Demand as root cause for trafficking for sexual exploitation 

The real source of traf­fick­ing and exploita­tion is demand. This have too often remained invis­i­ble and out­side the scope of State’s anti-traf­fick­ing efforts. Pover­ty and inequal­i­ty, among oth­er, have often been con­sid­ered as the cause of human traf­fick­ing: in real­i­ty, those are vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, which can be used by traf­fick­ers to eas­i­ly ensnare vic­tims, but they are not the cause of traf­fick­ing.

Sex­u­al exploita­tion is a form of human traf­fick­ing, and involves in par­tic­u­lar forced pros­ti­tu­tion, forced pornog­ra­phy and sex­u­al exploita­tion of chil­dren. The demand that fuels traf­fick­ing for forced sex­u­al exploita­tion is the demand for paid sex, which is often met by traf­fick­ing vic­tims. Men typ­i­cal­ly do not seek to buy sex from traf­fick­ing vic­tims, but rather seek to buy sex, and traf­fick­ing vic­tims are what they are pro­vid­ed. As traf­fick­ing sur­vivor Rachel Moran once said, “They don’t know and they don’t care.” This demand is thus over­whelm­ing­ly cre­at­ed by men and whose price is paid by women and girls. The demand of those men is face­less, name­less and con­sent-less. Men who pay for sex from traf­fick­ing vic­tims not only are, and cre­ate the demand, they also form part of the traf­fick­ing chain, and are inflic­tors of harm upon vic­tims through engag­ing in acts akin to rape.

Because buy­ers and traf­fick­ers can act rel­a­tive­ly free of con­se­quence, their like­li­hood of engag­ing in the mar­ket increas­es. Grow­ing trans­ac­tions is what we actu­al­ly see in coun­tries where reg­u­la­tion and decrim­i­nal­iza­tion of approach­es to pros­ti­tu­tion apply. The only solu­tion for impact­ing the dimen­sions of the traf­fick­ing of women for sex­u­al exploita­tion is to reduce the num­ber of buy­ers buy­ing. In 1999, Swe­den imple­ment­ed the so-called Nordic Mod­el (now the Equal­i­ty Mod­el), in order to com­bat the demand for pros­ti­tu­tion and sex­u­al exploitation.

Four pillars constitute the Nordic Model:

1. Pros­ti­tu­tion is vio­lence against women
2. The buy­ing of sex­u­al ser­vices is criminalized
3. Pro­vide pro­tec­tion and real help for women to exit prostitution
4. Ear­ly aware­ness-rais­ing in schools on the harms of prostitution

The Nordic Mod­el thus crim­i­nal­izes demand by tar­get­ing the buy­ers of sex­u­al ser­vices. As San­dra Norak said in our webi­nar on demand for sex­u­al exploita­tion (13 April 2021): “To fight traf­fick­ing and exploita­tion, we need to reduce demand because demand is a breed­ing ground for traf­fick­ing. Men will not stop buy­ing the bod­ies of women, as long as it is not for­bid­den.”

To learn more about this issue, we invite you to click on the links below:

• to watch the videos of the webinars

• or the inter­ven­tions of each speaker

• and to down­load in the video descrip­tions, the tran­scripts and addi­tion­al doc­u­ments made avail­able to researchers.

DEMAND AS ROOT CAUSE FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING – SEX TRAFFICKING & PROSTITUTION — 13 April 2021

• San­dra Norak
• Inge Bell
• Lea Ack­er­man
• Bri­an Iselin

DEMAND FOR HT: WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE AS CONSUMERS OF FORCED LABOR AND SEXUAL SLAVERY. HOW CAN WE END THIS CYCLE? — 14 June 2022

• Valiant Richey
• Inge Bell
• Bri­an Iselin

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