Transitional Road for Traffic: Analysing Trafficking in Women From and Through Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

THIS ARTICLE ANALYSES ASPECTS of the changing rhetoric and realities since 1989 of the traffic in women from and through Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union 1 (CEE). The overt and shocking human rights abuses apparent in the traffic in women stem to a large extent from the degraded status of women within these societies. 2 This essential inequality is thrown into sharp relief by both economic problems and war. Compounding variables are that certain criminals, military personnel and ‘business’ people view women (and children) as valuable commodities to exploit in terms of prostitution. 3 Discourses on economic transition and militarisation in CEE are related to debates on trafficking in women with focus on poverty, human rights, prostitution and migration. The rapid marketisation of these countries had a disproportionately heavy impact on women’s economic opportunities and family responsibilities. 4 The growth of trafficking in women for sexual exploitation across CEE from the 1990s to date highlights how considerations of migration and prostitution, when politically framed, can be decisive in the formulation of adopted policy strategies. The demand for prostitution in the wealthier Western European countries links with confused and contradictory attitudes towards prostitution and its regulation to generate and support thriving ‘markets in women’. Military and peacekeeping personnel link with local profiteers in creating further markets. Both the feminisation of poverty and the secondary positioning of women in countries within the region are key factors encouraging migration to the West. 5 There are competing causal factors and motives underpinning much of the trafficking trades, 6 particularly that of traffic in women. Key impacts of poverty and war have interlinked across CEE to oppress impoverished women with apparent complexities between migration, human trafficking and smuggling. 7 Contradictory dialogues speak to the current political interest in legislating against the traffic in women in CEE, specifically from alternating focal points of women’s human rights, immigration controls and the feminisation of poverty. In this article attempts are made to draw out some causal factors against the background of dramatic political and economic change, particularly the rapid globalisation of the now marketised economies in the region and to assess some of the ways in which legislative change