United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and protection of Minorities Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery 24th Session Geneva, 23 June - 2 July 1999 NGO consultation with UN/IGOs on trafficking in persons, prostitution and the global sex industry Madame Chairperson On behalf of Anti-Slavery let me congratulate you on your re-election as Chairperson of this working group and express my great satisfaction that both you and other members of the Working Group were able to listen to the two-day consultation on Trafficking in persons, prostitution and the global sex industry. I know that listening to any discussions that allow the full range of views to be expressed about human rights issues linked to the sex industry appear full of disagreement and dispute, both about the standards which should be upheld and about the best ways of implementing such standards. Like you, I await with enthusiasm the report to the Working Group from this consultation. However, given the wide range of views expressed, I realize that some important proposals for initiatives may not be mentioned in the consultation's report to you, in particular specific initiatives which some NGOs including my own, Anti-Slavery, would like to see taken up in the recommendations which the Working Group will adopt next week, at the end of this session. These recommendations are not based on our affiliation to particular groups which you could characterize as 'pro' or 'anti-prostitution', but rather on our observation of what is happening in the world at the moment, that is to say a rapid increase in the size and earnings of the global sex industry and, in the broader context of globalisation, a similar increase in the trafficking of women and children for a wide range of uses, both in their own countries, and in countries and continents far away from their own. In this context I would like to congratulate the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for her declared determination to ensure that the international community wakes up and takes serious action against trafficking. We are also aware that the General Assembly has mandated an open-ended intergovernmental ad hoc committee to draft an International Convention against Trans-national Organized Crime which is likely to have a protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons or in women and children, and another protocol to prevent and suppress trafficking in migrants. Evidently, it will be helpful to see a new commitment by all the states of the United Nations to action against trafficking. This commitment also needs expressing in practical action. For this reason, I urge the Working Group to recommend that the United Nations adopt a specific year as the International Year Against Trafficking Of Human Beings. This should, I would suggest, be as soon as possible in the new millennium and could be usefully followed by a UN Decade Against Trafficking, to end trafficking in human beings. During this decade, all States should be requested to adopt national programmes of action against trafficking. For such programmes to be effective, and indeed to ensure that the action agreed is appropriate and actually carried out, it would undoubtedly be helpful for guidelines to be prepared at international level to give a strong lead to States on the provisions of such national programmes. I am sure it would help for the Working Group to call for the preparation of such guidelines under the auspices of the UN. One of the specific actions needed at the national or local community-level concerns awareness raising campaigns which are aimed at potential migrants and potential victims of trafficking. These can evidently be organised by either government agencies or inter-governmental organisations. Inter-governmental organisations have the advantage of being able to incorporate information which they have received about abuses committed in countries where migrants regularly go in search of new opportunities. Awareness raising campaigns have to focus on which ever groups are most at risk of being trafficked into slavery. In the northeast of Brazil, for example, a notably vulnerable group are the young men who set off to work in Amazonia and end up in slave labour in Pará State. Two years ago there was a campaign to make them aware of the risks. However, in the present circumstances it is particularly girls and young women who need information, about the risks they run of being trafficked into prostitution across the world. Evidently the girls and women most at risk are situated in particular countries or areas, often members of certain racial or ethnic groups or indigenous peoples. However, it is the predatory nature of the global sex industry that traffickers constantly seek out the most vulnerable and refocus their efforts on new areas. Of course, information about abuse is not enough. Prosecutions and punishment are needed as well. However, this should never be the punishment of trafficked persons or those practicing prostitution and I recommend strongly that the Working Group should suggest that governments refocus their energies on ensuring that those responsible for trafficking are prosecuted. Let me underline that despite police and government claims that they do focus their attention on traffickers, in practice we receive consistent information from many countries that victims of trafficking and women involved in prostitution are victims of double jeopardy when they fall into the hands of the police - and are in turn punished as illegal migrants or illegal practitioners of prostitution when in fact they are victims of a serious human right violations. To summarise, it is the traffickers who ought to be punished, and in many cases this means that national laws require amendment to establish extraterritorial jurisdiction, to allow for the prosecution in one State of an individual who has committed a crime of trafficking in another State. Finally, let me urge the Working Group to give attention to the topical issue of 'corporate responsibility'. It is not just organised crime which makes money out of trafficked persons; it is also a wide range of business sectors such as the leisure and entertainment sectors in most industrialized countries. Through the governments of these countries, I am sure the Working Group can send a message about the seriousness of human rights abuse being committed in the global sex industry, requiring responsible business to commit itself in action to prevent and remedy abuse, for example by adopting 'codes of conduct' which in other business sectors routinely prohibit exploitation of forced labour and child labour, as well as all forms of discrimination. Let me be very clear that I am not asking for business to engage in a public relations exercise, but rather to be obliged to find out more about the experience of the women, men and children whom they employ or pay, in order to guarantee that no human rights violations are occurring either in the form of trafficking or of violations of international human rights treaties to which the country concerned is a state party, such as the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, the 1979 Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the various conventions prohibiting slavery and forms of servitude, such as debt bondage and the sale of wives. In conclusion, Madame Chairperson, let me thank the Working Group for inviting NGOs to organise the consultation held this week and welcome any other initiatives which will help NGO activists work together to end the massive abuse to which trafficked women and women in prostitution are subjected all over the world. Mike Dottridge Director, Anti-Slavery, 24 June 1999