United Nations Radio

human trafficking victim

PRES: Trafficking of human beings is a crime that affects all countries in one way or another - either as a source of trafficked persons, or as a transit or destination country. The majority of victims are women and girls, who are trafficked for sexual exploitation. To address this crime effectively, human rights experts say it is important to listen to the victims and survivors of trafficking. At an event at the United Nations in New York this week, several women shared their stories of survival. Bissera Kostova reports.

Cerpa: The first night was the worst. I had to service 19 men. They lined up for the new girl.

NARR: Kika Cerpa was trafficked from Venezuela to the US by a man she thought of as her boyfriend.

Cerpa: For the next three years, my exploiter moved me from one brothel to another. One time I told Daniel that I'm gonna go to the police - he told me if I go I will be arrested and deported.

NARR: This threat seemed only too real to her, as the authorities she encountered seemed indifferent to her plight.

Cerpa: Sometimes the police would raid the brothels. Instead of rescuing us they demand that we perform sexual service on them. Never did the police or the prosecution asked if we were trafficked. Never did they offer us help and protection.

NARR: After years of abuse, including by one of her clients whom she married, Ms. Cerpa had to fight a criminal conviction and finally gained legal status in the US. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, says victims of trafficking should never be treated as criminals.

Pillay: Trafficked persons should not be subjected to summary deportations. They should not be prosecuted for immigration or other offenses that are a direct outcome of their situation as trafficked persons.

NARR: Another victim who told her story, Charlotte Awino, was abducted from Uganda by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army and was trafficked into Sudan when she was 14 years old.

Awino: The rebels were using us as human shields. As usual, we the girls suffered more. We were distributed to the rebel commanders as objects, without rights and were sexually abused.

NARR: Charlotte was given as a wife to one of the commanders and bore him two children. After 8 years, when the rebels returned to Uganda, she managed to escape and was reunited with her mother Angelina Atyam, who had become an advocate on behalf of the thousands of kidnapped children in Uganda.

Atyam: As a mother I'm appealing: please follow the children, get them released, get them back, we need them. Not only Charlotte is my child, but every child affected is my child.

NARR: Charlotte's mother is now taking care of her two children, while she attends school with the support of an Irish family. Another survivor of trafficking, Rachel Lloyd from the United Kingdom, is now an activist in the anti-trafficking movement and runs an agency working with sexually exploited girls in New York City.

Lloyd: It would be easy to leave here today with a good feeling that we heard stories and we clapped a lot and maybe we had tears in our eyes.  Whilst it's critical for people to be able to hear the voices of survivors and to hear the things that we've experienced, it's far more critical for the UN particularly to hear the recommendations and the ideas and the opinions the survivors have.

NARR: Ms. Lloyd's recommendation is to address the demand side of trafficking.

Lloyd: You may have one primary trafficker as a victim, maybe there's five people involved in your ring, maybe there's 20 people, but how many people during your year, two years, ten years are buying you?

NARR: Ruchira Gupta, a journalist and founder a grassroots organization in India working to end sex trafficking, says victims of trafficking are clear about what they want.

Gupta: They are asking for the punishment of those who exploit them as a guarantee of safety and security. They are asking for access to safe housing, counseling, education, and job training. Regrettably, most government projects offer them either a bed in a shelter or a condom in a brothel. And policies that put more emphasis on protecting male buyers from disease or managing a border from human smuggling.

NARR: The UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, called for a victim-centred approach to fighting trafficking that punishes the perpetrators and offers redress to the victims.

Ezeilo: Can you imagine somebody deprived of the right to freely choose their partner, to marry someone you want, to have children when you want and you're forced to have pregnancy, forced to bear children and go through that and you are living with that. What compensation would be enough? Yet, there is even no compensation.

NARR: Ms. Ezeilo recommends that countries establish special funds for victims of trafficking, as a matter of priority. For UN Radio, I'm Bissera Kostova.

Duration: 4'38"