Migrant women’s rights organisations in Italy call for the protection of trafficking victims
As a group of migrant-women led organisations and organisations working towards the full achievement of migrant women’s rights in Italy and Europe, we consider the Anti-Trafficking Directive as one of the key instruments in protecting women and girls against trafficking, a very specific type of male violence against migrant and refugee women in the European Union. Migrant and refugee women and girls face a very high and disproportionate risk of becoming victims of human trafficking, particularly trafficking for the purposes of prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation. Migrant and refugee women are also vulnerable to being trafficked for the purposes of forced marriage, labour exploitation in marriage, reproductive exploitation in surrogacy and egg harvesting, trafficking for exploitation in domestic work and other forms of trafficking. Prostitution, trafficking for prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation are intrinsically linked in all contexts and all constitute a violation of women and girls’ rights. Statistically, trafficking in human beings for purposes of sexual exploitation remains, by far, the most prevalent form of trafficking in the European Union, with 51% of victims being trafficked for sexual exploitation. Out of 51% of these victims, 87% are women and girls.
Prostitution and sex trafficking, being two of the most egregious women and girls’ rights violations, cannot be analysed separately. They must be analysed together as consequential: sex trafficking exists because the purchase of sexual acts, including prostitution exists and is still allowed in many European jurisdictions.
Alongside the crucial need to provide women-specific psycho-social, legal and economic support and assistance to migrant and refugee women victims of sex trafficking, targeting the demand and hence the means (trafficking) that foster prostitution and sex trafficking remains the only solution to adequately support and protect victims from a systemic point of view. From a women’s human rights perspective we support the European Parliament’s step in criminalising all “users” of sex trafficking victims, since prostitution is one of the root causes of women and girls being trafficked.
Thus, it is with deep regret that we read that ASGI and EcST, the Association for Legal Studies on Migration and the Expert Group against Exploitation and Trafficking respectively, two leading entities in terms of migration in Italy, condemn and oppose the provision concerning the criminalisation of the buyers of prostitution and other sexual acts. Migrant and refugee women and girls are the primary target of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. The criminalisation of buyers of sexual acts ensures that trafficked women and girls are dully protected, since it analyses the problem at the source: the demand for prostitution and sexual exploitation. Advocating for victims’ protection while protecting the perpetrators of the exploitation and rights violation of women and girls is contradictory and counterproductive. They cannot go hand in hand. Our coalition is very sorry to see ASGI and EcST align with pro-prostitution organisations such as the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA). The incongruity of protecting pimps and buyers of women and girls in the sex trade, while purporting to protect the women and girls being exploited by them, is self-evident and should have been fully analysed.