We firmly believe that as long as women remain subordinate, marginal and oppressed, there can be no genuine peace and democracy in the world, nor can we claim to have achieved our real humanity.

In the face of the global commodification of women, the Workshop Group on the Traffic in Asian Women resolves to undertake the following strategies, both short term and long term, with a view to helping victimized women when they need it most on the local as well as international levels:

  • Conduct an investigation of cases of women victims of organized prostitution and sexual violence such as the Liza Mamac case; the case of a Filipino domestic helper murdered in Malaysia; the series of marital murders in Australia; devdasi prostitution and dowry deaths in India.

We urge this conference to call for the reinvestigation of the Liza Mamac case, the first trafficking case to have won in Holland but defeated in the Philippines; the reinvestigation of bride murders in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore and to call for a Senate investigation of the ASIATINNEN erotic magazine case featuring Filipinas for sale as mail-order brides.

  • Bring to the attention of foreign embassies these cases of maltreatment, murder and rape of migrant women.
  • Publish an Action Alert to be sent to all activist networks especially migrant women centers, activist groups and human rights organizations about recent cases of violence against women so that international solidarity support can be initiated.
  • Push the United Nations and all its related agencies to include sex trafficking as a human rights violation.
  • Submit cases of trafficking to Amnesty International and other international women's groups.
  • Develop a network of feminist and pro-feminist barristers, physicians, and psychiatrists to assist women's networks in pursuing cases against traffickers and assisting victimized women.
  • Conduct a wider education campaign to inform women in the Third World of the hazards of working as migrants and empower them to surmount these problems.
  • International networking of women's groups to stop sex trafficking and in particular support the protest campaign of Japanese Feminist Groups against the "Human Trash" card game.
  • Seek the support of progressive parliamentarians, civic and religious groups to assist in the campaign to end sex trafficking.
  • For the United Nations assemblies and international human rights organizations to expand
    and broaden concepts of human rights to include "The Rights of Women to be Free from Sexual Exploitation and Violence".
  • Call attention to government policies of sending entertainers (in large numbers) as an act of "official pimping".
  • Expose beauty contests as venues for the sexual objectification of women.
  • Establish more crisis centers that would assist women victims of trafficking.
  • Consider victims of trafficking as refugees with all the protection thereof.
  • Work for the reversal of this trend.
  • Struggle for the overall transformation of society and social emancipation of women.

Presented by the Workshop on "Traffic h Asian Women", International Peace Festival in the Philippines 1991, 10-13 September 1991.