NEWS AND VIEWS
Federation appeals to U.N. regarding trafficking of women
The statement below has been submitted by the World Federation of the Ukrainian Women's Organizations and World Movement of Mothers, non-governmental organizations in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, to the 42nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
As organizations that have been involved for many years in the promotion of basic human rights for humankind and especially women and children, we are concerned with the recent increase in trafficking and enslavement of women throughout the world and particularly at this time the growing number from Eastern Europe. The United Nations estimates that there are 4 million people throughout the world who are trafficked yearly. They are deceived and coerced to work against their will in different types of servitude. The International Organization for Migration reports that about 500,000 are trafficked into Western Europe annually.
Young Asian women have been the basic commodity for decades. The newcomers to the slave market are young, naive Ukrainian, Russian and other Slavic women, who because of their economic hopelessness and lack of employment are entrapped, enslaved, stripped of their basic human rights and forced to work in houses of prostitution in various parts of the world. This trade of the human flesh has become so lucrative that international organized crime is taking full advantage of the easy money and the lack of laws and stiff punishment. Many of these women are imprisoned in over-crowded living conditions and are threatened and beaten and not fed if they protest and do not perform sex with the "clients." All traces of these women are lost and they disappear forever. They have no legal status in the countries and no recourse from law enforcement.
Governments seem to be indifferent to this growing trafficking of women and girls and are not implementing the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Persons and of Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. The effective suppression of trafficking in women and girls for the sex trade should be a matter of pressing international concern.
Trafficking in women and girls is a debasement of the human spirit for both the victim and the perpetrators and collectively for the societies involved.
This modern day slavery cannot continue!
We, as well as Zonta International, the National Council on Family Relations, the International Union of Family Organizations, the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations, the Women's International Democratic Federation, the International Health Awareness Network, the International Federation of Aging, World Information Transfer, the International Alliance of Women, and the Global Alliance for Women's Health, supporting non-governmental organizations, appeal to all Governments to take definitive action to resolve this human tragedy.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 15, 1998, No. 11, Vol. LXVI
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