16 Days of Activism Against GBV: Human Trafficking

Photo: Amo Tiffani

Article 3 paragraph (b) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defines trafficking but for ease of understanding the following summarizes the definition in three components:

The Act (What is done)
Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons

The Means (How it is done)
Threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, or giving payments or benefits to a person in control of the victim

The Purpose (Why it is done)
For the purpose of exploitation, which includes the exploiting the others for the purpose of commercial sex work, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery or similar practices and the removal of organs.

Victims of trafficking are coerced, or overtly deceived into thinking they are obtaining legitimate jobs as miners or as restaurant, construction and domestic workers. While in the case of many children and adolescents, parents believe they are sending their children to safe havens from war, conflict and economic crisis to be cared for by distant relatives or family friends. Often these children are used to work on farms or as errand boys and girls in restaurants.

In the worst cases they are forced into commercial sex work---both girls and boys. Photo: Hawaii Independent

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In the United States, many child and adolescent runaways are trafficked into commercial sex work in hotels, during sporting events and large conferences. According to the article “Women the new pimps in human trafficking trade,” women emerged in 2009 to be the largest group of perpetrators in human trafficking. Women are often deemed to be more “caring” and “protective.” Thus many individuals and/or parents in developing nations do not think about the hidden motives of why they may be offering to help alleviate their problems with “work or safety abroad” for themselves or their children. When trafficked, victims have no contact with the outside world, their passports and other legal identifying documents are taken from them and they are often threatened with extreme forms of violence and death if s/he attempts to contact others for help or to escape. A trafficking victim in many situations is the slave of their “employers” as they depend on them for everything from food, medicine and shelter.

Many individuals never report being trafficked, even if and when they are able to escape, thus it makes it very difficult to calculate the exact number of victims of human trafficking. What many advocates know is that there could be as many as millions of victims of human trafficking, while the number of survivors (those who escape AND report that they had been trafficked) is in the hundreds of thousands. According to the 2014 Global Slavery Index, “around the world today, there are an estimated 35.8 million men, women and children trapped in modern slavery.”

According to the UN Information Service (UNIS), human trafficking negatively impacts development in several ways: “Bribery and corruption, organized criminal gangs of traffickers undermine governments and the rule of law. In addition, human trafficking comes at a high cost for the economy: reducing tax revenues and migrant remittances. It shatters the social fabric of communities: family ties and communities are destroyed, children are denied an education, and public health problems such as HIV/AIDS may be perpetuated.”

Border control points in developing countries are major sites for trafficked girls and women experiencing sexual exploitation

Photo: News Day Zimbabwe

Each year the U.S. Department of State issues a Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report that ranks various countries at risk of being source and/or destination countries of human trafficking. The tier system starts at Tier 1, the best, to Tier 3, the worst. In 2014 South Sudan was ranked Tier 2 but has subsequently moved to Tier 3 in 2015. According to the 2015 Tip Report, South Sudan is both a source and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. South Sudanese women and girls, particularly those from rural areas or who are internally displaced, are vulnerable to domestic servitude. Some girls as young as 10 years old, are subjected to sex trafficking in restaurants, hotels, and brothels in urban areas. Children working in construction, market vending, shoe shining, car washing, rock breaking, brick making, delivery cart pulling, and begging may be victims of forced labor as well as being forced into commercial sex work. While women and girls from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo migrate willingly to South Sudan with the promise of legitimate work but once they arrive to South Sudan they are subjected to various forms of sexual and labor exploitation.

In 2014, trafficking of children increased in South Sudan particularly in the "recruitment" of child soldiers.

According to the 2015 TIP report, the SPLA’s recruitment and use of child soldiers, often by force, increased considerably, with approximately 12,000 child soldiers within the SPLA, as well as in armed opposition groups in South Sudan. Most child soldiers were between 15 and 16 years old, but some were as young as 11. In addition the 2015 TIP report states that 23 girls were found working as servants in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) military barracks in Upper Nile state. In February 2015, the TIP report notes the SPLA-in opposition (SPLA-IO) also recruited a large number of children to be soldiers. The 2015 TIP reports states that 9,000 child soldiers, were recruited by the White Army, which is affiliated with the SPLA-IO with some children participating in active fighting.
Photo: Guardian News

Human trafficking occurs in the United States as a destination country for trafficked persons from other countries. It is also a source country, with persons trafficked within the country, especially children/adolescents living and working on the street. If you are interested in organizations working on anti-trafficking initiatives you can access Humantrafficking.org, a web resource for combating human trafficking.

16 Days of Activism Against GBV: Female Genital Cutting

Photo taken from the Bristol Post

Female Genital Cutting (FGC) is not, thankfully, a form of GBV that is practiced in South Sudan. However, FGC is a practice that is forced upon millions of girls and women in Africa as well as other regions. Any act that does not obtain the consent of a girl or woman is a violation of her human rights. Consent can only be given freely, willingly and voluntarily. Consent is not given through coercion or threats like “You will do this. If you do not, you will bring shame to our family.” FGC is perpetuated by families and communities who feel they must conform to social and cultural norms and beliefs governing girls/women’s sexuality and marital fidelity.

Female genital cutting (FGC) refers to all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Many in the international community refer to it as female genital mutilation. However, I find the term mutilation is inherently judgmental of the culture and social norms that perpetuate the practice. Do any of us in the United States call women who have had their breasts augmented as being mutilated? Yet, the social pressure on women to conform to an idea of beauty that will make her sexually appealing and thus more marriageable, is the same social pressure that girls/women feel in developing nations where they undergo FGC. But more importantly, in my human rights work promoting women's rights and advocating for the end of GBV, the more accusatory and judgmental we are as advocates, the more defensive proponents of a practice become pushing them to continue the very practice I and others are advocating should end.

It is a centuries old practice that has been found in many countries and cultures around the world. For example, the article “How Did Female Genital Mutilation Begin,” (2012) by Rosella Lorenzi points to the practice having origins in ancient Greece and/or in Egypt. The article also highlights that FGC was practiced by gynecologists in 19th century United States and England “to treat various psychological symptom as well as ‘masturbation and nymphomania,’ based on a now discarded theory called 'reflex neurosis,' which held that many disorders like depression originated in genital inflammation.”

Photo taken from Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) A West African Plague

But what is FGC, exactly? FGC is classified into four major types:
• Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).
• Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are "the lips" that surround the vagina).
• Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, or outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.
• Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

Photo taken from Caring for Kids New to Canada

Is there a health benefit to FGC? FGC has no health benefits, and it can harm girls and women in many ways. Immediate complications can include severe pain, shock, hemorrhage (bleeding), tetanus or sepsis (bacterial infection), urine retention, open sores in the genital region and injury to nearby genital tissue.

Long-term consequences can include:
• recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections;
• cysts;
• infertility;
• an increased risk of childbirth complications and newborn deaths;
• the need for later surgeries. For example, the FGC procedure that seals or narrows a vaginal opening (type 3 above) needs to be cut open later to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth. Sometimes it is stitched again several times, including after childbirth, hence the woman goes through repeated opening and closing procedures, further increasing and repeating both immediate and long-term risks.

UN Dispatch Map of the Day, July 22, 2013

The specific causes include a mix of cultural, religious and social factors within families and communities.
• FGC is often considered a necessary part of raising a girl properly, and a way to prepare her for adulthood and marriage. By enduring the pain without screaming or crying, a girl demonstrates that she has the maturity to endure the hardships of being a wife and mother.
• One of the strongest factors pushing families and communities to continue the practice is the idea of sexuality purity and modesty (the idea of being clean, the removal of the clitoris, an unclean “male” part) and/or marital fidelity. FGC is in many communities believed to reduce a woman's libido and therefore believed to help her resist "forbidden" sexual acts. When a vaginal opening is covered or narrowed (type 3 above), the fear of the pain of opening it, and the fear that this will be found out, is expected to further discourage sexual intercourse among Type 3 FGC women before or outside of marriage.
• No religious texts advocate the practice. FGC is practiced as much in predominantly Christian countries as it is in predominantly Muslim countries. Thus, religious leaders take varying positions with regard to FGC: some promote it, some consider it irrelevant to religion, and others contribute to eradicating it.
• Structures of power and authority, such as community leaders, religious leaders, circumcizers, and even some medical personnel can contribute to upholding the practice.
• The practice is mostly carried out by traditional circumcizers, who often play other central roles in communities, such as midwife or birth attendant. However, more than 18% of all FGC is performed by health care providers, and the trend towards medicalization is increasing (UNICEF).

On a positive note, an adolescent girl today is about a third less likely to undergo FGC than 30 years ago. Kenya and Tanzania have seen rates drop to a third of their levels compared to three decades ago through a combination of community activism and legislation. In the Central African Republic, Iraq, Liberia and Nigeria, prevalence has dropped by as much as half. (UNICEF)

What can I do?

“The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any.” –Alice Walker, African American Author

If this is an issue you are passionate about use your personal power to support advocates, organizations and campaigns that are working to end the practice:

Globalizing Gender, founded by my friend Natasha Johnson, a longtime and passionate advocate for GBV survivors.

End FGM European Network

Stop FGM Now.com

16 Days of Activism Against GBV: Forced/Early Marriage

Photo from Long, Hard Road to End Child Marriage in South Sudan

Early marriage is a human rights violation that denies a girl of her childhood, disrupts her education and most often ends her schooling, limits her economic and social opportunities, increases her risk of intimate partner violence and abuse, and places her health and reproductive health at risk. Forced/early marriage is found in countries across the globe, but is most prevalent in developing nations. The following statistics were extracted from the International Center for Research on Women website:

• One third of girls in the developing world are married before the age of 18 and 1 in 9 are married before the age of 15.
• In 2012, 70 million women 20-24 around the world had been married before the age of 18.
• If present trends continue, 150 million girls will be married before their 18th birthday over the next decade. That’s an average of 15 million girls each year.
• While countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are concentrated in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, due to population size, the largest number of child brides reside in South Asia.

In South Sudan 40% of girls are married before the age of 18 (2010 Sudan Household Health Survey). However the ongoing conflict and the ensuing economic crisis has forced many parents to resort to using early marriage in exchange for bride price as a survival method. Thus, the actual rate of forced/early marriage may be much higher during the last two years. Forced early marriage is also a harmful traditional practice that continues in my second home country of Mozambique. I personally see the consequences of forced early marriage right in my own community.

Some reasons why child marriage remains prevalent in South Sudan, Mozambique and in Sub-Saharan Africa in general are the following:

1. Social and cultural beliefs view girls as a source of wealth
• Many African communities consider early marriage a good practice that benefits both the girls and their families. It is an avenue for families to access much-needed assets, such as cattle, money, and other gifts.
• It is also viewed as a way to protect girls from premarital sex and unwanted pregnancy that undermines family honor and decreases the amount of bride price a family may receive.

2. Educating the Girl Child is not valued
Investment in girls’ education is often seen as a waste of money. In South Sudan, only 6.2% of girls complete primary school and 20.4% of young women drop-out of secondary school due to pregnancies.

3. Inadequate enforcement of laws and policies on early marriage. Many countries do have laws protecting girls from forced early marriage--without enforcement a law is just words on a piece of paper.

Harmful Consequences of Forced Early Marriage
• Higher risk of maternal mortality and obstetric complications such as obstetric fistula due to early and frequent pregnancies;
• Lack of control over health and reproductive decisions such as contraceptive use which strips women of their right to control her physical integrity. For example, the number and spacing of children and to be protected from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
• She is denied her right to access and complete her education;
• Girls are more likely to remain in a cycle of poverty throughout her lifetime.

What is being done do to stop forced/early marriage?

1. Empowering families and communities to understand the importance of girls staying in school, getting a job or starting their own business. Let them know that their value to you is far greater than any material object like cattle, money or gifts.
2. Advocates are working with families and communities to consider alternatives to early marriage by looking at community mechanisms to alleviate food insecurity or economic hardship.
3. Campaigns are pushing for improved birth and marriage registration which helps prevent early marriage by proving the age of a girl and her partner. When births and marriages are registered it means that girls and women are able to seek financial and legal reparation if the marriage ends.

If you are interested to learn more about forced early marriage in South Sudan, here is a link to a video called Child Marriage: South Sudan produced in 2013 by Human Rights Watch, most likely published shortly before the conflict began in December 2013. The rate of forced early marriage is much higher today (and the last two years) due to the economic constraints experienced by resource impoverished families. And the following link is to a website dedicated to eradicating forced/early marriage where you can learn about the stories of girls themselves from other parts of the world called Child Brides: A closer look at child marriage around the world, tales of heartbreak and of hope.