Campaigning the Customers:

Campaigning the Customers:
Gender Mainstreaming and Gender Budgeting the Trafficking in Women
The Approach of TERRE DES FEMMES
Astrid Lipinsky

1. Trafficking: The German situation

As the new millenium begins - and supposedly it will be a "women's millenium" with women taking the lead everywhere - preliminary investigations by the police in Germany in cases of trafficking decreased by 19.2% from 1998. In 1999, there were 257 reported cases. The police admitted that this was due only to the lack of personnel capacities and has nothing to do with a decrease in trafficking itself. In 1999, police statistics counted 801 women victims of trafficking, 84% of them came from Eastern European countries. Women from Southeast Asia came second. The number of women from Thailand shows a sharp increase followed women from the Philippines.

The new millenium comes in with new trends:

• The police is increasingly unaware of the real extent of trafficking.
• Results of sensitisation training with the police are good but police staff is de-motivated by the fact that the women victims are deported even after having testified before the court and that male perpetrators are seldom punished. The small number of sentences inflicted is very light.
• Governments link trafficking to issues of migration. The policy of closed borders is introduced as a measure to curb trafficking.
• German discussions rarely refer to trafficking as a human rights violations. State officials are only interested in the criminal law side of trafficking and illegal migrations.
• While intra-continental trafficking-from Eastern Europe-explodes, the numbers of persons trafficked from Asia, Africa and Latin America do not decrease accordingly but keep their share of the market.
• The percentage of women trafficked into prostitution (as opposed to marriage) increases.
• Increasing cooperation in legislation and policies on trafficking within the European Union can be observed.
• The German Ministry of Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth supports the establishment of a national NGO network concerned with trafficking (Koordinationskreis Frauenhandel coordination circle on trafficking in women and girls). The ministry also financed the establishment of counselling services for trafficked women from Eastern Europe in 1997 (funds run out in 2000).
• Government subsidies, in low numbers only, are available for re-integration programs addressed at victims of trafficking who are willing to return to their home country.
• Nearly every European can nowadays afford travelling worldwide. Figures from Sweden show that where prostitution is forbidden and persecuted, the number of sex tourists increases.

2. Trafficking: NGO work in Germany

Non-governmental initiatives in Germany are usually addressed at the victims of trafficking. Locally, a network of shelters, counselling services and round tables including the police and local government institutions provide advise, medical and legal services, a place to stay and assistance with government agencies and the judicial system.

On national level, several women's human rights organisations lobby for legal and political reform. A national NGO Network (KOK) actively participates in International and European level policy initiatives and legislation.

3. The men's campaign of TERRE DES FEMMES

As a national lobby organisation, TERRE DES FEMMES does not run shelters and counselling services itself. But there is an increasing wary about applying for the financial support of shelters and counselling services. The number of women being trafficked seemed to increase at all times and we detested only reacting only to violent and oppressing trafficking that have already occurred. We decided that our approach had to aim at abolishing trafficking altogether instead of caring for the victims.

The men's campaign resulted from the need to address those people - male clients and customers - who made trafficking extremely profitable. We want to raise their awareness of women being victims of trafficking and their concern for the victims' needs. Thus, awareness was a two-sided campaign. On one poster, we used the picture of women lined up and wrapped like pencils in a box to shock and to raise awareness for the devaluation of female persons and the commercialisation of women in trafficking. Our second poster called men to action and reminded them of their responsibility as customers for the exploitation of trafficked women.

The campaign was run twice in the cities of Stuttgart and Hamburg combined with a hotline for male customers. The hotline was heavily used but it is a pity that it could not be sustained longer than a few days. Leaflets instructed male customers on how to confirm the trafficking of a female host.

4. Gender budgeting trafficking in women

Recently, TERRE DES FEMMES developed the idea of a gender analysis of trafficking. In some countries, women are the main export items and earn even more than the sale of drugs. Money is earned and spent in huge amounts on trafficking women but it is not the women who profit from it. When trapped and sent back to their home countries, they are as poor as before, and poverty forces them to agree to being trafficked again.

5. Asia European cooperation: some strategies

Currently, trafficking in women is high on the international political agenda. Nearly every organisation, including United Nations affiliates, is running projects on the prevention of trafficking and the rehabilitation of the victims. Trafficking is global, but it is also a one-way-trade: women from the poor corners of the world are trafficked to either the rich countries or to the resorts for sex tourists in their own country or region. They are sold as housemaids in the rich countries, or as workers in export processing zones. Europe is on the buying side of this relationship where women are sold as well as bought within Asia. The European responsibility is to care for the victims and to educate the clients not to be participant to the trafficking of women. The eradication of poverty worldwide would stop trafficking. It also empowers women, which both sides of the trade must do nevertheless, by any means. Strong women resist oppression and assert their rights.

As a small concrete undertaking, I would suggest to institutionalise exchange between interested NGO in both Asia and Europe. This can be done by a series of expert seminars, of dialogue projects, and a comparison of training for judicial personnel. "Best practices" can be collected and awarded annually.

Bibliography

Brownmiller, Susan: Gegen unseren Willen, Vergewaltigung un Mannerherrschaft. S. Fischer, Frankfurt/Main 1978.
Bundesministerium fur Famille, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend: Action Plan of the Federal Government to Combat Violence Against Women, Bonn 1998
Bundesministeriu fur Frauenangelegenheiten und Verbraucheschutz (Hrsg.): Trafficking in Women, Women's Policy Perspectives after the 95 World Conference on Women. Wien.
Council of Europe-Division Equality between Women and Men: Fact Sheet Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Sexual Explitation. Strasbourg 2000.
Foundation Against Trafficking in Women; Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women; International Human Rights Law Group: Menschenrechtsnormen fur den Umgang mit Betroffenen des Menschenhandels. Deutsche Ubersetzung von Ban Ying Koordinations-stelle, Berlin, 1999.
Global Sruvival Network: Crime & Servitude: An Expose of the Traffic in Women for Porsitution from the Newly Independent States. Konferenzbeitrag. Moskau 1997.
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Lefo: Nein zum Frauenhandel. Wien 1998.

Astrid Lipinsky, TERRE DES FEMMES, Germany