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"I can sell women for money."
"I deserve whatever I want."
"Pornography fuels my desire."
This infographic is a clear and clever representation of how attitudes embedded in the cultures of countries, both origin or destination countries, intersect to facilitate sex trafficking networks.
Sex trafficking is a global issue and there are certain attitudes that fuel its operations.
Attitudinal change is a necessary condition in improving health outcomes for vulnerable women.
Changing the way we think about Australia's responsibilities in our new global world?
Eradication of poverty, empowerment of women and increasing educational and income opportunities in the developing countries from which victims are trafficked are important priorities in the prevention of sex trafficking. Programs that address these require funding. Scrutiny of Australia’s international aid program should therefore also be within the scope of sex trafficking advocacy. As a developed nation, Australia made a commitment in 2000 to raise its foreign aid budget to 0.7% of gross national income. This target was twice deferred by previous Labour governments. The Abbott government recently congratulated itself on restructuring foreign aid to increase efficiency and prioritise the Australian economy rather than the commitment we are billions of dollars short of upholding. (Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-shame-that-is-abbotts-foreign-aid-policy-20131101-2wrxt.html#ixzz2x31vD3l8) The fact that our aid allocation aligns with our own political or economic priorities is not an Abbott innovation, it has been this way in the past. It is important to think about whether foreign aid is something that should be designed to meet those with the greatest needs or to meet the greatest needs of Australia. The nature of current foreign policy rhetoric indicates that Australians view our economy, culture as disconnected from the fate and well-being of people who suffer in neighbouring lands, and in our new globalised world it's just not an assumption we can safely make (see our post about what fuels the demand for sex trafficking victims in Australia).
What does this conjunction of governmental practices of pity and risk entail for thinking political agency? If human rights have become the rights of those who are too weak or too oppressed to actualise and enact them, they are not ‘their’ rights. They are deprived of political agency; the only rights are our rights to practice pity and humanitarian interventions. Victims are therefore divorced from the very possibility of political agency, turned into spectral presences on the scene of politics. When agency exists even as a potentiality, they become risky beings. Trafficked women are risky only in relation to their agency as migrants. The political agency of the marginalised and the excluded, the powerless and the silenced is thus either effaced or pathologised, expunged from the truly political claims and implications it should have.
Aradau, C. The Perverse Politics of Four-Letter Words: Risk and Pity in the Securitisation of Human Trafficking. Millennium: Journal of International Studies. 2004;33(2):251-278.
(An interesting critique of the current political dissonance between approaches to migration and human trafficking).
Why do traffickers operate in Australia and how can we change that?
An important component of our advocacy strategy is helping people to more clearly understand the many determinants that contribute to social justice situations being the way they are. The fact that we live in a developed nation is not a guarantee that our lives and actions don’t interrelate with the propagation of social injustice, or cannot feasibly impact on the health and well-being of individuals affected by it.
The clandestine nature of sex trafficking makes it difficult to source an accurate number of victims who are here in Australia, but estimates tend to fall between 400[1] and 1000[2]. Australia is clearly a lucrative destination to for the traffickers that operate here to 'supply' women. There therefore must be some kind of ‘demand’ within Australian communities such that traffickers are motivated to ‘supply’ women via sexual trafficking.
Project Respect’s explanation is that this demand is driven by: 1) A lack of women in Australia prepared to do prostitution. 2) 'Customer' demand for women seen as compliant. 3) 'Customer' demand for women who they can be violent towards. 4) Racialized ideas that Asian women have certain qualities, for example that they are more compliant and will accept higher levels of violence. (http://projectrespect.org.au/our_work/trafficking/why_australia) As much as we may be motivated to do so, it is difficult to refute Project Respect’s suggestions that the desire amongst some Australian men to commit acts of sexual violence strongly contributes to the number of women who end up living in Australia under conditions of slavery. Australia’s continued struggle with, for example, domestic violence or the coward punch, cannot leave us in ignorance of the dysfunctional relationship between violence and masculinity that lurks within Australian society.
If there are qualities of certain strata of Australian society, or aspects of our culture that fuel this ‘customer’ demand for compliant women who will accept violence, then that is something we desperately need to address.
Changing the fact that there are men who live in Australia who want access to women to whom they can commit acts of sexual violence will not be easy or quick but it does need to be a priority.
An important way social change can be brought about is by identifying and challenging social/cultural norms that accept violence.
For example, Raewyn Connell, a prominent researcher in the field of gender relations, makes the following points with regard to coward punch perpetrators. These questions can reasonably be extrapolated to perpetrators of violence in many contexts: “We need to look hard at the social situations in which violence is happening. And we need to ask what else is happening in these… men’s lives. Is our society giving them secure jobs? Worthwhile work to do? Models of positive relations with women? Occasions for care and creativity?”[3]
This post is not trying to suggest that addressing violent tendencies within Australian society has the causal power to eradicate the hugely extensive global sex trafficking network. It more attempts to empower readers by encouraging consideration of the breadth of determinants and therefore possible targets for change that contribute to the horror of sex trafficking.
We may feel like we can’t control what happens in Thailand or South Korea or China, but we can start conversations, make inquiries, and push for appropriate legislation or policy change or funding for mass media campaigns. We can talk about how masculinity is viewed and aimed for and distorted in Australian society.
[1]http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/files/dmfile/download32fd1.pdf
[2]http://projectrespect.org.au/our_work/trafficking/why_australia
[3]http://www.raewynconnell.net/search/label/Australia
AFP's guide on how to identify someone is a victim of a trafficking situation
This is an extremely important guide on how to identify victims of sex trafficking sourced from the Australian Federal Police. Reading through these points gives clear insight into the situation for most victims of trafficking, including the physical and mental consequences of their situation on their health.
This is also an important starting point in creating an advocacy strategy. Removing victims from oppressive conditions and henceforth increasing their access to healthcare and support services obviously requires the identification of those oppressed. Doing this more effectively remains a huge challenge for continuing and future advocacy efforts.
"If you are a victim of trafficking or know someone who is contact the AFP on 131AFP (131237) or email [email protected]
Signs a person may be a victim of trafficking The following points may indicate that a person is a victim of human trafficking, slavery or slavery-like practices:
the person appears to be servicing a large debt to their employer or a third party;
the person does not possess their passport or travel/identity documents, which are with their employer or a third party, and the person is unable to access these documents when they wish to do so;
the person does not have a labour or employment contract/agreement, or they do not understand the terms or conditions of their employment;
the person is unable to terminate their employment at any time;
the person is subject to different or less favourable working conditions than other employees because he/she comes from overseas;
the person never or rarely leave their accommodation for non-work reasons;
the person is living at the place of work or another place owned or controlled by their employer;
the person has little or no money or no access to their earnings;
the person has physical injuries which may have resulted for assault, harsh treatment or unsafe work practices;
the person is always in the presence of their employer, who does not want or allow the worker to socialise with others;
the person works excessively long hours and have few, if any, days off
the person regularly between different workplaces, including interstate.”
Australia Federal Police. Human trafficking [Internet]. Canberra, ACT (Australia): Commonwealth of Australia; 2014 [cited 2014 March 24]. Available: http://www.afp.gov.au/policing/human-trafficking.aspx
Australians may understandably feel that victims of sex trafficking or slavery live in a world that is completely separate from ours. It’s not a world we understand. It’s not a world in which we feel like our actions can have any effect.
But the reality is we live in the same world and there are people in it who, due to the conditions they are born, grow up, live and work in are unfairly precluded from physical, mental and social well-being. Most of these people don't live in Australia. Some of them do. And even the ones who don't are not beyond our advocacy efforts.
Here are the facts from our only legal research and policy centre focusing on slavery in Australia, because an efficient advocacy strategy will utilise and build on existing work.
21st Century Sex Slaves Documentary (Human Trafficking)
