Page 46 - FMR64_Trafficking and smuggling & Climate crisis and local communities_2020_web

FMR 64
46 Trafficking and smuggling
www.fmreview.org/issue64 June 2020

and the criminal and administrative
penalties for sex work, as well as
establishing a respectful relationship
between sex workers and the police,
would facilitate the identification
(including self-identification) of
victims of trafficking in the industry.
Community solutions
Our research also shows that sex
workers use their own resources
to offer assistance to peers. In
Durban, South Africa, peer outreach
educators from the organisation
Sisonke encountered young women
and adolescent girls who were being
controlled by a pimp standing nearby.
Under the guise of distributing
condoms, they managed to give the
number of the organisation’s helpline
to the girls, who later called, and the
helpline staff reported the matter to
the police. This led eventually to the
successful prosecution of one of South
Lesego Tlhwale of children for sexual exploitation.
Africa’s largest cases of the trafficking
In India, one of the committees
of the Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad
(VAMP) sex worker collective was
Sex workers protest in South Africa during a trial for the murder of a sex worker.
approached by the madam
negotiate with clients and which clients to of a brothel, who suspected that a girl
avoid, how and where to advertise and what brought to her by a pimp was a minor.
prices to charge. This kind of information When committee members went to the
provision about laws, rights and conditions brothel to investigate, the pimp took the
of work is an established good practice girl away in a taxi to another brothel area.
to reduce the vulnerability of migrants The committee alerted their counterparts
and low-wage workers to exploitation and in that area, who discovered where the
abuse, including trafficking, and many anti- pimp took the girl. Committee members
trafficking organisations engage in such work. found her, verified that she was indeed
All the organisations whose staff we spoke a minor, contacted her parents, provided
with also engage in public activities – lectures, counselling to them and to the girl, and
rallies, work with the media or policy referred them to the police. Although the
advocacy – to address the criminalisation pimp escaped again, the action taken by
and stigmatisation of sex work. This is the committee women had such an impact
important because traffickers exploit this that he never returned to that community.
criminalisation and stigma in order to keep What these and other cases documented
victims under their control, convincing in the GAATW research have in common
them that if they go to the police they will is that the solutions are not always obvious
not be believed but will instead be arrested or conventional; in some cases, sex workers
and jailed for prostitution and, in the case have to get creative in order to find the best
of migrants, deported. Removing the stigma solution. Traditional anti-trafficking measures