3071-The political economy of new slavery

102 Responses to Sexual Slavery
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The protocol was
ratified by the BiH government on 24 April 2002 (Human Rights Watch,
2002b). In this protocol, trafficking does not only refer to prostitution,
but also includes the violence, intimidation and deception pertaining
to the displacement of people into forced or slave labour (UN, 2001).
Moreover, it does not recognize as legally legitimizing the original consent
given by the victims of slavery. The specificity of the definition of
trafficking has resulted in the elaboration of a report by the UN Special
Raporteur on Violence Against Women, in which four different sets of
circumstances have been established to facilitate the diagnosis of trafficking.
A first group of individuals has been established and refers to
the absolute coercion and dupery of which women are victim. A second
group encapsulates women who were partly lied to when they accepted
recruitment for employment, such as concerning their destination of
work, the nature of the work they were going to produce or the extent
of the debt they were going to sustain as a result of their travel. A third
group comprises of women who were aware of the kind of work they
were going to do, but who did not know the extent to which their movements
and finances were to be restricted. Finally, the fourth group refers
to women who know that they are to sell their body as a commodity for
the sexual pleasure of their clients, and who are in control of their own
finances and movements. This latter set of circumstances is the only
one where women can be referred to as prostitutes, as opposed to sexual
slaves, and do not classify as trafficked individuals. This report is the
first of its kind to define so specifically the term ‘trafficking’ for women.
However, it does not link the act directly to the issue of modern slavery,
or sexual slavery, and fails to present a specific protocol to address the
issues of prevention and repression of trafficking.
There is no doubt that the sharpening up of the definition of trafficking
will lead to a future legal link between its practice and sexual
slavery, the question that remains is when. Moreover, the rapid increase
in ‘humanitarian strikes’ and ‘democratic interference’ emanating from
Western powers since the end of the Cold War leaves thousands of
women at risk of being victimized by their traffickers, their wealthy
peacekeeping ‘clients’ and international law. In practice, therefore, as
illustrated by the case of Doboj, most women diagnosed as trafficked
individuals and freed, the ‘chosen few’, will have to wait to be transferred
to the IOM house in Sarajevo, this pending a) a local investigation,
b) a review of their case by the IPTF HQ , c) space in the safe house, all
of the above possible only through the rare availability of a translator
for those who do not speak the local language. This process is extremely