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(Senate - March 11, 1999)
INTERNATIONAL TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN VICTIM PROTECTION ACT OF 1999
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this week across the globe, men and women have celebrated International Women's Day, highlighting the achievements of women around the world. From Qatar to Indonesia, the day was marked by women marching, meeting, and protesting for recognition of their inherent dignity and fundamental human rights. I believe there is much work yet to be done to ensure that women and girls' human rights are protected and respected.
One of the most horrendous human rights violations of our time is trafficking in human beings, particularly among women and children, for purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor. To curb this horrific practice, I am introducing the `International Trafficking of Women and Children Victim Protection Act of 1999' which will put Congress on record as opposing trafficking for forced prostitution and domestic servitude, and acting to check it before the lives of more women and girls are shattered.
One of the fastest growing international trafficking businesses is the trade in women. Women and girls seeking a better life, a good marriage, or a lucrative job abroad, unexpectedly find themselves forced to work as prostitutes, or in sweat shops. Seeking this better life, they are lured by local advertisements for good jobs in foreign countries at wages they could never imagine at home.
Every year, the trafficking of human beings for the sex trade affects hundreds of thousands of women throughout the world. Women and children whose lives have been disrupted by economic collapse, civil wars, or fundamental changes in political geography, such as the disintegration of the Soviet Union, have fallen prey to traffickers. The United States government estimates that 1-2 million women and girls are trafficked annually around the world. According to experts, between 50 and 100 thousand women are trafficked each year into the United States alone. They come from Thailand, Russia, the Ukraine and other countries in Asia and the former Soviet Union.
Upon arrival in countries far from their homes, these women are often stripped of their passports, held against their will in slave-like conditions, and sexually abused. Rape, intimidation, and violence are commonly employed by traffickers to control their victims and to prevent them from seeking help. Through physical isolation and psychological trauma, traffickers and brothel owners imprison women in a world of economic and sexual exploitation that imposes a constant fear of arrest and deportation, as well as of violent reprisals by the traffickers themselves, to whom the women must pay off ever-growing debts. Many brothel owners actually prefer women--women who are far from help and home, and who do not speak the language--precisely because of the ease of controlling them.
Most of these women never imagined that they would enter such a hellish world, having traveled abroad to find better jobs or to see the world. Many in their naivete, believed that nothing bad could happen to them in the rich and comfortable countries such as Switzerland, Germany, or the United States. Others, who are less naive but desperate for money and opportunity, are no less hurt by the trafficker's brutal grip.
Last year, First Lady Hilary Clinton spoke powerfully of this human tragedy. She said: `I have spoken to young girls in northern Thailand whose parents were persuaded to sell them as prostitutes, and they received a great deal of money by their standards. You could often tell the homes of where the girls had been sold because they might even have a satellite dish or an addition built on their house. But I met girls who had come home after they had been used up, after they had contracted HIV or AIDS. If you've ever held the hand of a 13-year-old girl dying of AIDS, you can understand how critical it is that we take every step possible to prevent this happening to any other girl anywhere in the world. I also, in the Ukraine, heard of women who told me with tears running down their faces that young women in their communities were disappearing. They answered ads that promised a much better future in another place and they were never heard from again.'