Sex Trafficking Now a $16 Billion Business in Latin America

Released : Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Source: WUNRN

The trafficking of women and girls for purposes of sexual exploitation has become a $16-billion-a-year business in Latin America, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.

That amount "is almost half of what is calculated is generated worldwide" by sex trafficking, said IOM's director for the Southern Cone, Eugenio Ambrosi, in an interview published Wednesday in the Buenos Aires daily Pagina/12.

Prostitution, he said, "is vying for second place with weapons trafficking as the illegal business that moves the most money after drug trafficking."

Ambrosi lamented the fact that trafficking in women has "the advantage ... (that) the logistical and investment (costs) are much lower" than in other illicit businesses, and he added that "there's a connection" between drug trafficking and people trafficking.

"Sometimes the victims ... are recruited to traffic drugs," he said.

"There's a very well organized network, with the capacity to recruit and use women everywhere to satisfy the requirements of the market," said Ambrosi, adding that "something has to be done to go after the customers."

He said that in Argentina "there's a lot of demand (for prostitutes) ... due to a cultural question, like in other parts of the world, particularly in Latin America."

"We have no information that tells us of an important number of Argentine women sent abroad. In contrast, there are Paraguayan and Brazilian women who are sold outside their countries," he said.

The IOM chief for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguayand Uruguay said that a procurer "has a net profit of $13,000 per year" on each woman they exploit.

"It's a very large profit with a very low investment," he said, emphasizing that "it's horrible ... (to use terms like) sell, quote or market" when speaking about people who are being exploited.

Ambrosi said that in Argentina, "they pay between $32.50 and $1,623 for a woman who can generate $389 per day by being sexually exploited."

He said that the poor province of Misiones, on the border with Brazil and Paraguay, is one of the main areas for the exploitation of Argentine women, most of whom are minors.

In the northern provinceof Tucuman, "there are families that dedicate themselves to trading in women as if they were running a pizzeria or a bakery, to exploit them in other areas or to export them," he said.

"We have nothing to tell us that there is any systematic action by the police of the authorities to provide protection (to the procurers), but there could be complicity of individuals who by their own public functions, whether they be police or officials, make the crime easier" to commit, Ambrosi said.

In February 2006, the IOM joined with the offices of the first ladies of four Latin American nations in an effort to reduce the number of children transported far from their homes to suffer as indentured domestic, agricultural or sex workers.

Backed by the Inter-American Development Bank, the program focuses on child trafficking in Colombia, El Salvador, Paraguay and Bolivia.

The first ladies of those nations - the wives of the respective presidents except in the case of Bolivia- play a significant role in the project. Bolivian President Evo Morales is unmarried, and his sister Esther occupies the post of first lady of the Andean nation.

"The project will not only help combat child trafficking but will also raise awareness on sexual and reproductive health issues and related subjects such as domestic violence," IOM spokeswoman Jemini Pandya said last year at the organization's headquarters in Geneva.

Set to last 15 months, the pilot program draws upon successful counter-trafficking efforts in Peru, conveying those practices to more than 100 teachers representing 10 schools from each of the participating nations.

Organizers are counting on a multiplier effect, as they estimate that the initial corps of educators will directly reach more than 4,000 primary- and secondary-school students.

The International Labor Organization estimates that roughly 1.3 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean- most of them women and children - are subjected to forced labor, and the IOM says that one aim of the new project is "to place the subject of human trafficking in school programs and on public agendas."

The U.S. State Department publishes an annual report on human trafficking, a phenomenon Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has described as "nothing less than a modern form of slavery."