Minh Tien Pham
Professor Bieber
ENGL-113B
15 September 2012
Trafficking
Violates Women's Human Rights
Sex trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for
the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. Sex trafficking
is a certain problem which is a crime againsts humanity and it violates women rights.
There
is no universally accepted definition of trafficking for sexual exploitation. I
believe that sex trafficking is a big concern which is breaks human rights and
people need to define and also find the solutions to terminate this issue.
Sex
trafficking is a modern form of slavery in which a commercial sex act included
by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person such an act is under the
age of 18 years or less. Victims of sex trafficking are: men or women, girls or
boy, but mostly young girls. The main reasons for luring victims into
situations of slavery are: A promise of a good job; being sold into the sex
trade by parents, husbands or boyfriends, and being kidnapped by traffickers.
Moreover, there are also many types of sex trafficking: prostitution, pornography,
stripping, live sex shows. However, the most common sex trafficking in women is
prostitution and pornography.
Demand is the main reason why human
trafficking still occurs. Unlike many other commodities, human beings can be
used over and over again by many different customers, thus making the
trafficking of human beings a very lucrative business. Lowering the demand of
sexual services from trafficked women and children is imperative to ending the
sex trafficking industry. In some countries, sexual service is very popular. An
example of this is Vietnam, "Thousands of Vietnamese women are trafficked
through the Vietnam-China border by illegal organizers who take them to
Cambodia and from there to neighboring countries for prostitution purposes.
Vietnamese pimps pretend to court village girls to bring them to the city, and
then sell them to brothels". (Vietnam Child Sex Trade Rising, Associated
Press, 24 April 1998).
In the article “Striking the Brothels’ Bottom
Line” by Nicholas Kristof, author raises awareness of sex slavery and
trafficking while also trying to figure out how to defeat the traffickers. By
an unusual approach in his investigation of sex trafficking in a Cambodia
brothel, he states that the rights of women became underestimated and need to
be addressed as a big issue. Kristof
relates sex trafficking with the business: “Sexual slavery is like any other
business. Rising the operating costs, create a risk of jail, and the human
traffickers will quite sensibly shift to some other trade” (Kristof,188). He
wants people to acknowledge that human trafficking is quite sophisticated as a
business and it is not easy to deal with them. He shows that sex trafficking is
consider as a job, brothel owner like manager and those slave girls like employers.
Showing some persuasive evidences, Kristof also gives the audiences some cruel
fact behind the business: “Ms.Channa, who does not seem to be imprisoning
anyone against her will, readily acknowledged that some other brothels in
Poipet torture girls, enslave them and occasionally beat them to death”(186).
Indeed, girls under the command of brothel owner not only being abuse but also
being harass cruelly. They are struggling with their life every day and claim
their rights.
Understanding the cruel fact of human
trafficking, why women did not do anything but suffer it? Actually, there were
some resistances by them but isn’t enough strong to change their fate:” They
are speaking out to raise awareness about human slavery and trafficking, which
ranks just behind drugs and weapons in worldwide crime. They are revealing
their lives as sex slaves as a warning to others. However, they appear as
shadows on a wall, still too fearful to speak on camera to tell their story of
a life as sex slaves.” (Sex trafficking victims speak out against trade,
2003). Problem is they don’t know who to
trust and count on.
Recently, many organization have been established
to protect women rights and stop women trafficking: significantly increase the
financial penalties associated with sex-slave crimes, including asset
forfeiture and victim compensation, create an international slavery and
trafficking inspection force, modeled on United Nations weapons inspections and
charged with searching for establishments that exploit slaves, freeing the
victims, and detaining the criminals, initiate proactive law enforcement raids
against establishments for which there is a strong suspicion of slave-like
exploitation, with protections in place to minimize adverse effects on the
individuals living in those establishments, increase salaries for anti-trafficking
police, prosecutors, and judges in developing nations.( Sex Trafficking: Inside
the Business of Modern Slavery,2009). By those strictly laws which are mainly
focus on financial penalties, the rate of human trafficking are reducing. Women
have their own voice and they understand the status of them in society. There are
also some charity shows raise money to help sex trafficking victims, MTV EXIT
is one example.
Throughout
the world, many women being abused and suffer the violence of sex trafficking.
Women or young women- cannot give the decisions that affect their lives or
claim for their rights. Sex trafficking is a serious problem which is need to
be addressed and defeated. Although there were plenty of solutions for this
issue, sex trafficking still need to stopped from the root and by the authority
or government.
Word
cited
Kara, S.
Columbia University. Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery
Columbia University. New York, 2009. Print.
Alpert,
Adrienne. Los Angeles News. Sex trafficking victims speak out against trade.
Web . 23 February. 2010.
<http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=7294309>. Print.
Vietnam Child Sex Trade Rising Associated Press.24 April
1998. <http://www.humantrafficking.org/countries/vietnam>. Print.
Kristof, Nicholas. Striking the Brothels’ Bottom Line. New
York Times. 11 January. 2009. Print.
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