Intensive Programm
"A European Migration Policy for the 21st Century"
FH-Fulda, Tuesday, 22nd January 2002
Marion Böker
to introduce you to the issue I am talking about I have to differenciate between the terms ‚smuggling‘ and ‚trafficking‘.
Today I am not talking about ‚smuggling‘.
I felt invited to talk about ‚TRAFFICKING‘ especially in women and children, and among the children especially the girl child, since females are 80 percent of the victimes world wide.
‚Smuggling‘ is an illegal merchandized assistance to migrants since migrant women and men all over the world especially into Europe cannot easily cross borders to enter their country of destination.
Whereever around the world you will have restrictive migration policies you will see smugglers finding ways or documents for migrants to cross borders, oceans, tunnels.
Migrants, and recently the number of migrant women is increasing, pay a high amount of money, which mostly is given by a great many family members to sent out one person, traditionally a male family member to help the survival of the family if they are poor or if the one has to escape especially political persecution.
Migrants and their families are always full of hope to reach the country of destination. Too often migrants only meet death during crossing the many borders especially of Europe. The same Europe, I remember was the dream of how to overcome all borders to unite poeple, and as I remember I have heard about the political idea about Europe when I was at school, it was never said, that the dream and idea of Europe should exclude Non-Europeans or anybody.
As to the specific need to develope a unique European Migration Policy, Laeken was a real role-back. Single member states are resisting a mutual migration policy, others are trying to implement on but which should more or less reduce migration, keep migrants out at first of this specific states or out of Europe at all, even if everybody knows that the only way to prevent people from migration is that in theire country of origin they have freedom, a guarantee of basic and human rights, equality, security, a certain state of wealth as to have a housing, foot, education, and a future perspective for themselves and their beloved ones.
So, instead of spending european money for new and at least never effective so called security measures AGAINST migrants, we should invest the same amount of our european ressources FOR prevention, FOR combatting poverty in the South, or East, we should help stabilizing regions in crisis and should support people and organizations claiming and fighting for a bettter living circumstances and all kind of rights and future perspectives in non-European regions and states.
But since Schengen and the more since the political instrumentalization of September 11 of last year, for migrants and their families Europe is the country of destination and hope as well as of a risk for their lives and a huge wall and idea of exclusion which welcomes non of them and which institutionalized racism and makes migrants vulnarable and to victimes of racism.
Reality shows, as more restrictive migration policies are, as less you might avoid migration but as more migrants and their families are becoming victimes of racism, transnational crimes and are illegelizied, criminalized and stigmatized.
Smuggling might be illegal and abusive by unfair prices and unhuman by risky and dangerous procedures and might criminalize migrants,- but smuggling is not
TRAFFICKING
since this is contemporary slavery or how Wole Soyinka defined it a few years ago ‚a form of modern slavery‘:
Trafficking is a human rights violation "which embraces present some of the most difficult and pressing issues on the international human rights agenda"
these are the opening words of the Office of The High Commissioner For Human Rights (OHCHR) in it‘s ‚Trafficking in Persons Information Note‘ from December 2001.
As shocking it is to realize in which numbers we deal every day in the mids of our so called European or western civilizations with slavery, as difficult is to identify the many forms of slavery as to identify and free the victimes, slaves, women, girl childs, boy childs who are all living very much among us, may be next door at the nightboors flat and we do not see them and do not know their unhuman circumstances.
Often even our police and state authorities cannot identify even if they want to the victimes of trafficking, because the law is using a definition which excludes most of the typical forms of the recent slavery. The forced labour in the european sex industry is the most known field of trafficking, but still there are more hidden forms of trafficking, like the forced marriage or the exploitation of female foreign domestic workers in privat households and for example in embassies.
This was recognized since by many NGOs around the world working with and for trafficked women and which assist the women in getting out of this slavery and to return as best as possible to an independent free living which seems to be so normal and guaranteed by laws and basic or human rights for most of us:
But dealing with this issue you will soon recognize how vulnarable rights are for migrants, especially women in the european countries which are the main countries of transition and destination for about 120.000 trafficked women and children in the EU today.
In consequence it was a long way of lobbying and fight for the NGOs and their partners in the last years to reach a definition on international level which covers most of the recent forms of TRAFFICKING.
In November, 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, supplemented by additional protocols, one is the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. The Convention and this protocols were opened for signature in December 2000 at a high-level conference in Palermo, Italy.
The Protocol adopts a broad definition of trafficking, reflecting the wide range of means and end-purposes which characterize this type of activity. For the purposes of the Protocol, trafficking in persons is defined as:
With this protocols, which we urge all States to ratify, the first time it was accepted that trafficking is a human rights violation, even if still not all governments are developing and implementing their strategies against trafficking from the only possible perspective of those who must need their human rights protected and promoted.
I would recommend you in your further discussions and work to use the above mentioned definition as to trafficking.
Among the many international and regional documents and Recommendatins on trafficking I just want to list some concrete instruments which I recommend you to further on take into consideration:
which was developed in Thailand by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), an NGO association in which we are affiliated and is still basic background of our international lobbying work
Which we urge all States to ratify
Which we urge all States to ratify
Which you can find under http://www.osce.org (Link: documents)
This EU Migration Policy should even primarily focus on the integration of migrants and on the respect towards all the positive contributions migrants are making in theire final countries of destinations.
KOK- Federal Association against trafficking in Women and violance against women in the migration process and it´s positions and practice:
The mechanisms of trafficking in persons today are typified by both discrimination based on gender and racial discrimination combined in a new, internationally organised assault on human rights of global proportions. It is a Trafficking in women whose European roots reach back to the time of transatlantic and colonial slavery, which the media, women‘s movement and judicial system only woke up in the 19 th century when white women from Eastern Europe became its victims and is based in systematical and cultural grounded sexism and the general two-folded construction of two different gender, which we have to generally deconstruct and overcome since it is not according to our modern ideas of women’s rights as human rights.
The 38 consulting agencies and NGOs in Germany which I represent for the KOK, the Federal Association Against Trafficking in Women And Violence Against Women in the Migration Process, as well as the international partner NGOs with which we are associated, approach trafficking in persons and trafficking in women from this basic standpoint: as a violation of human rights. Only this human rights perspective can do justice to what the victims of trafficking go through.
They are caught up in a vicious spiral of subjugation, coercion, psychological and physical brutality, degradation and the stripping and robbery of their freedom, dignity and personal security.
Even if they do escape or survive this experience, the consequences can be with them for the rest of their lives.
In order to restore something of their human dignity and freedom to them, it must be recognised both in this country and internationally that these women - and also frequently, children under the age of 18 are victims of human rights violations and deserve the full assistance according to international human rights instruments and standards.
In the meantime tackling the multi-facetted problem of trafficking in persons is the order of the day on the national, regional and international level. It must now be demonstrated that co-operation can work in practice, and that co-operation must be expanded internationally.
Experts in this field already have concepts for action on three levels that help to tackle the issue: action through
prevention, protection and persecution.
Prevention - tackling of root causes
Trafficking in persons and trafficking in women follows the international and national development of migration.
The causes lie in a state of gender relations now global and not confined to the West - that does not fundamentally recognise a woman as a person with her own dignity and rights, and instead defines her as ‚worthless‚.
It is a state of gender relations in which it is men who define a woman‘s frame of rights, worth and price in the global sex-industry. Since industrialisation men have defined women in terms of a monetary and trade value. Men can trade women‘s bodies and their labour as merchandise around the world, without generally coming into conflict with the basic principles of their societies. Even if States have created laws against this practice and traditions or ratified international conventions there is still too much of an unspoken ‚tolerance‘ for male superiority and hegemony towards women and one of the largest international organized crimes often connected with corruption, money laundering and still male defined macro-economic mechanisms.
Traffickers in women often make more money than drug traffickers do!
Only in Germany the traffickers are gaining every year around 9 Million Euro. The 15.000 women in forced prostitution in recent France are alone exploited for the gain of 3 Million EUROS a year.
And imagine: We do not have statistices and figures about the whole range of the number of trafficked women and children and not of the whole money which traffickers make. We can only count the trafficked women coming in the councelling centers and are discovered by police,- the privat sector and hidden cases will be higher in numbers but we cannot prove them.
In the last few decades this state of gender relations has at least been changing slowly, but changing all too slowly if the persistence of deep-rooted structures of patriarchal control in societies and in their state systems is anything to go by. The negative economic effects of globalisation or the effects of the radical political and economic changes to state systems in many of the EU accession states - effects such as poverty or unemployment - also affect women more keenly and in much greater numbers than they do men.
That is why, since the UN World Conference on Women in Peking at least, we have been talking about ‚feminisation‘ of poverty and migration. This phenomenon is deepened anew with each armed conflict in one of the world‘s regions. This is something we in Europe had to watch unfolding so unmistakably at the Balkans. In search for a to secure life to support their families, women fall into the hands of the traffickers.
In recent China we are noticing the drastic consequenses of the sexist one-male-child-policy. Now, in some regions there is a relation in the population of 140 men to 100 women. Traffickers have started to discover this as a new marked: Forced marriages and prostitution are increasing. The trafficked women are captured from poor regions.
Prevention work as a means of tackling the problem at its roots can only be effective if a comprehensive program is implemented in countries of destination, countries of origin and countries of transition.
For Germany recently the leading countries of origin are Russia, Ukraine, Rumania, Lithuania, Poland ... ,- the countries of transition to Germany and the whole Europe are mainly the former Yugoslavia and Albania, the main european contries of destination for trafficked women are Italy, Germany and France.
In the case of trafficking in persons and trafficking in women, prevention means tackling poverty through joint international development programms and to implement an international early warning system and prevention programms for conflicts especially armed conflicts according to the Peking +5 Follow-Up document from June 2000 and the Resolution of the UN-Security Council 1325 from 31st October 2000.
Systems also need to be changed in line with a world-wide re-shaping of societies in favour of human dignity, and societies need to be organised around the principle of the equality of women and men and around principles of human rights and human dignity. It means fighting against every form of discrimination and racism. It means enabling men and women to participate in economic life and share in resources.
Events in the world today beg the question: shouldn‘t it be possible for us, finally, to establish some kind of pre-emptive and sustained reconstruction or Marshall- or Master type plan, which can be implemented in regions of the world when early warning indicators of crisis and conflict are triggered?
One of these indicators should be the extent to which women are able to participate in society and the extent to which their rights are guaranteed, or rather withdrawn or flouted and whether women are being systematically terrorised.
For the future, prevention also needs to be based on human rights education that should include - at the earliest possible opportunity sensibilisation to gender issues.
It should include realistic instruction in the alternatives to illegal migration in search of work on a regional, national and international level, and information on the true nature of trafficking in persons, especially women and children.
Girls and boys in both destination countries and countries of origin must be aware of how people are duped by the traffickers. They must be able to recognise the false promises and false pictures of living and working standards painted by traffickers and able to recognise as fairy tales the supposedly wealthy marriage partners awaiting trafficked women in the so-called Western countries.
They must learn about the sort of experiences victims of trafficking in persons and their families really have to go through. Prevention is also very much dependent on a socialisation of boys and men to conceive of girls and women on a basis of equality; to conceive of sexuality free of violence and dominance one that respects the free will of all partners.
This task of socialisation should begin at an early age. It demands a carefully designed and developed education program. But this task is being blocked in many places today by taboos and a false sense of embarrassment. Seen from the perspective of HIV prevention, these will need to be tackled head on if an entire generation is not to be lost.
Prevention work has only just begun, in the shape of state and NGO awareness campaigns targeted at potential victims of trafficking in women in the countries of origin, and also aimed at the milieus in destination countries where victims may also be.
In case some women who are planning to migrate actually go to embassies in person to get a visa, these embassies are helping by having information material from both government departments and NGOs about the real face of the "friend who helps migration", trafficking or forced marriages and adresses for emergency to hand-out. These flyers and leaflets for prevention have to be financially supported by governmental budgets especially by the countries of destination.
Another integral part of prevention would be to address the legalisation of prostitution and more generally the creation of legal avenues of migration, so traffickers can no longer criminalise their victims and threaten them with deportation.
Protection
In order that victims of trafficking in persons can be readily identified, it is exceptionally important, over and above the progress already achieved in internationally agreed definitions and in relevant legal terminologies and institutions in Germany, that we draw a clear distinction between migrants in general and the victims of trafficking in persons.
In this respect, awareness also needs to be focussed on the other forms of trafficking in women that exist alongside forced prostitution. We find it much harder to raise awareness of these other forms through our education and prevention campaigns.
There is a contradiction in Germany. Next to the very same rights and arrangements that the German government in cooperation with our member NGOs has outlined, we find that in their budgeting federal states are occasionally calling certain provisions into question. For example, in North Rhine Westphalia, there have been attempts to save on interpreters‘ fees and joint- plaintiff actions, other states have tried to cut costs in the accommodation of victims. This hinders our counceling staff members from to do theire work since regularly they are forced to go back to the Laender-Government and politicians to debate over the never increasing minimum budget for the need of the trafficked women. This does not help efforts to provide protection and harms the victims of trafficking in persons.
Victims need to:
Victims also have other requirements:
They have an equal requirement for the protection and support detailed above after returning home. More NGOs should be supported in this provision, so should the state in the countries of origin, and money should be set aside from economic co-operation funds for this purpose. Especially some countries of origin for example the EU affiliated member states and CEE countries cannot afford support of NGOs but are needing NGOs to serve the need of their trafficked women citizens at their return. Here we need joined european and international programms and funds.
Victims should be entitled to compensation, which should not be taken into account in the calculation of social and other benefits to which they are entitled.
Under age victims of people traffickers, that is children under 18, must be guaranteed direct assistance from youth welfare departments. This is frequently not forthcoming and youth welfare departments need to be sensitised to the situation and play their role as partners in tackling trafficking in persons.
In fact, we need more co-ordinated co-operation from government departments in general on national, regional and international levels and more support and cooperation between governments and NGOs to combat trafficking more effective:
Their staff should undergo anti-racist training, training in human rights and gender issues, especially about the rights and needs of trafficked women and children, specially as all people in contact with trafficked persons must know how to deal with traumatized persons.
Lawyers, defence lawyers (especially those representing suspected traffickers), doctors, police and customs officers and at least all stuff of NGOs as well, these are all those coming into contact with trafficked persons, should also benefit from such training to protect and guarantee the human rights of the victims and prevent the recurrence of certain incidents.
The state should unconditionally, and without periodic threats of cutbacks, take on all costs of protecting the victim. It is the very least the state can do to take on some responsibility for the actions of its citizens who act as ‚customers‘ of these trafficked women: so called clients, dealers and middlemen.
The development of strategies for the prosecution of the traffickers is of course another side of the fight, and is something will be discussing today and tomorrow. We must be careful all the while, not to allow the rights and requirements of the victim to slip from view.
To sum up, I hope that in your work the following days you will be able to discuss implementation of some of the proposals and demands of us NGOs into the European framework and may be some of yours will be able to furnish these conference with come concrete recommendations or will later help us to combate poverty, trafficking, human rights violations and help to make human rights work effective for all woman, man and children in the world .
Thank you to have invited me to speak out.