The UK Solicitor General, Harriet Harman, this month launched a drive to crack down on sex trafficking in Europe. As part of the strategy she suggested that men who use women who have been trafficked as prostitutes should also be prosecuted along with the people who trafficked them.
Referring to trafficked women she said;
“The people who purchase their services would not regard themselves as criminals, but they are the demand side of terrible criminal exploitation.”
She therefore advocated the arrest of clients if a woman had been trafficked. If such policy is introduced then business travellers and other people will have to be much more careful in the UK about accessing sexual services.

The AIDS epidemic is making it easier for traffickers to find vulnerable children to force and deceive into sex slavery. In countries such as those in sub-Saharan Africa where AIDS has left many thousands of families with children as their heads, there is no one to protect children and young women from traffickers. Where there is desperation people are easily deceived. In many places in Asia there is a myth that children are less likely to be infected and so there is a greater and greater demand for young prostitutes. In India there is a widespread belief that if a man who is HIV positive has sex with a virgin he will be cured. In fact children are more likely to contract HIV as their tissue tears more easily. Far from men being cured, thousands of children are being infected by the disease after they have been trafficked. The transport of people across borders also makes it much harder for governments to tackle their country’s HIV problem. The cause of ending trafficking is thus closely bound up with the fight against HIV/AIDS.

CheapTickets.com has removed its sponsorship of a new travel journalism blog which championed “informed sex tourism”. Referring to a recent article in the New York Times which claimed that Rio was not an easy place to buy sex, the blog, Gridskipper.com, thanked the New York Times and reminded its readership that they could always go to Bangkok. CheapTickets.com have taken a principled stance on this issue, recognising that sex tourism is not a joke and often results in slavery for children and young women. Sex trafficking will only be reduced when the culture which accepts it as fun or part of a business trip is changed.

The International Organisation for Migration has started a major campaign in tsunami hit Sri Lanka to try to prevent the exploitation of women and children. Sri Lanka is a source country for women and children being trafficked to Lebanon and several Gulf States for sexual exploitation and forced labour. Women, boys and girls are also trafficked inside Sri Lanka for sex tourists to use, as well as being forced into domestic servitude. This was the case before the tsunami, and the emergency has increased the risk of people being trafficked because they have lost all security and means of income. The IOM has distributed 5000 posters informing people that they should be very cautious of anyone who offers them a job abroad. They have also been offering financial support to families who now only have one parent leading them and who are vulnerable to splitting up due to pressures of poverty.

A German television documentary alleged this week that German visas had been given to children in the Bulgarian capital Sophia who had subsequently been trafficked into Germany by Paedophile networks. The report alleged that Bulgarian parents, mainly of Roma origin had been paid to send their children to Germany. German diplomats have refuse to comment on the scandal, despite the Euro Roma organisation of Bulgaria approaching the German embassy in Sophia to enquire what measures are being taken to punish the people involved in the affair.
This is only part of a wider visa scandal which is putting German foreign minister Joschka Fischer under pressure to resign. The guidelines on the issuing of German visas have become so lax that many traffickers have been able to obtain visas for women being forced into prostitution against their will.
The pressure on the government can only grow as the trial of 73 people accused of human trafficking is under way in Rostock. These people are accused of selling women into sex slavery in Germany from many eastern European countries. It is certain that recent loop holes in the visa application process made the work of the traffickers much easier. While it is important to avoid xenophobia and the closing of borders as a reaction to large scale human trafficking, it is vital that officials are trained to look for trafficking rings when they scrutinise visa applications.