CORRUPTION

International Affairs Forum Fall 2016
Interview with Ms. Taina Bien-Aimé
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Your organization, the Coalition Against
Trafficking in Women (CATW), is one of the
oldest organizations in the world to fight
human trafficking and the commercial sexual
exploitation of women. Could you briefly
describe CATW’s practice areas: legislative
advocacy, education and prevention, and
ending the demand for human trafficking?
CATW is one of the oldest international antitrafficking
organizations to look at trafficking
in women as gender-based violence and
discrimination. This involves looking at
commercial sexual exploitation, including
prostitution, as a form of violence and
discrimination against women and girls. We are a
very small organization, and our New York office
focuses mostly on legal advocacy and raising
awareness about these issues. Our partners in
Latin America, more specifically in Mexico, and in
the Philippines work with victims and survivors,
and also focus on prevention by exploring
positive masculinities with men and boys.
Additionally, our partner organizations focus
on preventing trafficking in situations involving
natural disasters or conflicts.
CATW’s efforts to end sex trafficking and
prostitution may resemble the efforts of early
abolitionists to end the slave trade. In what
ways, if any, is combatting sex trafficking
a continuation of the earlier abolitionist
tradition?
accommodation of violence and discrimination,
but for its elimination Whether a person is
working in areas related to the death penalty or
abuses in the mining industry, all practitioners
in the human rights or civil rights fields are
working toward the abolition of a harm. Within
the context of our work, we strongly believe
that harm reduction policies are critical. But you
cannot invest continuously in harm reduction
without looking at harm elimination, because
otherwise what you are doing is facilitating the
continuation of violence and abuse. It is a twopronged
situation wherein we acknowledge
that it is critical to provide comprehensive
access to medical, educational, economic, and
legal services to people who are sex trafficked
and prostituted. But parallel to that should
also be efforts vis-à-vis the government, law
enforcement, the medical community, and
other stakeholders to really look at where the
essence of this harm stems from and to address
it. Gender analysis is critical here, because
women and girls have additional vulnerabilities
related to their sex and gender; the same
vulnerabilities that play a role in such crimes as
domestic violence, female genital mutilation,
child marriage, and other harmful cultural
practices that treat girls as second-class citizens.
One cannot properly address sex trafficking
and commercial sexual exploitation, including
prostitution, without a clear framework on
violence and discrimination against women and
girls.
Anyone who works in the human rights or
civil rights fields should be, by definition,
abolitionists because we are not working for the
Which groups are the most at-risk for sex
trafficking? Are there particular indicators or
factors that might make someone at-risk?
Fall 2016
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