By Vicki Silverman
Washington File staff writer

Washington -- "Trading Women", a documentary film broadcast on U.S. public television in mid-2003, offered many Americans their first exposure to the current trafficking of human beings into situations of forced labor, in this case for the sex industry in Southeast Asia.

In October, special showings of the film will take place in London, Paris and Washington to further educate policymakers and the public about what many now recognize as slavery in the 21st century.

"Trading Women" is the work of anthropologist, writer and director David A. Feingold. He drew on his decades of professional experience in the region to learn how and why significant numbers of women and girls from the hill tribes of Burma, Laos and China have entered the sex industry in Thailand.

Speaking with the Washington File in early September, Feingold discussed the conditions affecting the women in his film. He also shared some of his broader concerns, particularly the lack of data and failure to grasp the complexities that underlie human trafficking worldwide.

The opening scenes of "Trading Women" underscore stereotypes of Asian women as sexual commodities, but the film continues on to shatter these myths.

Feingold believes the media treatment of trafficking does not present the true dimensions of the problem. "Too often -- in film or print -- you have little Apsu, naive little Aka girl who has been sold by dad, who is a heroin user. She is sold to a trafficker, who sells her into a brothel whereupon she is rescued by a dynamic NGO. Then, there is the compulsory interview that says Asians don't care about their daughters," he said. After five years of research, supported by the United Nations (through UNESCO), Feingold concluded that there was little truth in this scenario.

"This sort of myth that everyone is sitting around waiting to sell their children is not characteristic of most cases," Feingold said. "Some girls are literally kidnapped, as you see in my film. The majority of girls, however, leave their villages voluntarily, for a wide variety of reasons, but along the way they often become involved in coercive situations."

That coercion may take the form of debt or ignorance of particular conditions, such as being promised a job as a waitress that turns out to be something else, he said. Ultimately, the girls are sold or "trafficked" to an individual who profits by exploiting their bodies.

Feingold cautioned that, in Thailand, trafficking does not equate to brothel-based sex trade as often assumed. "The number of true brothels in Thailand has been steadily declining over the past five years," he said, explaining that research indicates trafficking victims will more likely end up as "karaoke workers," the lowest, most exploited end of the sex industry in Thailand.

Identifying the Problem in Asia

Feingold began his investigation of the migration and entry of women from the Upper Mekong region into sex work with what he calls a simple question, "Why was it that 30 years ago there was a vast and extensive sex industry in Thailand and there were no minority girls in it? What changed?"

What changed, according to Feingold, was the destruction of the entire upland economy and environment by a combination of well-meaning development programs and opium suppression projects. "This forced males and females out of the village, leaving them landless," he said.

"One thing our research showed, for a highland girl in Thailand -- not from across the border -- the single greatest risk factor to being trafficked or otherwise exploited is lack of citizenship. If you don't have citizenship, you cannot get a diploma nor are you allowed to travel outside your area. It creates vulnerabilities and there are between 400,000 and 500,000 hill people in Thailand who are not citizens, meaning they are vulnerable," Feingold said.

"If you look at where the key problem of trafficking is (in this area of Southeast Asia), it is in Burma. The majority of girls who are trafficked come from Burma. For the Shan women, the way they express their choices are to stay home and get raped by the Burmese army for free, or come down to Thailand and do sex work for money. This is not a choice anyone should ever have to make," he said.

Turning to some of the critical elements related to monitoring and combating human trafficking around the world, Feingold said, "What makes trafficking so vile is the exploitation. Trafficking, looked at simply, has two elements: migration and coercion. Trafficking is an ex post facto definition of the migration event. Some individuals start off being trafficked, most girls do not. They end up being trafficked and the measure of being trafficked is what happened to them along the way.

"I was recently in Indonesia participating in a conference to look at the national trafficking plan for Indonesia (a visit facilitated by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta). It seemed clear that approximately 90 per cent of the trafficking is labor trafficking. You're a girl and you come from the countryside to a 'legitimate' job placement office. You owe them money (placement fees). You cannot pay, so they place you in a locked center where you are not necessarily badly treated but it is a violation of international law."

Feingold continued, "The placement office processes your papers for work in the Middle East, Malaysia or elsewhere, which may take a month or two months. Meanwhile, your debt increases. You arrive at your destination, where you may be abused or exploited or papers taken and if you complain about not getting paid, you are thrown in jail.

"Basically, you have a situation where what is necessary is the enforcement of existing labor rights -- that's what the key issue here is. So in many cases you have girls who were not sexually trafficked but get forced into the sex trade in order to make money to send home or pay off debts, which is why they migrated anyway," Feingold said.

Greater Research Is Needed

Feingold believes greater research related to trafficking is a pre-requisite to ending the abuse. Statistical accuracy is vital, he explained to the Washington File.

"One of things we do in UNESCO, which is the lead research organization for the United Nations on trafficking, is develop what I call an 'epidemiology' in trafficking because it is a constantly changing phenomenon," Feingold said. "Trafficking is like a disease. If you don't change your response or if your response to the disease is 10 years out of date and made up of myths, the solution will not be effective, and may even be harmful."

Feingold also worries that the media and others will grow tired of reporting on trafficking, possibly without ever touching on the true complexities that underlie human trafficking. "Saving little Apsu has more emotional resonance than doing something about changing the conditions of her life," he said.

Change Is Possible

While there is much work that needs to be done to understand and end the current trafficking of human beings, Feingold strongly believes change is possible.

"There are local success stories. In general, I think programs which remove vulnerabilities work well," he said. In Thailand, he pointed to success in working with a number of very local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on establishing legal status for the at-risk populations in the Upper Mekong.

Citing another example, Feingold said that it was once the case that if a girl was "rescued" from a brothel in Thailand and she was from outside the country, she was placed in an immigration jail. "Now, because an MOU (memorandum of understanding) was negotiated by the Thai Public Welfare Department and the Immigration Department, that no longer happens," he said.

"Instead, once the girl has been picked up and it is determined that she has been trafficked or that she is underage, she goes to a shelter, where she receives vocational training and eventually goes home. These are small things that make big differences in their lives," Feingold said.

"It is easy to say that bad things are woven through human history, but the fact is things do get better," he said.

"The international community has taken a collective decision that slavery is not acceptable. Have they lived up to it? No, but there is a chance they will. When I started to work on trafficking, no one was interested in this issue unless they were specifically involved with the victims or otherwise professionally involved. Much has changed. The trafficking issue is at a key juncture now. There is a lot of interest and there is an opportunity to really do some good things," Feingold said.

Other Resources

A comprehensive look at the U.S. response to combating human trafficking is available online here.

In conjunction with U.S. legislation to combat human trafficking, the Department of State publishes an annual Trafficking in Persons Report.

For more information on UNESCO's projects related to human trafficking in the Upper Mekong, see this link.

And to learn more about the scope of human trafficking worldwide, Feingold recommends the book "Disposable People, New Slavery in the Global Economy" by Kevin Bales, published in July 2000. Kevin Bales is among the professionals contributing to the "National Geographic" magazine's September 2003 article on human trafficking, entitled "21st Century Slaves". The article can be found at www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0309.