We, women from thirteen Asian countries met in Seoul, Korea from December 11-13, 1991 to share our experiences and work out strategies to curb the alarming increase in the traffic in Asian women. Shocking forms of traffic in women have come to light in the various regions of Asia causing serious concern and demanding collective action worldwide. 

It is ironic that while international human rights standards have dramatically improved since the 1949 UN Declaration on Human Rights, there has been a regression in women's human rights. There has been a horrific rise in crimes against women especially in the Asian region.

 The Asian Women's Human Rights Council (AWHRC) was formed to address this issue and to bring about a new understanding of women's human rights. The Conference on the Traffic in Women has been organized to understand and analyze the sexual exploitation of Asian women in various forms and to explore the different ways of stopping this inhuman trade.

The various country specific problems discussed during the Conference revealed how changing socio-economic and political developments in the world today have had a negative impact on women's lives.

The patriarchal system that underlies the gender oppression of women across all cultures and societies coupled with conditions of poverty brought about by WBIMF structural adjustment policies on developing nations have aggravated the already depressed conditions of Asian women. In addition to being subordinated economically, politically and socially, women have been commodified to an extent never before imagined.

Women are among the poorest of the poor and are marginalized in the development process. Under the development model promoted by the IMF-WB in the Third World, female workers in the export processing zones have been exploited as cheap labor. Moreover, recent stabilization policies of the World Bank have aggravated the debt burdens of Asian countries driving many of them to the brink of economic collapse. It is in these times of economic crises that women are forced to seek ways to help ensure the family's survival by vending, scavenging, and even engaging in prostitution. Going
abroad to work as entertainers and domestic helpers has become a viable economic alternative for hundreds and thousands of Asian women. The search for greener pastures is fraught with many risks for women including sexual abuse and exploitative work conditions.

Given the low status of women in the patriarchal order both in their own societies and the market economies of the world, women have been increasingly commodified as sexual objects to be bought, sold and exchanged for their labor value as well as for their sexual services. Impoverished women are sold by traffickers to men in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand and other western countries as well as in Japan. "Sexploitation without barriers" amply describes this global trafficking in women.

This massive export of female labor for entertainment and prostitution to the rich countries has become integrated in the massive labor migration process mediated by governments in their pursuit for more foreign exchange. Layers of beneficiaries like recruitment agencies, promoters, airlines, money changers and even families gain from the earnings of the migrant women. Sex trafficking syndicates, utilizing the legal cover of this migration movement, have benefitted tremendously from the trafficking in women either for prostitution and/or bonded labor. Religious practices and cultural traditions such as devdasi prostitution contribute to the sexual exploitation of women in general. According to the UN Rapporteur Jean Fernant, trafficking in women is more profitable than arms or drug smuggling.

"The voices of the Asian women can no longer be stifled. United, we re-address ourselves to the struggle against our oppression and fight with renewed determination to reverse this trend."

 The whole ethos of US militarism has brought about its own traditions of military prostitution and has become an integral extension of US military operations in Asia which reached its peak during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Military prostitution surround US bases in Japan (Okinawa, etc.) and the Philippine Naval Base in Olongapo and, until recently, Clark Air Base in Angeles City. In the issue of military bases can be found an intersection of national, racial, class and gender oppression. The US bases demean Filipino and Japanese and Korean women and are a transgression of their national sovereignty. The shocking stories of Korean women used in "comfort stations" by the Japanese troops in World War II and all throughout Japan's colonization of Korea dramatizes the degradation to which colonized Asian women have been subjected to.

Media representations of women reinforce the notion that women are sex objects for the gratification of men. Extreme forms of this type of representation are to be found in pornographic materials which increasingly utilize Asian models for their exotic beauty and docility. Asiatinnen, a German erotic magazine regularly features Asian women who want to marry German men. Sex tourism sells women as part and parcel of the tourist package from which governments derive a substantial part of their national income.

The end of the Cold War and the return of free market economies in Eastern Europe is also projected to intensify traffic in women to Western Europe.

Trafficking as violations of Asian women's human rights

Trafficking in women consists of the transport, sale and purchase of women for purposes of prostitution and bonded labor within the country as well as abroad. This includes a variety of forms and practices under which women live and work in extremely oppressive and/or slave-like conditions. "Mail-order brides" in Australia, Asian brides market in Japan, trafficking of refugee women and young girls for bonded labor, Filipino and Thai entertainers in Japan and a host of religious and cultural practices - like Devdasi prostitution and bogus marriages, are some examples.

Consider the following:

• On the Pakistan-Afghan border, kidnapped women are sold for Rs600 / kilogram in the marketplace;

• Many violent murders of Filipino entertainers in Japan in the hands of syndicates like the Yakuza have remained unsolved;

• An estimated 12,000 Bhutanese women refugees have sought refuge in the western part of Nepal as a result of sexual violence perpetrated by the Bhutanese soldiers;

• Charred bodies of five young Thai girls were found chained to their beds after a fire in Phuket, Thailand in 1986;

• In 1998, Rosario Baluyot, barely 12 and a child prostitute in Subic near the US military base in Olongapo, Philippines died of infections caused by a rotting vibrator used in her allegedly by an American serviceman;

• Almost 22 Nepali who were returned from the brothels of Bombay were found infected with AIDS;

• In India, under the Devdasi system in the south, young girls are dedicated to a goddess called Devadasis (slaves of goddess) and inducted into prostitution. Young girls are also married off to rich, old men from the Middle East for monetary consideration or taken as domestics to the Gulf where they are often sexually assaulted and brutalized;

• The presence of American bases in Asian countries and the practice of military prostitution, along with sex tourism have been largely responsible for the spread of AIDS in Asia which is now reaching epidemic proportions. Prostituted women are the most vulnerable and are even more discriminated because of the fear of AIDS;

• In China and Vietnam, where prostitution had been significantly reduced in the past, prostitution is now rapidly growing; there are cases of Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian and Burmese women being trafficked to Thailand;

• Hundreds of Asian women sent to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan and the Gulf countries as domestic helpers are sexually assaulted by their employers;

• Thousands of children ii i Asia are daily victimized by pedophiles who now prey on vulnerable, impoverished children;

•Thousands of refugee women caught in the midst of civil war, ethnic conflicts, insurgency and disaster situations in Asia have increased dramatically in recent years;

• An estimated 200,000 Korean women had been forced in the name of Jung Shin Dae (volunteer comfort girls) into prostitution to serve the sexual need of the Japanese army during the Second World War and throughout the colonial period. Just before the end of the Second World War, many of the women were allegedly murdered to hide the existence of the comfort stations.

Moved by the massiveness of the problems on trafficking in women, we resolve to do the folllowing:

On the International level:

• To utilize existing United Nations structures and conventions in seeking solutions to this problem. Although there is a Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Persons, the concept of trafficking should be broadened to reflect the present realities and forms of trafficking. The concept of traffic in women should not be restricted to traffic for the purpose of enforced prostitution but should be broadened to include all kinds of activities forced on women such as domestic labor, clandestine employment, false adoptions and bogus marriages.
• A Special Woman Rapporteur on Traffic in Women with monitoring and research obligations from either Asian, African or Latin American country should immediately be appointed by the UN Commission on Human Rights.
• Asian non-government organizations should actively participate in proceedings of the various UN channels like the meeting of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, the CEDAW, etc.
• Women's groups should likewise push for the use of the Voluntary Fund for participation of groups in the Sub-Committee on Contemporary Forms of Slavery; provide financial assistance for legal expenses in cases of trafficking.
• An International Tribunal to try cases on trafficking in Asian women should be held.
• The AWHRC should apply for a UN NGO Consultative Status to carry out its tasks more effectively in the international level.
• The AWHRC should seek the assistance of the UN-NGOs with consultative status like WILPF and World Council of Churches, Commission on International Affairs, IWRAW and others, for lobbying purposes. 

 
On the Regional level:

• Bilateral consultations on specific issues should be held among concerned groups and governments - e.g. on the entertainer issue (Japan and the Philippines, Japan and Thailand, etc.); on kidnapped and trafficked and refugee women (Pakistan-Afghanistan, Pakistan-Bangladesh, etc.); on problems of domestic helpers (Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei).
• Joint action between sending and receiving countries should be organized to dramatize and highlight common issues and campaigns. Exchange of information especially in monitoring cases of trafficking across countries, comparison of legal, immigration and labor procedures, especially the sharing of successful legal precedents on trafficking cases.
• A More effective coordination between women regional organizations and formations on this issue (AWHRC, APWLD, etc.) 

On the National level:

• In trying to curb abuses arising from the massive migration of women workers, adequate mechanisms should be set up to ensure adequate protection for their welfare without prejudicing their right to seek work abroad.
• There is need for closer coordination and information sharing on the operations of recruiting agencies and underworld syndicates.
• Intensification of campaigns in the media on the issue of trafficking. Radio, TV, print and other media should be utilized to the maximum.
• Extensive grassroots organizing of women for education and empowerment should be undertaken by existing women's organizations.
• Education on laws affecting women written in popular languages needs to be done to infomi the women of their rights.
• Asian governments should be pressured to sign existing human rights conventions affecting women migrants and workers.
• Work for revision of laws within each Asian country to respond to trafficking issue; the prostituted woman and trafficked woman should be entitled to the protection of the same laws and enjoy the same human rights as every other citizen; her background and past sexual history should not be taken into account in court proceedings.
• Pressure governments to stop sex tourism to Asian countries as a means of earning foreign exchange.
• Intensify campaigns to end military prostitution.
• Pressure governments to disseminate widespread information on AIDS prevention and ensure that in doing so, prostituted women with AIDS are not marginalized and blamed for the spread of the disease.

We have come together because of the urgency of the problems before us. But more importantly, we have come together to start to vision a future for women where violence, sexploitation and degradation shall have been significantly reduced.

Because of the highly organized nature of sex trafficking in the world today and the lengths to which Asian women have been degraded and commodified, we pledge to launch coordinated campaigns, pressure governments at the highest levels to respond to this modern day slavery of women.

The voices of the Asian women can no longer be stifled. United, we re-address ourselves to the struggle against our oppression and fight with renewed determination to reverse this trend.

Let us shout aloud, let us cry out.
Let our silent voices now be heard.
Now is the time for us to say
Now is the time for us to decide
Come, sisters, come.
Let us say, let us decide;
(Aruna Granadson, India)

Resolution: Conference on Traffic in Asian Women, 11-13 December 1991, Seoul, Korea. Asian Women's Human Rights Council. From: Asian Womenews, 2(1), April 1991-June 1992, pp. 5-7.