From now on, Europe has a kind of textbook for combating human trafficking: a European Parliament conference has approved the Brussels Declaration with recommendations about how to counter the export of women and children for purposes of prostitution. The document calls for the cooperation of law enforcement bodies and assistance to the victims of prostitution.
The three-day conference was attended by representatives of the International Migration Organization, European Union current and prospective members, and countries supplying white slaves, including Ukraine. The speakers, mostly top governmental officials, maintained that worldwide human trafficking had become one of the Mafia’s favorite occupations. Two million people, half of them children, annually fall victim to this trade, Antonio Costa, director of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, told the conference. For example, shadow business accounts for 10% of the European Union’s economy: illegal migrants work in agriculture and civil construction, while a considerable part of women end up in bordellos. Mr. Costa pointed out that the main suppliers of white slaves to the European Union are Albania, Moldova, Rumania, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and China.
Valentyna Dovzhenko, head of the Ukrainian delegation at the conference and Chair of the State Committee for Family and Youth Affairs, said that Ukraine intends to suggest that European Union states grant young Ukrainian citizens permission for temporary employment. She is convinced this will help stem the tide of Ukrainian illegals heading for the EU and thus prevent the Mafia from unlawfully exporting people (Ms. Dovzhenko was sure that if the permission was granted, this would cause no mass emigration abroad; she believes the number of patriots is on the rise in Ukraine). According to Ms. Dovzhenko, tens of thousands of Ukrainian men and women are working abroad illegally at present. Over the past few years, Ukraine has been able, with the assistance of the International Migration Organization and the governments of some countries, to repatriate over 400 Ukrainian women forced into prostitution abroad. But were all of them really forced to do so? “We have information that about 15% of the women who went job-seeking abroad had no idea at all about what might happen to them. Almost 40% even hoped that everything would be OK and they would work as domestic help. Taken together, this is more than half. And only a small part, about 20%, knew where they were going and what they wanted. In other words, these women entered prostitution to some extent knowingly,” Ms. Dovzhenko said.
The conference participants agreed that stamping out human trade is impossible unless the causes of this thriving business are addressed. Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium noted that it results from the huge gap in the living standards of “the rich North and the poor South.” Yet, affluent countries fight only “the symptoms, not the roots, of the illegal trade.” According to Mr. Verhofstadt, the European human trade policy must include the collection and exchange of information as well as measures that prevent the export of women and children.
Some conference participants said more severe punishments should be meted out to white slavers. For example, Deputy Foreign Minister of Italy Margherita Boniver revealed that her country’s legislature was considering a new bill authorizing eight to twenty years in prison for human traffickers. Sweden went even farther: they passed a law on prosecuting the consumers of sexual services. As to Ukraine, it is licking its slave trade wounds: the women wrested from Western brothels are improving their mental and physical health in Kyiv’s newly-established rehabilitation center for the victims of human trafficking.
