On May 4, the House International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations heard testimony on the expected increase in prostitution during the 2006 FIFA World Cup, which will held in Germany this June. Subcommittee Chair Christopher Smith (R-NJ) said that this hearing would be the first in a series of hearings to address this issue.
Rep. Smith stated, “Today we join our counterparts in the European Union who have expressed their worries that there will be an explosion of prostitution and trafficking during the time of the World Cup.” He emphasized that Germany’s legalization of prostitution in 2001 leaves World Cup fans “legally free to rape women in brothels or even in mobile units designed specifically for this form of exploitation.” The whole region is affected, he explained, since 75 percent of the 400,000 prostitutes in Germany are foreigners, many of whom come from Central and Eastern Europe. Rep. Smith warned that the German legalized prostitution infrastructure “is gearing up to expand its capacity during the World Cup and there is every reason to believe that the ‘new recruits’ into prostitution will be trafficked women and girls.” He added, “I see this as flagrant state complicity in promoting sex trafficking.”
Stressing that prostitution is “a major industry in Germany,” Ranking Member Donald Payne (D-NJ) said that Germany’s policy of legal prostitution makes it difficult to “weed out trafficking.” Many of the women and girls who are brought into Germany, he noted, are locked up and must stay on the street until “they have their quota” of customers for the night. Rep. Payne said that to fight trafficking, we need to fight poverty. “We have to start taking a global approach if we’re going to stop all this exploitation,” he stated.
International Organization for Migration (IOM) Program Manager Ashley Garrett highlighted IOM strategies to address the exploitation of women and children during the 2006 World Cup. “First, IOM has been approached by the MTV Europe Foundation to partner along with the Swedish International Development Agency in producing a television public service announcement addressing the demand side of sex trafficking,” she explained, adding, “This campaign will raise awareness about the connection between major sporting events and trafficking for sexual exploitation, encouraging potential clients to educate themselves on what trafficking in persons is and how to take personal responsibility in reducing this form of exploitation, while providing a warning to potential victims.” Ms. Garrett said IOM worked with the German government and other organizations to establish 28 federal and local campaigns within Germany to identify and protect potential victims of trafficking. IOM Missions also are monitoring traffickers in Ukraine, Moldova, and other countries formerly belonging to the Soviet Union for changes in recruitment patterns.
Jennifer Roemhildt, executive director of Lost Coin, described the preparations for the expected increase in prostitution during the 2004 Olympics in Athens, where prostitution is legal. The Greek government, she said, heightened security, trained ‘trafficking monitors’ to patrol areas known for illegal prostitution, printed leaflets on sexual health and sexually transmitted diseases, and arranged for free legal aid for victims of trafficking. “In a decision which starkly divided Greek society,” Ms. Roemhildt noted, “the municipality of Athens chose to license more brothels. The international community joined local advocacy groups in criticizing the Athens authorities for expanding the availability of prostitution during the Games.” Despite expectations, she said, there was actually a decrease in the demand for prostitution during the Olympics. Regarding prostitution in Germany during the World Cup, Ms. Roemhildt stated that Lost Coin “congratulates the German NGOs for their foresight in creating and offering a hotline to clients as well as victims, and calls on “Chancellor Merkel to speak out against the victimization of women through prostitution and trafficking in her country.”
Emphasizing that “trafficking is a market-based criminal industry driven by two primary factors: high profits and low risk,” Co-Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Polaris Project Katherine Chon said that trafficked women and children are “almost invariably from marginalized populations, including from the very poor, from immigrant and minority groups, and from abusive homes.” She said that “those who are prostituted face on average a 62% chance of being raped or gang-raped, a 73% chance of being physically assaulted, and a 40 times greater chance of mortality than the average person.” She criticized legalized prostitution and described nightly quotas forced on trafficked women and children by pimps: “To meet the quota, women and children as young as 12 years old must engage in numerous commercial sex acts with customers each night, in locations such as hourly hotel rooms, apartments, alleyways, and parked cars. The punishment for not meeting a quota on a given night is a severe beating, starvation, rape, or torture by a pimp, or being forced to continue to provide commercial sex for upwards of 24-48 hours until the quota is met.” She said that the Polaris Project recommends that Congress and the international community “strongly condemn any facilitation or cooperation by the German government to allow the inevitable rise in demand associated with the World Cup to fuel increased commercial sex industry activity and the resulting sex trafficking.”
Amnesty International (AI) Advocacy Director for Europe and Central Asia Maureen Greenwood-Basken highlighted poverty, discrimination, and family violence as “root causes of human trafficking” and cited the “lack of accessible frameworks for legal migration” as an additional factor. Ms. Greenwood-Basken stressed the importance of protecting the rights of trafficked persons: “There is a high risk that the rights of the trafficked person, after first being violated by the traffickers, are violated again by the authorities in the destination country. Trafficking survivors should not be detained, charged, prosecuted or punished for illegal entry or residence in a country of transit or destination and unlawful activities which are a consequence of their situation as a trafficked person.” Stating that the “problem which needs to be addressed is not migration but human trafficking,” she said that AI calls on the German government “not to repatriate women who have been victims of human trafficking without first offering the victims substantial medical, psychological, and legal help.”
Juliet Engel, director of the MiraMed Institute in Moscow, criticized the German government for profiting from revenues obtained through legalized prostitution, calling it “an official ‘pimp’ for the 2006 World Cup.” Noting that “Russian women constitute the third largest group of women annually trafficked into Germany,” she urged the German government “to close the ‘mega-brothels’ and the ‘performances boxes’ and turn the focus of the World Cup activities to football instead of legalized violence against women.”
