less than 55,000 women and children are sex slaves in Cambodia, 35 percent of which are younger than 18 years of age.

- Over 5,000 women and children have been trafficked from the Philippines, Russia and Eastern Europe and are forced into prostitution in bars servicing the U.S. Military in South Korea

Source: World Revolution

Dubai, July 4 (IANS) Three Indian women in Bahrain who were allegedly forced into prostitution have filed a complaint with labour officials in that Gulf nation.

The three, aged 24, 25 and 35, worked in a restaurant. They alleged that were forced into prostitution by the restaurant manager and a woman supervisor, both Indians.

According to a report in the Gulf Daily News newspaper, the trio alleged that they were kept confined in their apartment in Manama between their work shifts. All their salary was deducted to meet accommodation charges, compelling them to survive on tips.

The report quoted the victims as saying that they were forced into doing sexual acts and drinking with male customers to increase the take from each table.

The customers were usually Indian but whenever any Bahraini came, the manager and the supervisor signalled them to hide, as they feared that it could be a plainclothes policeman, the women said.

One of the women eventually contacted the Indian embassy in Manama. All three were rescued Sunday, following which they filed a criminal complaint with the police.

It is not known whether their Bahraini sponsor, the owner of the restaurant, was aware of the activities in the restaurant, according to the report.

Two of the women had been working in the restaurant for the last eight months while the third had been in Bahrain for two years.

Now, they are seeking unpaid wages, gratuity, bonus, air tickets and compensation for mental and physical abuse, the report quoted a consultant with the law firm that has taken up their case as saying.

- Indo-Asian News Service

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Four American allies in the Persian Gulf are among the countries criticized for not doing enough to combat human trafficking in a U.S. State Department report released Friday.

“Human trafficking is nothing less than a modern form of slavery,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a news conference on the report.

In the annual “Trafficking in Persons” report, the State Department listed Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as “Tier 3″ countries, which are defined as nations “whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards” set by American law and “are not making significant efforts to do so.”

The report identified the countries as destinations for trafficking victims exposed to sexual exploitation and forced labor.

The State Department also listed Bolivia, Cambodia, Cuba, Ecuador, Jamaica, Myanmar (formerly Burma), North Korea, Sudan, Togo and Venezuela as Tier 3 countries.

Source - CNN

19,000 Pakistani children have been trafficked to the United Arab Emirates. (LHRLA, Indrani Sinha, SANLAAP India, “Paper on Globalization and Human Rights”)

‘SANLAAP is a developmental organisation in West Bengal, India, working to correct social imbalances, which manifest in gender injustice and violence against children, youth and women. It works against the trafficking of children and women for commercial sexual exploitation and sexual abuse using a wide range of strategies: campaigns, advocacy and sensitisation of various stakeholders on the issue of trafficking on one hand, and rescue, rehabilitation, repatriation and socio-economic reintegration of trafficked persons on the other. SANLAAP engages youth as partners in all its endeavours.’

The CATW initiative presented this case from Saudi Arabia -

The story of two Thai women:

Two Thai women forced trafficked to Saudi Arabia have come forward leading to the surrender of their trafficker, another Thai woman named Suna Thianmanee. Both women had contacted Suna in hopes of finding high paying work in Saudi Arabia, but instead were forced into prostitution. The women were forced to travel, in a tiny compartment below the truck’s undercarriage or empty oil tank of the vehicle tanker in the scorching sun, from one construction site to another and to offer their sexual services.

Upon arriving in the Saudi capital, they were forced to share a five-metre-by-four-metre room with seven other girls, one of whom was Suna’s sister. They were told that they would be engaged in prostitution, not restaurant helpers as promised, if they wanted to live. One of the women said that all nine girls, including herself and Suna’s sister, had been wrongfully lured into the sex trade. Each girl had to service four to ten customers a day. Suna would earn about 200 to 800 riyals (Baht 2,000-Baht 8000) per visit while the girls would get free room and boarding and earn occasional tips. In five months, Suna was able to expand her brothel by renting a two-story, three-bedroom house. Most customers were Thai and Filipino workers and some Saudi citizens. (Preecha Sa-Ardsorn, “Saudi woman procurer surrenders before police,” The Nation, 19 July 1998)

Hi, Natalia Antonova here.

A few years back, I conducted an interview with a wonderful human being, Tetyana Metyura. Ms. Metyura is an associate of La Strada, an NGO devoted to the struggle against human trafficking. We met in my hometown of Kiev, Ukraine.

The trafficking of Eastern European women to the Middle East was, and continues to be, of special interest to me; after all, while I was in Jordan in the summer of 2005, a number of people asked me: “Why do so many prostitutes in Arab countries come from places like your native Ukraine, Nat? Do you know what your name, Natasha [a diminutive of Natalia] actually implies?”

I wanted to highlight this problem for my Jordanian friends, and for anyone else who might ask similar questions. I also wanted to understand how things ended up going so terribly wrong, both for my fellow women and for the people who would sink so low as to engage in the soul-crushing slave trade. I didn’t get the answer to all my existential questions - but Ms. Metyura was a well of useful knowledge nonetheless.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

…I was surprised when I came across Middle Eastern stereotypes of trafficked women. Some of the people believed that women who are involved in the sex-trade are the guilty party. At the same time they forgot that victims of trafficking have an unlimited workday, suffer from violence, and work under the constant threat of force. They are one of the most vulnerable groups out there.

…Of course, here at La Strada we refuse to generalize about people based on their nationalities, there are plenty of Israelis and other Middle Easterners who are interested in helping trafficked persons, not hurting them further…

You can read the entire thing here.

An article from the JPost lists Israel as one of the worst human traffickers -

A report released this week by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has cited Israel as among the top destinations in the trafficking of human beings, either for sexual exploitation or forced labor.

Entitled “Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns,” the report claims that, “virtually every country in the world is affected by the crime of human trafficking.” However, Israel, along with nine countries, was named as the worst offenders of illegal trade in human beings.

“The fact that this form of slavery still exists in the 21st century shames us all,” announced UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa on the organization’s Web site. “Governments need to get serious about identifying the full extent of the problem so they can get serious about eliminating it.”

In Israel, Haifa feminist center Isha L’Isha, one of the human rights organizations active in the fight against the trafficking of women, welcomed the report’s findings and was hopeful that it would force the government and relevant authorities to take more action against this crime.

Tal Eisenberg, the organization’s legal advisor and coordinator for the center’s Fighting Against Trafficking in Women project told The Jerusalem Post, “It is excellent that the United Nations has recognized that there is such a problem in Israel. I hope that we can learn from the report and that the government will now take more notice of the problem.” She said that many countries did not even know that trafficking takes place within their borders and that Israeli rights organizations had made great progress in combating the problem.

Executive Director of Amnesty International Israel, Amnon Vidan said that the Israeli authorities had to deal with the problem before it happened, by stopping the transit of women across the border with Egypt.

The UNODC report identified 127 countries of origin, 98 transit countries and 137 destination countries. It stated that the vast majority of human trafficking was in women and was for the purpose of sexual exploitation, with roughly 20 percent of the trade being in forced labor.

The report, which was based on 113 individual sources such as government documents, research by national criminal justice organizations, Interpol, research institutes and news agencies, suggested that, “the best way of addressing the demand side of trafficking human beings is to demolish the markets generating profits to the criminals. This would require identification of traffickers in order to be able to investigate trafficking cases, and prosecute and convict offenders. Unfortunately, relatively few cases are prosecuted successfully resulting in a very small number of convictions.”

An article by Spengler for the Asia Times -

The proliferation of Iranian prostitutes in Western Europe as well as the Arab world helps explain the country’s population trends. The European Commission’s most comprehensive surveys of human trafficking found that Iranian women made up 10-15% of the prostitutes working in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. “Fatima” from Persia has become as familiar as “Natasha” from Belarus. Iranian whores long have been a scandal in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, which periodically round up and expel them.

It is hard to obtain reliable data on prostitution inside Iran itself, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it has increased since Ahmadinejad became president last year. Anti-regime sociologists claim that at least 300,000 women are whoring in Tehran alone.

Read the rest.