Sexual slavery
Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership right over one or more people with the intent of coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in sexual activities. This includes forced labor that results in sexual activity, forced marriage and sex trafficking, such as the sexual trafficking of children.
Sexual slavery has taken various forms throughout history, including single-owner bondage and ritual servitude linked to religious practices in regions such as Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Moreover, slavery's reach extends beyond explicit sexual exploitation. Instances of non-consensual sexual activity are interwoven with systems designed for primarily non-sexual purposes, as witnessed in the colonization of the Americas. This epoch, characterized by encounters between European explorers and Indigenous peoples, saw forced labor for economic gains and was also marred by the widespread prevalence of non-consensual sexual activities.
In unraveling the intricate layers of this historical narrative, Gilberto Freyre's seminal work 'Casa-Grande e Senzala' casts a discerning light on the complex social dynamics that emerged from the amalgamation of European, Indigenous, and African cultures in the Brazilian context.
In some cultures, concubinage has been a traditional form of sexual slavery, in which women spent their lives in sexual servitude, one example being Concubinage in Islam. In some cultures, enslaved concubines and their children had distinct rights and legitimate social positions.
The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action calls for an international effort to make people aware of sexual slavery and that sexual slavery is an abuse of human rights. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies.
Definitions
The 1988 Rome Statute, which defines the crimes over which the International Criminal Court may have jurisdiction, encompasses crimes against humanity which include "enslavement" and "sexual enslavement" "when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population". It also defines sexual enslavement as a war crime and a breach of the Geneva Conventions when committed during an international armed conflict and indirectly in an internal armed conflict under Article, but the courts jurisdiction over war crimes is explicitly excluded from including crimes committed during "situations of internal disturbances and tensions, such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence or other acts of a similar nature".The text of the Rome Statute does not explicitly define sexual enslavement, but does define enslavement as "the exercise of any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over a person and includes the exercise of such power in the course of trafficking in persons, in particular women and children".
In the commentary on the Rome Statute, Mark Klamberg states:
Types
Commercial sexual exploitation of adults
Commercial sexual exploitation of adults is a type of human trafficking involving the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of people, by coercive or abusive means for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Commercial sexual exploitation is not the only form of human trafficking and estimates vary as to the percentage of human trafficking which is for the purpose of transporting someone into sexual slavery.The BBC News cited a report by UNODC as listing the most common destinations for victims of human trafficking in 2007 as Thailand, Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United States. The report lists Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine as major sources of trafficked persons.
In 2012, the International Labour Organization reported 20.9 million people were subjected to forced labor, and 22% were victims of forced sexual exploitation, 300,000 of them in Developed Economies and the EU. The ILO reported in 2016 that of the estimated 25 million persons in forced labor, 5 million were victims of sexual exploitation. However, due to the covertness of sex trafficking, obtaining accurate, reliable statistics poses a challenge for researchers.
Commercial sexual exploitation of children
Commercial sexual exploitation of children includes child prostitution, child sex tourism, child pornography, or other forms of transactional sex with children. The Youth Advocate Program International describes CSEC as a form of coercion and violence against children and a contemporary form of slavery.A declaration of the World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm in 1996, defined CSEC as, "sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or in kind to the child or to a third person or persons. The child is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object".
Child prostitution
Child prostitution, or child sex trafficking, is a form of sexual slavery. It is the commercial sexual exploitation of children, in which a child performs the services of prostitution, usually for the financial benefit of an adult.Child prostitution usually manifests in the form of sex trafficking, in which a child is kidnapped or tricked into becoming involved in the sex trade, or survival sex, in which the child engages in sexual activities to procure basic essentials such as food and shelter. Prostitution of children is commonly associated with child pornography, and they often overlap. Some people travel to foreign countries to engage in child sex tourism. Research suggests that there may be as many as 10 million children involved in prostitution worldwide. The practice is most widespread in South America and Asia, but prostitution of children exists globally, in undeveloped countries as well as developed. Most of the children involved with prostitution are girls, despite an increase in the number of young boys in the trade.
India's federal police said in 2009 that they believed around 1.2 million children in India to be involved in prostitution. A CBI statement said that studies and surveys sponsored by the Ministry of Women and Child Development estimated about 40% of India's prostitutes to be children.
Thailand's Health System Research Institute reported that children in prostitution make up 40% of prostitutes in Thailand.
In some parts of the world, child prostitution is tolerated or ignored by the authorities. Reflecting an attitude which prevails in many developing countries, a judge from Honduras said, on condition of anonymity: "If the victim is older than 12, if he or she refuses to file a complaint and if the parents clearly profit from their child's commerce, we tend to look the other way".
All member countries of the United Nations have committed to prohibiting child prostitution, either under the Convention on the Rights of the Child or the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. Various campaigns and organizations have been created to try to stop the practice.
Child sex tourism
Child sex tourism is a form of child sex trafficking, and is mainly centered on buying and selling children into sexual slavery. It is when an adult travels to a foreign country for the purpose of engaging in commercially facilitated child sexual abuse. Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, that may include "disease, drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and possibly death", according to the State Department of the United States.Child sex tourism has been closely linked to poverty, armed conflicts, rapid industrialization, and exploding population growth. In Latin America and Southeast Asia, for instance, street children often turn to prostitution as a last resort. Additionally, vulnerable children are easy targets for exploitation by traffickers. South Africa, the United States, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Nepal, the Dominican Republic, Kenya and Morocco have been identified as leading hotspots of child sexual exploitation. Also, child victim ages have been found in Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand to range from 6 to 11 years old, followed by 12 to 15 years old, and 15 to 17.
Child pornography
Child pornography, sometimes referred to as 'child abuse images', refers to images or films depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child. As such, child pornography is often a visual record of child sexual abuse. Abuse of the child occurs during the sexual acts which are photographed in the production of child pornography, and the effects of the abuse on the child are compounded by the wide distribution and lasting availability of the photographs of the abuse.Child sex trafficking often involves child pornography. Children are commonly purchased and sold for sexual purposes without the parents knowing. In these cases, children are often used to produce child pornography, especially sadistic forms of child pornography where they may be tortured.
Child pornography is illegal and censored in most jurisdictions in the world. Ninety-four of 187 Interpol member states had laws specifically addressing child pornography as of 2008, though this does not include nations that ban all pornography.