Sexual slavery or 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 some cultures, concubinage has been a traditional form of sexual slavery, one example being concubinage in Islam, in which however concubines had distinct rights and legitimate social status. 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 (Article 7) which include "enslavement" (Article 7.1.c) and "sexual enslavement" (Article 7.1.g) "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 (Article 8.b.xxii) and indirectly in an internal armed conflict under Article(8.c.ii), 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" (Article 8.d). 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" (Article 7.2.c). In the commentary on the Rome Statute, Mark Klamberg states:
Sexual slavery is a particular form of enslavement which includes limitations on one's autonomy, freedom of movement and power to decide matters relating to one's sexual activity. Thus, the crime also includes forced marriages, domestic servitude or other forced labor that ultimately involves forced sexual activity. In contrast to the crime of rape, which is a completed offence, sexual slavery constitutes a continuing offence. ... Forms of sexual slavery can, for example, be practices such as the detention of women in "rape camps" or "comfort stations", forced temporary "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women as chattel, and as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.
Types
Commercial sexual exploitation of adults
Commercial sexual exploitation of adults (often referred to as "sex trafficking") 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 (ILO) reported 20.9 million people were subjected to forced labor, and 22% (4.5 million) 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 (CSEC) includes child prostitution (or child sex trafficking), child sex tourism, child pornography, or other forms of transactional sex with children. The Youth Advocate Program International (YAPI) 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
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
