Trafficking and sexual work

Patricia Britos

1. Introduction

The definition of trafficking is: the illegal trade of human beings with the
purpose of work exploitation (includes sex work) and organs removal. People are
transferred, transported and kidnapped; sometimes, they are recruited for a job
that it happens to be a quite different thing, for example, women consent to work
as a hotel maid but instead, they are abused, raped, beaten and put to work as
prostitutes. Without their identity documents or passports, they are threatened to
their own death or their families.

In Argentina, specially, it is widely known that there are many people who
come from Bolivia to work in the farms (men and women) and they live as slaves,
without possibility to escape. Women for prostitution are recruited specially in
Paraguay. I'd like to discuss the issue of the consent. That it's to say the problem
that involves the will of women to develop the sexual activity; this includes the
issue about their freedom. It is a fact that it is impossible this activity without the
complicity of the politicians and the police force. Apart from this, let’s take into
account the problem of the suffering of the women that exercise sexual work
habitually. When the police are searching girls kidnapped, go beyond their own
mandate and are violent with the sexual workers. This is not understandable
because prostitution is legal in Argentina. My intention is discussing the grounds of
trafficking legislation and establishing what is the meaning of sexual exploitation.

Methodically, my research is based in Martha Nussbaum’s position that

points to the close relation between law and emotions. My conclusion is based in
empirical data1, Theoretically, I also intend to explain the importance of the
emotions in this kind of crime; the vulnerability of certain groups in the society
makes them easy victims to the kidnapping and psychological torture situation. And
the most relevant trouble appears in the governmental institutions and the social
discrimination contributes to avoid strong and effective measures to end with the
human trafficking crime.

2. Human trafficking next to my door

It is usual to think that this kind of crime is something very strange to my

environment, although this activity is perhaps happening in our neighbour’s house.
The nowadays slavery has no chains as we were used to; the real chains are the
menace, the money debts and the fear of the own death or the family’s.
People who live in a neighbourhood is not aware of what takes place in
every house or apartment around. For example, a group of researchers from the
Mar del Plata University went to a rural area looking for some data about living
conditions. They arrive at a house where a man opens a window and says that he
is alone, locked and he has no document –he was a foreigner- because he is there
against his will. He begs them for help. They go to the police and when they come
back, the man is not there anymore. Finally, he was traced and found and at last,
he was rescued by the authorities.

An example of textile trafficking in 2012:

In the textile industry, there is trafficking in the cities in front of everyone. In Buenos
Aires, a victim was able to flee and denounced a workshop where 23 persons
made other 80 (including some minors) work as slaves. All of them are Bolivians.

1
I am in touch with the sex workers union, including with travesties and transsexuals’ association
and their problems. I have also interviewed lawyers, judges, migration and police officers as well as
pimps.
There were 3 bedrooms with similar characteristics. It was discovered a room, 6
m2, no windows, with 2 bunks for 6 people each. They used the system “cama
caliente”, that means that each bed is used all the time by different people because
when one is working another is resting. Workers deal with shifts in the sewing
machine and in the bed. For them, living is working; there is nothing left to enjoy.

An example of sexual trafficking in 2010:

This happened in a city called Tandil. Two poor and young women were deceived
by a relative in Paraguay; she said that she could take them to Buenos Aires and
they could work for an elderly people home. But, when they arrived to Argentina,
they were taken to another city and kidnapped in a house. They were watched
constantly and when they went out, they always were accompanied by someone
who took them to a public phone and dialed their family’s phone numbers in their
country. Apart from that, this person listened to the conversation, and it was
impossible to make a denunciation. One of them, Aranda, was able to escape
through a narrow window and asked for help in a Communitarian Centre near the
brothel. She was received and attended by a social worker; when this woman
intended to phone to the police, Aranda prevented her that that was a risk because
the police was paid by her kidnappers.

In Batán, a rural area that provides with vegetables to Mar del Plata, it is
quite usual to find employees in the farms who are brought from Bolivia by the
owners who also come from that country. Many workers are against their will. They
have no documentation, they are locked and they have to pay a debt due to the
cost of the bus ticket from abroad. As well as the girls recruited to offer sex, these
men, women, or directly whole families, they are transported and forced to
continue working on account of an unlawful debt which rarely is completely paid
off. Although the state of poverty makes them to accept the terms of the unwritten
contract, they are manipulated so that the victims are not in condition to get free at
last. The coercion consists in some actions that involve psychological manipulation
and/or the application of physical force.

I have decided to follow sexual trafficking because as I see it, this matter
(all concerned with sex) is object to a great moral prejudice and the consequent
social discrimination. This does not make things easy. In fact, sexual work and
trafficking is frequently confused –at least, in Argentina- and, for that reason, it is
hard to recognize the true problem.

According to UNICEF, as many as two million children are subjected to

prostitution in the global commercial sex trade. International covenants and
protocols obligate criminalization of the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
The use of children in the commercial sex trade is prohibited under both the
Palermo Protocol and U.S. law as well as by legislation in countries around the
world. There can be no exceptions and no cultural or socioeconomic
rationalizations preventing the rescue of children from sexual servitude. Sex
trafficking has devastating consequences for minors, including long-lasting physical
and psychological trauma, disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, unwanted
pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and possible death.

Abuses of contracts and hazardous conditions of employment for migrant

laborers do not necessarily constitute human trafficking. However, the imposition of
illegal costs and debts on these laborers in the source country, often with the
support of labor agencies and employers in the destination country, can contribute
to a situation of debt bondage. This is the case even when the worker’s status in
the country is tied to the employer in the context of employment-based temporary
work programs. (US Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011)

That means that there is no way out, it is not easy to escape. Of course, if
a worker is tied by debt because someone pays his/her ticket to travel to a place
where he/she will obtain a job, this relationship becomes spoiled, corrupted and
detrimental to human rights. I will not talk about poverty because I consider that
worse than poverty is marginality (that is the impossibility of develop decide one’s
own life). In Argentina, the poor were able to access to education and change their
lives. In the last decades, that social climbing disappeared. The story of immigrants
in the last part of 19th Century is a clear example of this, those who arrived from
Europe in that migration wave, were uneducated workers, most of them were
peasants. Nevertheless, we, their descendants became professionals, or at least,
had the opportunity to choose. A world open to talent.
The brute luck, as John Rawls calls it, is the main cause for the sense of
vulnerability that makes possible the risk of becoming victims of trafficking. Some
people trust in someone else when they are offered a job (especially in another
country), necessity and luck of resources provoke vulnerability. The social and
economic level of the citizen will be determinant for being captured by delinquents
who generally are very near; they may be close friends, including relatives. We
always think of husbands or boyfriends when young women are deceived but,
nowadays, it is quite usual to find women close to the family as deceivers. Pimps
are also females in some cases; in fact, the sexual exploitation has gone different
in this century. In one of the cases in Mar del Plata, a Paraguayan woman is
captured by a criminal network; she finally got married to her pimp and came back
to her country and transported two girls underage who had to undergo sexual
exploitation without any other option. This woman who acted as a pimp after has
been kidnapped, was in jail and now she is free and repented for her actions. It is
obvious that emotions are involved in this crime of crime and that most vulnerable
people will be the best victims.

3. Vulnerability

“Women in much of the world lose out by being women. Their human powers of
choice and sociability are frequently thwarted by societies in which they must live
as the adjuncts and servants of the ends of others, and in which their sociability is
deformed by fear and hierarchy” (Nussbaum, p. 298)
 I agree with the idea that emotions are relevant for the analysis of legal
affairs. Lawyers generally do not agree, they pose that law is what is written and
passions and sentiments belong to day to day life, quite different from the justice
world. In Political Philosophy, the first that concerns with a sense of justice related
with a psychological construction is John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum is who
studied the moral through reason and emotions. In the rawlsian theory, there are
five groups of social primary goods (liberty and opportunity, income and wealth,
health and educated intelligence) to distribute. He considers that “[p]erhaps the
most important primary good is self-respect, a confident conviction of the sense of
one’s own value, a firm assurance that what one does and plans to do is worth
doing.” (Rawls, 1963, p.158)

Portela2 states that the legal term “vulnerability” is vague and ambiguous.
And he adds that there is no possibility of finding out the proper interpretation
without the grounds of ethical human rights. In fact, I agree with him as regards this
subject though we are in opposite theoretical positions in the question of the
meaning of sexual activity because he does not admit autonomy in certain area of
sexual work (e.g. the autonomy of the sexual workers who have the power of
decision, especially those well-educated). Both pose that vulnerability is
everywhere. Before and after the act of kidnapping, high society does not share the
fear of kidnapping because all this begins with the search of a decent job. And,
when I regard to a “decency”, the object is to direct the stress to a well-paid job, I
am not judging morally.

As regards vulnerability, those girls and women that are caught by someone
who makes them enter into prostitution against their will, vulnerability is well
expressed in lack of resources, education, and obviously, they are vulnerable
because they are women. When they are in a criminal network, they are
threatened and menaced by their kidnappers with the possibility of hurting them or
their families. Some girls can go out but do not ask for help because they run the

2
Mario Portela is judge in the TOF1 in Mar del Plata, a federal court.
risk that their kids suffer an attack or something similar. The kidnappers reinforce
their power saying all the time that these women´s families are in danger far away
because the crime always wins. And that is worse than what these trafficked
women suffer themselves.

Let´s see that there is no problem with men, I mean, sexual workers. There
is no crime in this, there is no prejudice and there is no police violence. Just only
the transsexual activity suffers the same violence. The women are required for
sexual work, especially young girls, and they are in danger because they can be
kidnapped and their families do not see them anymore. In this paper, I pretend
mostly to point to the protection of women.

The domination over women is historical; Gayle Rubin (1986, p. 7) tells us

that in the valley of Amazonas and in the mountains of New Guinea, there are
frequent collective rapes in order to control women. Many mechanisms of
intimidation have been used for years: Bertrand Russell told about that Mungo
Park travelled through Africa at the end of the XIX Century and, in a small town
called Kolor, saw masks hanging from the trees. He was told that the masks were
used by men, the husbands disguised in order to scare their wives as if they were
kids to control them. Obviously, women were thought as individuals who were not
able to think by themselves.

In order to solve the problem of vulnerability, it is necessary to work hard in

order to make disappear the feeling of shame, envy and disgust. Nussbaum
reminds us that these are the obstacles to compassion. We also can say that the
lack of sympathy and empathy does not help; instead, it makes the things get
worse.

4. Description of sexual exploitation in Argentina

It is necessary to be clear and precise as regards the meaning of every

term used in the sexual work. Besides, a brief description also is indispensable to
understand the debate suggested. Firstly, there are different kinds of services
according to the geography and the history. The translation also may be
complicated, so, I will intend to make my best to give a good explanation.

For one hand, “brothel” is a general term that has to be adjusted. I prefer
not to translate for a better understanding. There is a distinction between
“whiskerías”, “prostíbulos” and “privados”. 1) whiskerías: shops where alcoholic
drinks are served and women are paid for drinking with a man. There is an offer of
sex; it is usual using a room in the same place or going to a near hotel. There are
also some places that include dancing, most of the girls collect their money doing
this and some include the selling of sex service outside the place. 2) prostíbulos:
this is an old word, in the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th century, there were
large houses where the prostitutes lived and work. They needed to pass a medical
test to be able to work. Nowadays, some use the word “prostíbulo” scornfully.
Some use it for a “privado”. 3) privados: this is a present concept, there are
houses or apartments where there are sexual workers. Generally, there is a boss
that runs the business and gives protection to the women. These are pimps
because they propitiate the prostitution and this is an offence in Argentina. I
emphasize that prostitution is not, it is legal.

I am providing with an example to make you understand what the problem

consists in. In Mar del Plata, a well-known criminal case ended up with no one in
jail. Many women, sexual workers, disappeared and the supposition was that there
was someone who killed these women. This series of events (1996-2001) was
called the “loco de la ruta” (the mad of the highway) because, for a long time, the
hypothesis was that a man kidnapped them and killed them and that he was a
serial killer. But, at last, everyone suspected that the police had to do with it. The
question is that the few corps recovered showed that there was not a unique
murderer; there were several ones. And, despite the silence of witnesses, it was
possible to know that when women worked in the streets, some corrupted
policemen forced them to sell drugs. In this case, high hierarchy police officers
were involved in this. The result is that no one was arrested. It is for this reason
that girls started to work in the “privados”. That was an attempt to be protected,
with or without pimps.

Nowadays, President Cristina Kirchner prohibited the ads offering sex and
that provoked a new trouble for some sexual workers. Those who had left the pimp
control or the “privado”, and have their own apartment –sometimes shared with
another girl or girls-, they have to go back to the privado because it becomes hard
to promotion themselves. I would like to explain well that a privado is an apartment
or house owned by someone who employees women as sexual workers, women
live there, in others, they work only some hours. There is no strip tease, dancing or
drinks, there are bedrooms and the men go directly there. Some of these owners
are pimps and some are not, some have trafficked girls and women and curiously,
those shops are rarely discovered. In fact, there are some well-known secret
truths: some policemen own brothels. Is there trafficking there? We can´t say, they
never have a raid. Another worrying thing is that there is a NGO (the “Alameda”)
which works against trafficking and wastes time attacking sexual work in general;
e.g. there is an expensive “whiskería” that has been in the media, presented by the
Alameda as a place where there are trafficked women. I would say that that is
impossible, those who work there earn weekly more money than we make up for a
month teaching in a university. Besides, they have always the mobile in their
hands, and that is the most clear and sound proof. Holding the mobile and the ID
document is the clue in searching this kind of crime.

5. State security forces and the law

According the Palermo Protocol (the 3P document), that supplements the

United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the States that
sign it ratifying and accepting its terms, have to “establish comprehensive policies,
programs and other measures”. The aim is to prevent and combat trafficking in
persons and to protect its victims from re-victimization (Palermo Protocol, art. 2
and 9). Besides, the State parties might promote cooperation among them to be
able to accomplish the goals proposed.

Following the TVPA, the extent of every country effort to control the
trafficking is expressed in tier placement:

Tier 1: countries whose governments fully comply with the TVPA‘s

minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

Tier 2: countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA‘s
minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into
compliance with those standards.

Tier 3: countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum
standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.

Argentina is one of the countries that has not been able to accomplish the
goals of the Palermo Protocol, let´s see what is the meaning of belonging to the
Tier 2 Watch List. These items give us some idea of the failure in this crime
treatment:

a) the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very

significant or is significantly increasing;

b) there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat

severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year, including increased
investigations, prosecution, and convictions of trafficking crimes, increased
assistance to victims, and decreasing evidence of complicity in severe forms of
trafficking by government officials; or

c) the determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring

itself into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the
country to take additional steps over the next year.
 As regards sexual work is the same. Many suffer and no good solutions
are proposed. This crime is concerned to the police though it is also a matter of the
rest of government institutions. Education is involved in the prevention of
trafficking, if this happened, the problem of vulnerability would decrease. In fact,
the inform about violence against women that the Argentine PNUD Office realized
in 2011, neither include sexual work, sexual exploitation and trafficking, not takes
into account the violence that all the society produce against women on account of
prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is not a trouble because everyone has met
oneself in situation where one feels something about another person and, finally,
discovers that it was a mistake. Or, if it was not, it was a good thing. In the case
that I am walking in a dark street and a young boy crosses by running, I grab my
bag because I may think that I may be victim of a thief. Most of the time, this does
not happen but my prejudice protects me from losing my bag. Discrimination is
something more complicated, this is a feeling that is not based in our own
protection, and there are dark emotions in there. And finally, there are people
suffering; this is the case of women involved in sexual work. How can we discover
where the trafficking is if we saw the women involved as sinners?

6. Conclusion

I am concerned with individual rights, personal choice, autonomy and

equality to the law. For that reason, I am worried about the lack of protection of
women. Prejudice, discrimination, old values that have to do with religious cult, the
role the society has chosen for us.

The world community has been slow to address the problems of women,
because it has lacked a consensus that sex-based inequality is an urgent issue of
political justice. (…) The outrages suffered every day by millions of women –
hunger, domestic violence, child sexual abuse and child marriage, inequality before
the law, poverty, lack of dignity and self-regard- these are not uniformly regarded
as scandalous, and the international community has been slow to judge that they
are human rights abuses. (Nussbaum, p. 298)

AMMAR They are for a bill that regulates the autonomous sexual work. Sexual
work is not sexual trafficking.

Buenos Aires, May 11th 2012 – As regards a new judgment in the Cámara del
Crimen3, the judges posed that it is licit the voluntary “prostitution” activity that
takes place in a private place. The union (AMMAR) has claimed that sexual work is
legitimate for 18 year-old people; they remind us that in Argentina, sexual work is
legal unlike sexual exploitation and pimping. For that reason, AMMAR claims
firmly about the importance of differentiate the “Sexual Work from the Trafficking”.
They think that ignorance and prejudice about their activity takes to a confusion or
misunderstanding. They say:

We, the women that belong to AMMAR, we are neither trafficked nor obliged or
kidnapped. And, we do not feel more victims than any other worker whose rights
are disrespected.

Today, there is a legal vacuum because the sexual work is licit but it lacks a
regulation that guarantees our rights. So, we need a bill that protects us and
regulates our work that allows us to go out from underground and face the stigma
and discrimination we suffer daily. Besides, we are convinced that trafficking and
pimping only will be defeated through the sexual work regulation.

I include this document because it is a real expression of what women in

prostitution suffer. It is impossible to theorize without paying attention to those who

3
The literal translation should be something like “Crime Court”.
have to face the day to day problem. Political participation is highly important for
undergoing the conflicts generated by what appears in a violent and unlawful
world. “Taking part in political life does not make the individual master of himself,
but rather gives him an equal voice along with others in settling how basic social
conditions are to be arranged” (Rawls, 1999, 205).

We can say that it is recommended to prevent children from sexual

exploitation. Police should pursuit the child abusers. It is not much what is being
done. For that reason, it is highly important to identify those who are at risk.

7. Bibliography

Nussbaum, Martha (1999), Sex and Social Justice, New York, Oxford University
Press.

Nussbaum, Martha (2000), Women and Human Development, Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press.

Nussbaum, Martha (2001), Upheavals of Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, version castellana de Araceli Maira, Paisajes del
pensamiento, Barcelona, Paidós, 2008.

Nussbaum, Martha (2006), El ocultamiento de lo humano, Buenos Aires, Ed Katz.

Portela, Mario (2011), “Derechos humanos y trata de personas”, this paper was
read at “Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres Jueces”, Catamarca, Argentina.
Rawls, John (1971), A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University
Press; versión castellana de María Dolores González, Teoría de la
Justicia, Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993.
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Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Rawls, John (1963), “The Sense of Justice”, Collected Papers. John Rawls,

Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 1999.

Rubin, Gayle (1986), “El tráfico de mujeres: Notas sobre la 'Economía Política' del
sexo”, Revista Nueva Antropología, año/vol VIII, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México.

Rubin, Gayle (1989), “Reflexionando sobre el sexo: Notas para una teoría radical
de la sexualidad”, en Vance, Carole (Compiladora), Placer y peligro.
Explorando la sexualidad femenina, Madrid, Ed. Revolución.

Department of State, United States of America (2011), “Trafficking in Persons

Report”.