Intervention Zita Gurmai “Prostitution and Women Slavery” Rome, 16 April 2015
Dear friends, dear sisters, Thank you for inviting me to this PD event on prostitution and women slavery. As President of PES Women, I can inform you that PES Women has worked on combating trafficking of women and sexual slavery since 2006. Back in 2006, the PES and PES Women had a campaign in the context of the Football World Cup saying ‘Celebrate the World Cup, Stop trafficking and Sexual Slavery’. Yes we managed to have proposals in the Conclusions of the EU Heads of States on what to do in the future. But today, I sadly need to admit that in Europe, violence against women is still a problem of pandemic proportions. Let me start by a real story, from my country Hungary. It is a story that a women’s organisation working on the ground told me. Selena (name is changed) is 32 years old, she is Roma, she grew up in a foster-home. Between the age of 10 and 14, two of her educaters were abusing her sexually. When she was 15, her mother took her home, and introduced her to prostitution. Her father raped her, while her uncle took her to Holland. She was prostituted for seven years abroad and in Hungary. From her salary, she supported 8 people. She attempted to commit suicide about 40 times. After the 40th one, she got to the 1
recovery program of the shelter through a catholic nunnery order. As a result of the trauma she went through, she has a minimum of self-esteem. A psychologist is treating her with post-traumatic stress disorder, and a psychiatrist is treating her for drug addiction. She has been living in the shelter for 5 months with her 8 month-old baby; she has a cleaner’s qualification. I’m telling you this story because this is the reality of prostitution in Europe. The majority of those exploited in the system of prostitution are from migrant background or from minorities, and that many women trapped in prostitution have experienced sexual violence in their childhood or intimatepartner violence. This shows that the system of prostitution is linked to inequalities and discrimination. In Europe, the majority of women and girls in the system of prostitution are foreigners: women from Eastern Europe and Latin America, from Africa and Brazil. They are brought in Western Europe by Western men. We know that prostitution and sex trafficking are intrinsically linked. According to Eurostat, sexual exploitation is the most widespread form of human trafficking in the EU at 62%, and women and girls make up the overwhelming majority of all victims at 96%. According to the police, in the Netherlands, up to 90% of the women “working” in the licensed brothels are forced to be in prostitution. As you can see, trafficking is a major issue. We know that trafficking is violence against women. We know that sexual exploitation equals rape and is therefore violence
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against women. We know, but so many don’t know. So many men still refuse to see it this way. In an intervention in the European Parliament in January 2014, Europol (which is the EU police agency) representatives explained that trafficking in human beings, and especially in women and girls, has increased in the countries where prostitution markets have been legalised. We can see it in Europe: we have two opposite models dealing with prostitution. We have Germany and the Netherlands which have legalised the organisation of prostitution; in these countries, prostitution has become a “work”. Do you know that in Germany, 1 million men pay for sex from 400 000 women every day? In Europe, we also have the Swedish model, which considers prostitution as a form of violence against women. 14 years after its adoption, this model seems to deter trafficking and to change mentalities, especially amongst the younger generations who don’t want to see women’s bodies for sale. The economic crisis has only reinforced the international mechanisms of trafficking. The austerity measures imposed in Europe have pushed more people towards prostitution. Recent studies have shown that there has been a worrying trend with an acceleration of trafficking, of younger and younger victims. There has also been a significant increase in the number of prostitutes in countries where harsh economic measures have left the population vulnerable, for example in Greece and Spain. There is also, increasingly, a risk for migrant workers in precarious situation to be economically and sexually exploited if they lose their job, particularly eastern Europeans working in Western Europe. 3
The work of NGOs with these vulnerable populations is crucial, to alert them, to protect them, to help them escape exploitation. But we can’t undermine the work of politicians, in cooperation with NGO’s and the police forces and the judicial system, to reflect on the mechanisms of trafficking of human beings, and act. Apart from putting adequate legislation, such as the 2014 European Parliament Report by colleague Mary Honeyball on the “Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution and its Impact on Gender Equality”, we need to allocate funds to let NGOs do their work, to train instances such as the judicial mechanisms to assist adequately to these issues. This is one of the biggest obstacles I came across when I was in Rome in October.
Dear friends, dear sisters, I want to assure you that PES Women is doing everything in its power to fight any form of violence against women, any form of exploitation of women.
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