"The slave trade in women for sexual purposes is growing ... Smuggling in humans is much less risky than smuggling drugs and it is highly profitable", Commissioner Anita Gradin told the European Commission's Conference on Trafficking in Women held by the European Commission in June, 1996.
Almost four years later, the number of women in varying degrees of sexual slavery worldwide is around 2 million.
Research by the Women and Public Policy Program of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, using information from more than 200 countries, shows that the problem of trafficking in women is massive.
The Women and Public Policy Program's "Protection Project" is designed to produce a comprehensive legal database of national and international legislation to protect women and children from commercial sexual exploitation.
In November 1999, the US Central Intelligence Agency produced a report, "International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery", that concluded that as many as 50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe are brought to the US under false pretenses each year, and forced to work as prostitutes, abused labourers or servants.
US President Bill Clinton, with Norway's Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik, issued a joint statement on November 1 which asserted: "We share concern about the growing problem of trafficking in women for the purpose of placing them into slavery-like conditions ... It is important to focus on the economic and social structures that give rise to prostitution and sexual exploitation, and to find methods to empower the women involved."
Rarely do I find myself agreeing with Clinton (or citing CIA reports) in this column, but Clinton and Bondevik were correct when they identified women's subservient economic position, especially in the Third World and the former Eastern bloc, as the underlying cause of trafficking in women.
The CIA report identified countries that are the primary sources for exploited women and children coming to the US as Thailand, Vietnam, China, Mexico, Russia and the Czech Republic. Other countries that are increasingly providing victims include the Philippines, South Korea, Malaysia, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Brazil and Honduras.
The report revealed that 250 brothels in 26 cities across the US appeared to be holding trafficking victims, but said that it was not always easy to tell because the victims generally did not speak English and might have been even more afraid of law enforcement officers than of their captors.
Most women are not kidnapped, but lured to the US with promises of financial security and the chance to escape situations of poverty and hopelessness. Generally they are not aware of the sexual nature of their relocation until arriving. Because women make up the bulk of those living in poverty in every country, there is no shortage of women desperate enough to believe promises made to them by those who profit from the modern slave trade.
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women wrote in 1999 that "women have been disproportionately marginalised by the structural adjustment programs of the last decade, including the expansion of the market economy and the rise of crushing external debt burdens in developing nations, petty- and high-level corruption by government officials, and the rise of organised crime, as well as by the increase in regional and local warfare and natural disasters".
Clinton is correct to say that there is a need to focus on the economic factors which give rise to the trade in women, but he heads a superpower whose economic might is in part based on the wholesale economic exploitation of the Third World.
Until a global redistribution of wealth occurs, something that is desperately needed for the long-term survival of humanity, poorer countries will provide a steady stream of victims (overwhelmingly women and children) to provide sexual services for those in exploiter countries who can afford them.
As with most organised crime, far from being innocent bystanders, most "civilised" governments not only turn a blind eye, but directly and indirectly profit from this trade.
BY MARGARET ALLUM