More attention is needed to help women
trafficked for sexual exploitation overcome stigma and
discrimination if they are to fully recover from their ordeals and
reintegrate into society, said the International Organization for
Migration (IOM) as it marked International Women’s Day
today.

“There is an increasing awareness of
human trafficking around the world today. But more needs to be
done. We have to change attitudes. Too often, women and girls
trafficked for sexual exploitation are victims twice over because
of the stigma attached to prostitution,” said Ndioro Ndiaye,
IOM’s Deputy Director General.

Efforts to help victims of human trafficking
focus largely on prevention campaigns and victim assistance such as
the setting up of emergency rescue hotlines, help with returning to
home countries, rehabilitation and reintegration assistance
including counselling, medical care, training or grants to set up
businesses. However, few programmes address the stigma that women
have to live with for the rest of their lives and which can leave
them exposed and vulnerable again to abuse.

The shame of sexual exploitation can lead to
social ostracism for trafficked women and girls and is a fact of
life for victims all across the world. Families either disown their
offspring or risk being disowned themselves by communities who
believe that the fault lies with the victim and not the
trafficker.

In Southern Africa, trafficked women from poor
rural areas often rejected by their families upon their return, are
forced to move to urban areas and work in the sex industry in order
to survive. For them, commercial sex is the only way they know of
earning a living. In other parts of Africa, and elsewhere in Europe
and South America, there is the stigma of failure if a trafficked
victim returns without any money or the promised wealth that going
abroad was supposed to achieve, regardless of how that money was
gained.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the stigma
of being trafficked for sexual exploitation is forcing the majority
of trafficked women and girls who return home not to seek
assistance they need to recover, even though comprehensive
assistance programmes are available.

“The shame factor of having worked in
the sex industry means that trafficked women and girls simply
don’t want to admit to what happened to them, what they had
to do in order to survive at the hands of unscrupulous traffickers.
It’s deeply worrying that this prevents them from coming
forward for help when they clearly need it. We could be helping so
many more victims,” said Oksana Horbunova, an IOM
counter-trafficking programme coordinator in Eastern Europe.

The stigma attached to women trafficked for
sexual exploitation is not just present at the end of trafficking
process, but from the beginning of it. IOM’s database of
trafficking victims show a significantly large number of women who
are single parents made vulnerable to trafficking because of
poverty and lack of opportunities and the stigma and discrimination
attached to those factors. A high percentage of women trafficked
are also victims of domestic abuse.

When trafficked, their treatment at the hands
of traffickers, clients and law enforcers is symptomatic of the
stigma attached to their predicament. More importantly, the victims
don’t always receive the support they need from authorities
once rescued, and are sometimes treated as criminals in the
interviewing process, put into prisons and finally deported.

“Although attitudes are improving in
some countries through legislation, the creation of
non-governmental organizations specializing in trafficking issues
and the training of law enforcers, it is a slow process. More
alternatives need to be available to trafficked victims than being
sent home which is not always ideal when one sees what women and
girls have to return home to,” said Richard Danziger,
IOM’s head of counter-trafficking department.

One such example is in the United States where
victims of trafficking are given visas that allow them to stay in
the country if they want to and bring over immediate members of
their families.

“By breaking down the stigma and by
empowering trafficked women to step forward and speak of their
experiences, global efforts to counter human trafficking,
particularly of women and girls for sexual exploitation, will be
much more successful. But this can only be done by tackling
ignorance and prejudice among the public at large as to why women
fall prey to traffickers,” added Ndiaye.