What About Our World's Women? Part 1

I've recently been reading a book titled Half the Sky. I haven't finished it yet, but I've spent a few days engrossed in its pages. Half the Sky outlines how the world is failing women, specifically covering: sex trafficking/forced prostitution, gender-based violence (including rape and "honor" killings) and maternal mortality.

The book is disturbing, rightfully so. It talks about women being stolen from their families or tricked into prostitution. These women ("women" seems an inappropriate term, as they are often girls in their early or mid-teens) are young and they're desperate for money. Traffickers prey on this desperation, promising positions as dishwashers in hotels or restaurant jobs. These positions are often in countries or regions other than their own. Parents will sometimes allow girls to leave, because there are a group of girls from the village going. Once the girls are taken, they're beaten into submission, often raped into obedience and then drugged to appear a willing sex worker. It is difficult, if not impossible, to escape their captors. Girls are unable to communicate, as they are often taken to countries where they don't speak the language. If they are lucky enough to escape and seek the local authorities, authorities are frequently on the payroll or using the services of the brothel. They will then return the girl to the brothel, where she is then punished and severely beaten, if not killed.

The book highlights individual stories. It shows pictures of girls who have been beaten. One girl whose eye was stabbed out for disobeying. Some girls are killed for their disobedience or made to watch a girl be killed for her disobedience ensuring the rest of the girls don't act the same. Some girls are kept naked, making it more difficult to escape. The girls are forced not to wear condoms because clients "don't like" them. Girls become pregnant by clients and the children are further used as leverage, separating mother and child. Boys become servants and girls become, when of age, prostitutes. Girls become infected with HIV. Clients often request virgins so they don't have to use condoms or put themselves at risk for STDs. This makes the stealing of young girls even more lucrative, sometimes stealing or kidnapping a girl who hasn't yet reached puberty and keeping her until she has done so.

The book is maddening. How can we be allowing things like this to continue? The authors talk about our (our as in "Americans") general apathy toward these situations. Discussing the reading of these stories, but then shrugging them off as something happening in a distant nation, far away, and feeling removed from it, basically saying, it's not our problem.

But it is our problem. How can it not be? As a person, I can't help but feel outraged. As a woman, even more so. The things these women are being subjected to are most egregious.

As I've been reading this book, I can't help but think of Azerbaijan. I read an article recently which discusses Azerbaijan's listing on the Tier 2 Watchlist for Trafficking in Persons. The report states:

Azerbaijan is primarily a source and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor; women and some children from Azerbaijan are trafficked to Turkey and the UAE for the purpose of sexual exploitation; men and boys are trafficked to Russia for the purpose of forced labor; Azerbaijan serves as a transit country for victims from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Moldova trafficked to Turkey and the UAE for sexual exploitation

Azerbaijan is on the Tier 2 Watch List for its failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking in persons, particularly efforts to investigate, prosecute, and punish traffickers; to address complicity among law enforcement personnel; and to adequately identify and protect victims in Azerbaijan; the government has yet to develop a much-needed mechanism to identify potential trafficking victims and refer them to safety and care; poor treatment of trafficking victims in courtrooms continues to be a problem.

One of the biggest challenges in dealing with trafficking problems, is that countries have anti-trafficking laws, but often don't enforce them.

The book also points out something very interesting, often when these countries are highlighted in the media and subjected to embarrassment, countries will begin to modify their approach (often leading local authorities who were once on the payroll of brothels or engaging in the services offered, to start enforcing the laws instead of avoiding them).

The Half the Sky website (as well as the book) gives ways everyone can become involved in helping address the needs of women worldwide. Please be sure to check it out at: http://www.halftheskymovement.org/