Sweden Takes Action Against Sex Trafficking

Sweden, currently holding the EU Presidency, is calling for a strengthening of international cooperation and coordinated action to combat the increasing global problem of prostitution and human trafficking for sexual purposes. Sweden is calling upon other EU countries and the international community to adopt even more effective measures to combat this serious violation of human rights, and of individuals human dignity, this barrier to social equality and gender equality.

Sweden regards trafficking and prostitution as intrinsically linked and Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce a law (1999) criminalizing the purchase of sexual services.

In July 2008, the Government confirmed its commitment to action by adopting an Action Plan against prostitution and human trafficking for sexual purposes and committed SEK 213 million to the introduction of 36 measures up to 2010. The Action Plan covers five priority areas: greater protection and support for people at risk and for victims, a stronger emphasis on preventive work, higher standards and greater efficiency in the justice system, increased national and international cooperation, and educational and awareness campaigns.

The consensus among Swedish experts is that efforts to combat prostitution and human trafficking must take into account judicial, social and gender perspectives and be based on the human rights principle. Societies that claim to defend principles of legal, political, economic and social equality cannot allow human trafficking to flourish. The eventual elimination of human trafficking is achievable.

Illinois and the Swedish Prostitution Model

llinois' Cook County Sheriff, Tom Dart, is in the process of re-focusing Illinois' efforts to address prostitution to the demand side. In his efforts, he is looking to the Swedish model for addressing prostitution. In Sweden, the selling of sex is legal, but buying sex is illegal, reflecting a belief that prostitution is a form of violence against women. The law is meant to put the focus on the people who create the demand for commercial sex and facilitate it: johns, pimps, and in some cases traffickers.

In a recent article in the Weekly Standard, Ambassador Lagon, former Ambassador-at-Large and Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) and current Executive Director of Polaris Project, reports that Dart is shifting "enforcement resources from the supply side to the demand side: from arresting (and releasing and rearresting) forcibly prostituted women and girls to arresting pimps and johns and impounding their cars, while directing the prostituted females to social services."

Lagon quotes Thomas Bodström, a former Swedish minister of justice, stating that "as long as men think they are entitled to buy and use women's and girls' bodies, human trafficking for sexual purposes will continue." While not all commercial sex is forced or is trafficking, proponents of the Swedish model and efforts to address demand argue that such efforts will afford protections to anyone engaged in commercial sex, since it will allow prostitutes and sex-trafficking victims to access social services and healthcare without fear of arrest.

End Demand, IL, an organization advocating for efforts to address demand for commercial sex, states that its goals are to "advocate for the creation of resources and tools for law enforcement to hold perpetrators accountable, deter further exploitation and increase options for prostituted and trafficked women and girls. . . . EDI's work will result in the adoption of sound public policies and practices that focus law enforcement efforts on protecting victims of the sex industry and prosecuting traffickers, pimps and other enterprises that profit from the exploitation of women and girls in the sex trade. Furthermore, our work will create an infrastructure of care for those involved in prostitution." From a basic economic-analysis standpoint, addressing demand makes sense, given that reducing supply tends to mainly drive up prices and profits - for pimps and traffickers, in this case - and does not eliminate demand.

At the same time, Amanda Kloer of End Human Trafficking points out that simply lifting the Swedish model and attempting to graft it onto other communities and localities is problematic. She lists three main reasons that simply imposing the model on Illinois may not work, including Sweden's more extensive social welfare system, the fact that Sweden is more homogeneous and a significantly smaller country and more centralized nation than the US, and a cultural emphasis in the US on individual rights and the ability to "do what we want." She concludes, "These concerns shouldn't prevent Sheriff Dart or any other creative public servants from taking a hard look at their prostitution policies and reinventing them to better protect women and girls in prostitution. But they should be an reminder that the U.S. isn't Sweden, and thus we shouldn't implement the exact same policies nor expect the exact same results."

We can learn a great deal from international efforts to end slaver, but at the same time, innovative efforts, in fact all efforts, to address trafficking must carefully consider the local context.

Swedish Institute Releases Films on Human Trafficking Efforts

The Swedish Institute, in conjunction with The NewsMarket, has released two short films about Sweden's efforts to combat sex trafficking, at home and in its capacity as current president of the European Union.

The first discusses Sweden's Action Plan against human trafficking, and sets forth the Swedish government's stance that prostitution is inextricably connected with human trafficking. This view led the Swedish government in 1999 to become the first country to criminalize the buying of sex while allowing the selling of sex, treating the prostitute as more of a victim than a criminal.

The second video highlights the conference "Towards Global EU Action against Trafficking in Human Beings" that was held October 19-20 in Brussels. At the conference, future efforts to combat trafficking were addressed, including the Stockholm Program and increasing cooperation with origin and transit countries.

Queen Silvia of Sweden stated during the conference: "It is important that we recognize that the demand for sex with minors is a very strong driving force behind this global problem, and therefore needs to be addressed urgently. And to deny, to turn a blind eye, or to passively observe, is a contribution to the continuous contemporary slave trade that is manifested by trafficking of human beings."

Can Legalizing Prostitution Help Prevent Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation?

Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to US drug policy, on the heels of comments by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on US complicity in the violence on the US-Mexican border and a recent President Obama town hall meeting which detoured to the role of marijuana in stimulating the economy. Amongst my friends, this has led to numerous discussions of the liberalization some of America’s more “puritanical” policies on drugs and commercial sex work. As a result of my experience in the immigrant advocacy and anti-human trafficking fields, I am somewhat leery of the legalization approach. What would happen if the US was to legalize sex work? What has been the experience of countries that have legalized prostitution? Would this somehow help victims of human trafficking?

I have had some exposure to the British and Swedish approaches to prostitution and models for fighting human trafficking during a 2007 fellowship in the UK and Albania with the Advocacy Project. The British model is somewhat similar to the US system where prostitution is illegal, although they do not have an option similar to the T-visa for victims of human trafficking. British policy was recently updated on April 1st when the Council of Europe Convention Against Trafficking in Human Beings took effect in the UK.

The Swedish approach to prostitution, much lauded by advocates in the UK, is somewhat different. Prostitution has been legal in Sweden since 1999 but it is illegal to buy sex or to pimp. Not only has Sweden made buying sex punishable by fines and jail time, they also humiliate the purchasers of sex by publishing their names in the newspaper. But what has happened in countries where prostitution is legal and the shaming approach of Sweden was not adopted? I recently ran across an informative opinion piece called “Does Legalizing Prostitution Work?” by Helen Mees, a Dutch economist and lawyer, that goes some way towards answering this question.

Mees argues that, even in the liberal city of Amsterdam with its open outlook on prostitution and soft drugs, women are forced into sex work while police stand by and watch. Even in the Netherlands, women and girls who sell their bodies are routinely threatened, beaten, raped, and terrorized by pimps and customers. In a recent criminal trial, two German-Turkish brothers stood accused of forcing more than 100 women to work in Amsterdam's red-light district (De Wallen). According to the attorney who represented one of the victims, most of these women come from families marred by incest, alcohol abuse, and parental suicide. Or they come from countries in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia and have fallen victim to human trafficking, lured by decent job offers or simply sold by their parents.

These women are Amsterdam's leading tourist attraction (followed by the coffee shops that sell marijuana). But an estimated 50 to 90 percent of them are actually sex slaves, raped on a daily basis with police idly standing by. It is incomprehensible that their clients are not prosecuted for rape, but Dutch politicians argue that it cannot be established whether or not a prostitute works voluntarily. Appalled by their daily routine, police officers from the Amsterdam vice squad have asked to be transferred to other departments. Only this year, the city administration has started to close down some brothels because of their ties to criminal organizations.

According to a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the average age of death of prostitutes is 34. In the United States, the rate at which prostitutes are killed in the workplace is 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women, working in a liquor store. Other studies show that nine out of ten prostitutes urgently want to escape the job. Almost half have attempted suicide at least once.

Apparently Norway examined the Dutch and Swedish approaches to prostitution and decided that the Swedish approach was superior and changed its legislation accordingly. According to Mees, the shaming approach of the Swedish has been so successful because the fear of humiliation for purchasing sex is quite real.

According to a study in California, most men who bought sex would be deterred by the risk of public exposure. For example, 79 percent said that they would be deterred if there was a chance that their families would be notified. And a whopping 87 percent said that they would be deterred by the threat that the police might publish their photographs or names in the local newspaper.

Most of these men showed pathological behavior towards women. One in five admitted to having raped a woman, while four out of five said that going to prostitutes was an addiction.

While it is important to realize that prostitution and human trafficking are two separate phenomena that can sometimes intersect, the importance of protecting the safety of both sex workers and trafficking victims cannot be overstated. Ultimately, the approach to prostitution and fighting trafficking adopted by countries should be the model that best protects women and girls. Some argue that this is an approach, much like the Swedish model, that would humiliate and criminalize those that pay for sex or pimp women. The first step, surely, is to raise awareness and to realize that even in countries where prostitution is legal, sex trafficking and forced prostitution do not disappear.

Three Charged in Sweden Human Trafficking Case

*This article never specifically mentions why this is a case of human trafficking and NOT smuggling. The journalist never specifies what actions qualified the crime as human trafficking and in doing so blurs the line between human trafficking and smuggling which are two fundamentally different actions.

From The Local:

September 25th, 2008

Three men have been charged for arranging to have 49 foreign citizens smuggled into Sweden.

The human trafficking victims were allegedly taken across the European continent through Denmark and then over the Öresund bridge to Skåne in southern Sweden.

The suspects are said to have cooperated with accomplices in France, according to charges filed on Thursday in Malmö District Court.

The victims who asked for help to enter Sweden each paid 10,000 kronor ($1,515) to the smugglers.

The men are charged with organizing and carrying out human trafficking.

Two other men were also charged with the latter crime.

According to the charges, the men are suspected of conducting their human trafficking operations in cooperation with several different groups, including with a man who has already been convicted in Denmark, as well as another man not included in the charges.

The charges cover seven separate instances of human trafficking which took place between February 13th and June 16th of this year.

One of the men is also charged with serious forgery crimes. At his home police found a USB-memory stick with digital images of Arabic-language identity papers bearing official stamps.

Read the full article

Sweden's Sex Law: Get the Customer

By Karl Ritter

From the Associated Press:

STOCKHOLM, Sweden- Selling sex isn't illegal in Sweden, but buying is — a radical approach to prostitution that faced ridicule when it was introduced nine years ago.

Now, while Americans are preoccupied with the downfall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer in a prostitution scandal, some countries are considering emulating the Swedish model, which prosecutes the client but views the prostitute as an exploited victim.

Officials say the changed approach has reduced the demand for prostitutes and reshaped attitudes toward the sex trade.

"We don't have a problem with prostitutes. We have a problem with men who buy sex," said Kajsa Wahlberg, of the human trafficking unit at Sweden's national police board.

Under Sweden's so-called "Sex Purchase Law," paying for sex is punished by fines or up to six months in prison, plus the humiliation of public exposure. A handful of Swedish judges have been caught up in prostitution scandals, including a Supreme Court justice who was fined in 2005 after admitting to paying for sex with a young man.

Pimps and brothel keepers are also prosecuted, but not prostitutes, because they are viewed as victims, treated as commodities in the sex trade.

While authorities judge the new system a success, critics question whether it has really reduced prostitution or merely pushed it off the streets into more isolated and dangerous surroundings. Wahlberg concedes that accurate statistics are hard to obtain, but estimates the number of prostitutes in Sweden dropped 40 percent from 2,500 in 1998 to 1,500 in 2003.

She says police know from eavesdropping on human trafficking rings that Sweden is considered bad business because of its tough stance.
"They are calculating profits, costs and marketing and the risk of getting caught," Wahlberg said.

"We're trying to create a bad market for these activities."Conscious of the international interest, Sweden's government is planning a thorough review of the effects of the law, expected to be ready next year.

Read the full article

Germany Smashes Human Trafficking Ring Sending Iraqis to Sweden

From All Headline News:

German police arrested six people on Wednesday morning at Gelsenkirchen, Essen and Mulheim, in an alleged human smuggling ring that took Iraqi refugees to Sweden. Aside from the six arrested, another five were detained for investigation and one member of the ring is still being pursued.

The syndicate is allegedly responsible for bringing over 100 Iraqi asylum seekers to Sweden; another 63 were apprehended in Germany and Italy. The refugees were traveling aboard rented camper vans that picked up the Iraqis in Greece and traveled through Italy, Austria and Germany.

Sweden is a favorite destination of refugees because of its liberal asylum laws. Investigation into the syndicate began in September 2007 and involved about 200 police officers.

Germany, because of its central location, is a favored stopover or final destination for victims of various human trafficking schemes. On July 2006, joint Bulgarian and German police operations took down a syndicate that tried to smuggle 14 Bulgarian women into Hamburg to work as prostitutes.