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The Women's Freedom Network Newsletter
Sept/Oct and Nov/Dec, 1999, Vol. 6, Number 5 & 6. NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SEXUAL TRAFFICKING
The Protection Project
Laura J. Lederer, Director
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P eople ask me, why document the laws? Why should we collect the laws? We need to collect the laws because the trafficking of women and children is international, but the laws are all national. At this point there are no international laws that have enforcement capability. There are the United Nation Conventions, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which set an international norm. But those conventions, without particular statutes in the penal code, do not have any enforcement capability. So we need to find out what the laws are in various countries because what might be legal in one country might be illegal in another country. To do this we have mailed out a detailed series of questionnaires. The first one was on prostitution and sexual trafficking, and the second one was on child pornography, pornography, and sexual exploitation in cyberspace. We sent them to the ministries of justice of all 200 countries because they are on the cutting edge. They are prosecuting these cases. They know what the current law is. And we took the time to find the person inside the Justice Department in each country who was either responsible for or familiar with this set of issues and to do a little diplomatic work.
So what have we found? In terms of trafficking, we have the trafficking laws for 216 countries which is a 96 percent return rate. We have found that almost every country in the world has some sort of law or another that they use to address the trafficking issue, whether it is an old white slave-trade law from the turn of the century, which is when the business of transporting people for purposes of prostitution first came up, or whether it is a law that was written in 1949 after the first convention on trafficking, or whether it is a brand new law. There are about 50 countries that have new trafficking laws, but there are about 10 or 15 that are general laws that address both labor trafficking and sexual trafficking. For a long time we did not think there were laws in place that could be used for trafficking and now we know there are. They are not perfect laws, but they are certainly there. Many of them need to be strengthened.
The other thing that we are doing is looking at the range of penalties and we find that for the most part the procuration and old trafficking laws from the 1940s and '50s have a fairly low range of penalties anywhere from six month to three years, maybe five years. The newer trafficking laws are taking the issue much more seriously with imprisonment for traffickers of up to 5 to 10, sometimes 20 years. Cambodia's laws say 20 years maximum imprisonment or fines, and sometimes a combination of the two.
We were also looking for what we call the three P's, which are what the experts are now saying is the way to address this issue: Prevention, Prosecution, and Protection. And we looked to see which governments have laws that actually mandate prevention programs and protection-- that is, social service programs for those who have been victims. We have collected about a dozen at this point. The United States is now looking at some new laws that will allow some of the agencies and departments within the U. S. to both educate people about trafficking, but also to provide special shelters, rehabilitation programs, legal counseling, and other sorts of witness protection for those who have been trafficked. We have been encouraging countries to look at their laws and "harmonize" or figure out a way to make the definitions, the suspect activities, and the penalties a little more in tune with one another, so that a trafficker cannot say if I go to this country, I am going to be in better shape, because they have low penalties, and they have a very vague definition of what constitutes trafficking; whereas if I go to this country I am going to be in trouble because they have pretty much got all the loopholes closed. So countries can at least begin, if not to cooperate, to figure out the ways that they do not become the next country of choice for these traffickers. I think that is going to be a very big help and we hope that our work will be of help to them in that process.