Sex Trafficking

Over 22,000 UK women told VictimFocus about their experiences of violence and abuse. This dataset is the largest and most comprehensive record of violence committed against women and girls in the UK.

'I thought it was just a part of life' Understanding the Scale of Violence Committed Against Women in the UK Since Birth 99.7% of our sample had been repeatedly subjected to violence including assaults, harassment and rape.

Only 0.3% of women had only been subjected to one violent incident or less.

Our initial findings in this report suggest that current statistics of the prevalence of violence against women have been underestimated for decades, and instead, it is likely that every woman and girl will be subjected to violence, abuse, rape or harassment.

In the vast majority of cases reported here, women were subjected to multiple crimes and the perpetrators were overwhelmingly male

Bride Trafficking is a long-standing evil in society that can be classified as a crime against humanity because it violates the rights, dignity and the liberty of the victims involved. Bride Trafficking is so deep rooted in society that providing accurate figures is extremely difficult since it is often impossible to track down and trace individual incidents of Bride Trafficking. According to the author, who has conducted a case study with fifty women from the State of Haryana, inter-country trafficking for the purpose of marriage is widespread in India. Trafficked women are subjected to a slew of atrocities, including being raped in transit and then raped by their husbands and other male family members. Apart from that, they face domestic violence, are treated worse than slaves and are frequently trafficked multiple times. Poverty, female foeticide, female infanticide, illiteracy, dowry and other factors can all contribute to trafficking. In this paper, the author will discuss Bride Trafficking in general, the reasons for it, the human rights violations that these trafficked brides face and the potential solutions to this illicit trade.

Although much literature on human trafficking focuses on sex trafficking, a great deal of human trafficking results from migrant workers, compelled - by economic deprivation in their home countries - to seek better life opportunities abroad, especially in agriculture, construction and domestic work. Such labour migration is sometimes legal and well managed, but sometimes not so – with migrant workers frequently threatened or coerced into entering debt bondage arrangements and ending up working in forced labour situations producing goods for illicit markets. This book fills a substantial gap in the existing literature given that labour trafficking is a much more subtle form of exploitation than sex trafficking. It discusses how far large multinational corporations are involved, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in human trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation. They explore how far corporations are driven to seek cheap labour by the need to remain commercially competitive and examine how the problem often lies with corporations’ subcontractors, who are not as well controlled as they might be. The essays in the volume also outline and assess measures being taken by governments and international agencies to eradicate the problem.

This paper argues that the feminisation of migration has heightened the awareness of human trafficking, yet the feminisation of poverty is a social concept that is yet to be fully understood within the context of human trafficking. The false notion of “return” has been given as a solution to those individuals who are “out of place” or have been displaced as “victims of trafficking”. This article will discuss the Right to Remain visa applications of 12 women who were trafficked from post-Soviet countries to Israel, by examining the impact that gender, level of poverty and each woman’s decision to migrate has had on her life. In addition, this article will analyse the life experiences of the 12 women who experienced human trafficking. It will explore the idea that each woman is a “victim of trafficking” and that, conversely, this may be understood as a means to negate a more nuanced understanding of women’s mobility. Finally, this article will provide an intersectional analysis of trafficking flows in the world today.

The legal and political debates on the phenomenon of trafficked Nigerian women in Italy have recently raised a series of ambivalences and contradictions concerning the governance of immigration, questioning the persistence
of a deeply rooted sexism and racism in the Italian public imaginary.
In the sections below, we will introduce the main elements of the prostitution-trafficking and migration-asylum laws and debates at international and national (Italy) levels in order to frame the rhetoric and concepts used in the
Italian legal discourse and practices on these issues. We will also provide an analysis of a specific deportation case of sixty-nine Nigerian women held in the deportation center (Centro di Indentificazione ed  spulsion/Identification and Expulsion Center [C.I.E]) of Ponte Galeria in order to highlight institutional discrimination against Nigerian migrant women, the normative paradoxes created by incoherent laws and procedures, and the intersections of different cultural assumptions (racism, sexism, patriarchy, morality, and
security) that characterize the reception system. In particular, our analysis is drawn from two organizations, BeFree and the Legal Clinic of University of Rome 3 (Legal Clinic, hereon), that work in the deportation center
of Ponte Galeria, and primarily from semi-structured interviews with two feminist experts—Enrica Rigo and Francesca De Masi—who work in these organizations.

This article discusses two main points: that most traffickers are known to the victim and do not fit the ‘ideal’ trafficker script, and that the ‘ideal trafficker’ image does not represent the entirety of all trafficker’s demeanour and behaviour. The article will conclude by asserting that stereotypical images of an ‘ideal trafficker’ has the potential of diverting the authorities from identifying and detecting all types of traffickers and blurring the understanding of human trafficking.

The US TIP Report frames Jamaica as having a problem with 'human trafficking' and 'child sex tourism'. This paper presents preliminary findings from our mixed methods research on Jamaicans' experience of working in the sex trade and in the formal and informal tourism economy. In brief, though our sex worker research participants routinely face violence in the course of their work, they were not driven into sex work and are not prevented from exiting it by 'human traffickers', but rather by economic need and, in the case of male and trans sex workers, by anti-gay prejudice. Our participants view the criminalisation of sex work and of homosexuality as far more urgent and significant threats to their safety and well-being than 'human trafficking'. Criminalisation and marginalisation were also pressing concerns for our non-sex-worker interviewees, and the paper uses these data to critically interrogate the lines that are drawn between work, slavery, and freedom in this dominant, Global North discourse.

On November 5, 2017, the Spanish ship Cantabria, a vessel in the European Union's Operation SOPHIA "anti-trafficking" program, docked in the port of Salerno in southern Italy. Alongside the survivors, the ship carried the bodies of 26 young Nigerian women and girls who had perished in two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya. Because the only victims of the shipwrecks were women, the Italian authorities opened an inquiry to investigate whether the women had perhaps been purposely killed-thrown overboard by traffickers in the Mediterranean. This chapter traces the imaginaries at stake in discourses of trafficked women as cargo, raising the spectres of the slave trade and its logics of disposability. It also traces how Operation SOPHIA - the EU's anti-trafficking operation - works to imperil gendered migration across the Mediterranean. Through an exploration of the name Sophia -- a name that indicates a boat, a Prussian princess, a radio call, an anti-trafficking operation -- it unpacks how SOPHIA names a nexus of migration in its gendered, raced and sexed complexity, returned to the context of the unfinished processes of imperialism, slavery, primary accumulation and state violence.

About the Book

Trafficking in women is a reflection of the complex social issues facing the global society today. Trafficking in persons is a serious crime and a grave violation of human rights. Every year, thousands of men, women and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad. Almost every country in the world is affected by trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims. Human trafficking poses serious threats to human life and dignity all over the world. Particularly speaking of a globalized world, the shameful act of human trafficking not only points to the loopholes in the existing socio-legal measures that claim to attain an equal and dignified life to all individuals, but it also questions the continuous practice of mal-treating human beings who are trapped easily because of their ignorance and poverty and are trafficked for different purposes such as sexual exploitation, slavery, bonded and forced labour in domestic as well as commercial fronts. The present books looks at the issue of women trafficked for sex work in India with a case study of the two states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

This book is divided into seven chapters.

Chapter  1:  Introduction, introduces the concept and issue of trafficking of persons in general and that of women (including children and young girls) in particular. It examines the magnitude of the problem of human trafficking on global as well as national (Indian) and regional. Chapter one also presents a general picture of human trafficking.

Chapter 2:  Key Legislations related to trafficking, looks into the legislation and laws related to trafficking at the International level and in India.
   
Chapter 3:  The material of context,  provides the material context of South Asia and India and how trafficking is emerging as an important issue. It focuses on the different Indian states ( specific mention to Andhra Pradesh and  Telangana here) with relation to her population index, sex-ratio, literacy levels, as well as poverty levels. Based on the data, an attempt is made to understand the direct and indirect co-relations between the demographic profile and incidences of trafficking for each state. For example, based on various studies, poverty remains a major key factor in inciting people into deception, by false promises of money and a better life, and thus traps them into trafficking.

Chapter 4: Profile of Women Victims of Human Trafficking discusses in detail the life, issues and perspectives of the victims of trafficking. This chapter also includes a discussion on the situation and status of the victims from the point of views of the social activists as well the police.

Chapter 5:Re-habilitation of Women victims of Human trafficking, Traces their journey into trafficking and the recovery and rehabilitation.

Chapter 6:  The role of NGOs, Police and Civil Society, examines the different stake holders and their role in this issue.

Chapter 7:  Case Studies. Looks at case studies of a large number of victims.

Chapter 8: Conclusion summarizes the study and presents major findings and observations.

Human trafficking is a serious threat to humankind and it is one of the biggest and constantly growing criminal activities all over the world. The mere purpose of trafficking that is exploitation of underprivileged persons for economic and/or sexual purposes points to the loopholes in the existing constitutional and legal framework puts a big question mark to the ethical promises of individual life with dignity and independence. In case of women and young girls, the impact and consequences of trafficking grow manifold, given their vulnerable situation, their commodification as sex-objects and their forced marginalization in the socio-cultural and economic parlance. India, especially Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are no exception to this trend and are emerging as a  major source, transition and destination point for trafficking.

Despite continued public and legislative concern about sex trafficking across international borders, the actual lives of the individuals involved—and, more importantly, the decisions that led them to sex work—are too often overlooked. With Mobile Orientations, Nicola Mai shows that, far from being victims of a system beyond their control, many contemporary sex workers choose their profession as a means to forge a path toward fulfillment.

Using a bold blend of personal narrative and autoethnography, Mai provides intimate portrayals of sex workers from sites including the Balkans, the Maghreb, and West Africa who decided to sell sex as the means to achieve a better life. Mai explores the contrast between how migrants understand themselves and their work and how humanitarian and governmental agencies conceal their stories, often unwittingly, by addressing them all as helpless victims. The culmination of two decades of research, Mobile Orientations sheds new light on the desires and ambitions of migrant sex workers across the world.

In Nepal, the adult entertainment sector (AES) is perceived as a high-risk
environment for children where sexual exploitation is known to occur. The AES is made up of a diverse range of venues that includes restaurants, folk dance bars, erotic dance bars, massage parlours, guest houses, and hotels.
This Working Paper seeks to understand the reasons why the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) exists in the AES, focusing on how social and cultural norms reinforce and reproduce the material and structural realities of the sector. It also explores how these norms affect the employment trajectories of minors and looks at the role of labour intermediaries – both formal and informal – in intentionally or unintentionally supporting the employment of minors in the AES.

Prologue, by Andrea J. Nichols and Erin C. Heil
Part I: Practice Techniques
1. Survivors: A Diverse Community with a Common Body of Knowledge, by Melanie Weaver
2. Identification, Assessment, and Outreach, by Rebecca J. Macy
3. Safety Planning With Survivors of Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation, by Amber Sutton and Abby Howard
4. Change is a Process: Using the Transtheoretical Model with Commercially Sexually Exploited and Trafficked Youth and Adults, by Rachel Lloyd
5. Evidence Based Trauma-Treatments for Survivors of Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation, by Tonya Edmond
6. Client Centered Harm Reduction, Commercial Sex, and Trafficking: Implications for Rights Based Social Work Practice, by Kathleen M. Preble
7. The Hidden Truth: How Our Policies and Practices Can Both Help and Harm Victims of Human Trafficking, by Lynly S. Egyes
Part II: Practice with Specific Populations
8. Sex Trafficking Among Immigrant Women in the United States: Exploring Social Work Response within a Landscape of Violence Against Immigrant Women, by Laurie Cook Heffron
9. Afrocentric Intergenerational Assessment and Recovery from Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation, by Valandra
10. Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of LGBTQ People: Implications for Practice, by Andrea J. Nichols
11. Clinical Practice with Commercially Sexually Exploited Girls with Intellectual Disabilities, by Joan A. Reid, Julia Strauss, and Rachael A. Haskell
Part III: Programmatic Design
12. The Sanctuary Model and Sex Trafficking: Creating Moral Systems to Counteract Exploitation and Dehumanization, by Sandra Bloom
13. How Do We Help? A Clinical and Empirical Review of Challenges to Service Provision For Sexually Exploited Clients, by Lara Gerassi and Abby Howard
14. System Failure! Is the Department of Children and Families Facilitating Sex Trafficking of Foster Girls? by Joan A. Reid
15. Supporting Sex Trafficking Survivors Through a Collaborative Single-Point-of-Contact Model: Mezzo and Micro Considerations, by Maura Nsonwu, Laurie Cook Heffron, Chiquitia Welch-Brewer, and Noël Bridget Busch-Armendariz
Part IV: Prevention and Outreach
16. Preventing the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children: The My Life My Choice Model, by Lisa Goldblatt Grace, Katherine Bright, and Audrey Morrissey
17. Prevention and Outreach to At-Risk Groups, by Andrea J. Nichols
18. Challenges to Sensational Imagery Used in the Anti-Trafficking Movement and Implications for Practice, by Lauren Peffley and Andrea J. Nichols
Conclusion, by Andrea J. Nichols
Biographies of Editors and Contributors
Index

Human trafficking is a social issue that has no geographical boundaries, but disproportionately affects some countries more than others. Trafficking routes are complex and in this context, India can be categorized as a source, destination and transit center. A plethora of economic, political, and indigenous social causes contribute to trafficking in India. Trafficking negatively impacts individuals and also society as a whole. The Indian Government and non-governmental organizations have been working to address this issue, but gaps still remain. Best practices from organizations working in this area point towards multi-faceted approaches such as economic empowerment, prevention and advocacy to solve this issue. Finally, any non-native change agent who desires to address this complex subject in India would need to consider certain cultural imperatives while framing their entry posture.

Course Description: This participatory interdisciplinary online course examines contemporary issues in globalization with focus on modern slavery and human trafficking. We are living in epic times, when the call for racial and economic equity has never been more pronounced. As human rights become center stage, human trafficking becomes a core issue throughout the world. The overall organizing framework for the class is to highlight the social, cultural, political, and economic causes of human trafficking, with an eye towards anthropology and sociology of slavery and sex work. The class will consider evidence that inequalities, especially structural poverty, exacerbate modern slavery worldwide. Students will develop skills in policy analysis, history of slavery, policy impact monitoring, and the ethnographic skills of the anthropologist. My own work on human trafficking in film and global health will be used as weekly frames. We will look at modern slavery through all of its guises, with particular attention toward “sex slavery” from a global, regional, and local trajectory. The books “Out of the Darkness” by Alice Jay and “Playing the Whore” by Melissa Grant are designed to provide a holistic perspective of sex trafficking and sex work from the individuals and survivors themselves. The “Human Trafficking: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” by Burke will serve as the text book and guide the chronology of the course. Finally, we will examine the global workforce and the impact of widespread global migration as well as new collaborative networks that bridge artificial and real borders in a global world. 
Operative Learning Outcomes
In this class we will use "slavery and human trafficking" as starting points to help us critically analyze the relationships between sex, gender, and human rights; race, colonialism, and political economy (thinking about the Atlantic slave trade, the Gulf kafala system, and South Asian caste structures); capitalism and labor exploitation (especially in the food and agriculture industry); public health and bodily violence (focusing on organ transplants and commercial surrogacy); and new technologies used by police and workers alike. Our case examples will include issues that receive high media publicity (The ongoing Epstein case)—to stimulate critical thinking. I will assign videos, music, films, poetry, and other multimedia pieces to engage with the topic. There will also be a huge spread of lectures posted on Canvas (under FILES) that you should visit weekly and draw from in your discussion boards and assignments.
By the end of this course students will be thinking critically about the relationships between knowledge production; identity politics; community engagement and cultural specificity; governance, policing, and bureaucracy; techno science and the politics of aid and development; and systems of capitalism and political economy. We will be dealing with some difficult texts—texts that are visual, tactile, and may be emotionally triggering, they deal with sexual and emotional violence, child abuse, and war and mass violence. Please talk to me at any point if you have any concerns, questions, or difficulties.
Course Objectives are that Students will be able to: Develop an understanding of the interrelationship between human trafficking and international, and intercultural perspective. Discuss human trafficking in terms of the major historical, local, and global perspective develop potential solutions to problems associated with human trafficking; identify the definitions and prevalence of human trafficking; Describe the underlying causes of human trafficking; Recognize the impact of human trafficking at multiple scales (e.g., individual, societal, national and international). Apply the lens of many disciplines across the humanities, biological and social sciences (Sociology, Social Work, Peace Studies, Anthropology, Global Health, Public Health, Criminal Justice, Film Studies, Art, and more).

Military prostitution has been a staple of US–Korea relations since the 1940s, contained in the so-called camptown communities surrounding US military bases in South Korea. But during the 1970s, as the US military steadily reduced its troop presence in Asia, camptowns were thrown into a chaotic state. Facing tremendous social disorder and economic upheaval, establishments that depended upon GI patronage began sending their madams and sex workers to domestic military sites through brokered marriages with US servicemen. These women arrived in the US South, a region housing the vast majority of America’s military. Consequently, southern bases like Fort Bragg in Fayetteville (NC), Fort Campbell in Clarksville (TN), and Fort Hood in Killeen (TX) saw the proliferation of military prostitution, which took form in illicit massage businesses catering to the sexual needs of local troop populations. By the 1980s, the Korean American sex trade would spread from these southern military towns to elsewhere in the United States. Highlighting the transpacific circuits among camptowns in South Korea and military bases in the United States since 1945, this article develops a portrait of the US South as a transnational militarized terrain, the camptown as a transpacific phenomenon, and Korean immigrant community formation as deeply intertwined with the happenings of US militarism abroad. In doing so, it explains how the proliferation of illicit massage businesses witnessed by southern military communities in the 1970s was a transnational outgrowth of military prostitution encouraged by the US military in South Korea.

This paper is the result of a critical review of the literature and data on trafficking in human beings (THB) in Portugal. Among the primary characteristics of this research is the deafening silence of trafficked persons – especially migrant women in the sex trade. A wide review of research and data suggests that this silence is due to the enforcement-led approach to counter trafficking and a resistance to this approach by a segment of civil society. A trafficked persons' identity as a " victim " has contributed to political consciousness and mobilization around THB; currently, that identity contributes to denying their agency and to their silence. This review identifies the need to advance both our knowledge and practical intervention on the subject through stronger involvement by various organizations, including abolitionist and non-abolitionist NGOs. Independent research on a solid empirical basis is crucial.

In Canada (AG) v Bedford, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered a landmark decision unanimously striking down Canada's prostitution laws, finding that they violated section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In response, Parliament enacted the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA), making prostitution itself unlawful for the first time in Canada. This paper considers the published peer-reviewed empirical evidence on prostitution, sex work, and sex trafficking in Canada since the PCEPA was enacted. Canada's new policy approach to prostitution focusses on the activity of prostitution rather than on the interests of sex workers, based in part on claims that prostitution cannot be made safe and is inconsistent with a gender equal society. This paper shows that the existing body of peer-reviewed empirical evidence about prostitution, sex work, and sex trafficking in Canada reflects what policy studies scholars call "issue bias." It makes suggestions for further empirical research and about how to ensure the legitimacy of the court processes, including constitutional challenges, in which this evidence is used.

The researchers analyzed court documents to develop a case
study of an individual convicted of buying sexual services from
exploited children. Findings indicate that the subject deviates
from preexisting victim selection processes and demonstrates
characteristics inconsistent with existing sexual offender typologies
that likens offender behaviors to the hunting techniques
and behaviors of predatory animals. As evidenced in the case
study, the individual perceived the victims solely as a means of
deviant sexual satiation and did not participate in traditionally
established victim acquisition techniques. In addition, the
researchers propose adopting terminology that adheres to
the term consumer rather than buyer as it better represents
some offenders’ disconnect and lack of empathy in the victim
acquisition process.

This paper explores prostitution in urban centers in Nigeria from the pre-colonial period to contemporary Nigeria with particular focus on in Western Nigeria. Lagos presents a viable site for an overview of prostitution because of its cosmopolitan landscape and socio-economic and cultural heterogeneity allowing for a mapping of the forms and patterns of prostitution over time. The work sites of the prostitute cannot be understood in separation from the particular historical and socio-cultural context in which it is carried out all of which shape the sexual agency of the women. In studying commercial sexual relations in urban Nigeria, this paper problematizes prostitution, examining shifts in meanings, perceptions and organization of prostitution. How was a prostitute defined at different epochs in Nigeria’s history? How did society organize sex and sexuality and how did these shape commercial sex relations? In examining the above, use was made of colonial records including police records, and administrative correspondences. Private letters of prostitutes and petitions by ethnic associations as well as abandoned husbands form part of colonial archives utilized to allow a glimpse of the way the prostitutes and family members made sense of the sexual space. Interviews with sex workers were also conducted especially in examining contemporary forms of prostitution. Given the growing interest in sex trafficking as modern form of trafficking, there is a copious body of literature and this proved useful.

Over the centuries, prostitution has been problematised from many sides, with women always at the centre of the debate. However, its dynamics cannot be understood without the demand side of the equation. Why are there men that pay for prostitution to exist? The purpose of this paper is to give insight into the mindset of men who seek out prostitution services by critically analysing the discourse they produce online. Sex buyers' expectations in commercial sexual encounters with prostituted women are a good insight into their belief system about women in general. Such expectations are likely to have practical consequences in the way they behave in their relationships with all women in terms of sexuality and, therefore, for feminist purposes of equality on a broader scale.

Resumen en castellano:

Durante siglos, la prostitución ha sido problematizada desde muchos ángulos, con las mujeres siempre en el centro del debate. Sin embargo, sus dinámicas no pueden ser comprendidas sin un análisis de la demanda. ¿Por qué hay hombres que pagan para que la prostitución exista? El objetivo de este artículo es ahondar en su manera de pensar mediante un análisis crítico del discurso que ellos mismos producen. Las expectativas que estos hombres tienen de cara a los encuentros sexuales comerciales con mujeres prostituidas son una ventana a su sistema de creencias sobre las mujeres en general. Tales expectativas tienen consecuencias prácticas en la manera en que actúan con todas las mujeres dentro del marco de la sexualidad y, por tanto, afecta a la lucha por la igualdad fáctica entre hombres y mujeres a nivel social. Palabras clave: Prostitución, masculinidad, relaciones de poder, análisis del discurso. summAry-Introduction. 1.-Patriarchal masculinity, sexual violence, and prostitution as a gendered phenomenon. 2.-Methodology and a note on terminology. 3.-Analysis of buyer-authored reviews on prostituted women and girls.-Conclusions.-Bibliography.

This paper looks at the effects of human trafficking and the challenge of the young girl child in the society, furthermore, it also explain Human trafficking as a form of modern slavery, either by recruitment or transfer of people using force or abduction, deception or receiving payment to get consent of a person to have control over another person.

This research aims to study sex trafficking as an unintended consequence of peacekeeping operations in post-conflict societies. Discussions and results are primarily drawn from secondary literature that focus on the case of post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aim of this research is to explore the factors that encouraged the complicity of members of the international community in the sex trafficking industry that flourished after the war. Impacted by massive destruction of war from 1992 to 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina provided a fertile ground for the proliferation of sex trafficking. Although the intervention and arrival of the international community directly helped abate the widespread violence and put an end to the war, the influx of a powerful international community, as a side effect encouraged sex slavery and gross atrocities aimed at women, despite the introduction of a number of institutional changes to combat trafficking and sexual exploitation by peacekeepers, violations continue to occur. This research discusses sex trafficking in post-conflict regions with the intention of identifying lapses in the structure of peacekeeping operations that require effective policies.

There is so much work to do to combat human trafficking, but few people are available to do them. Hence, there is urgent need to raise advocates who will be at the forefront of combating human trafficking. This booklet is written to stimulate action among readers to take strategic actions against human trafficking in their communities. Everyone has a role to play in combating human trafficking.

Human trafficking is one of the actual and acute problems of 21 century, because trafficking is a contemporary slavery which appears like shameful phenomenon for modern civilization. At the same time this issue involves many countries as well as organized criminal groups. Russia one of the biggest countries of the world faced with this problem. Russia is a country of origin, transit and destination for human trafficking. Features and reasons of human trafficking from Russia were analyzed in this article. Some proposals and presumable developments of trafficking issue were put forward as well.

Josephine Butler waged a 16 year battle against the Contagious Diseases Act in the UK which were finally rescinded in 1886.  Between 1870 and 1885, 17,365 petitions against the acts bearing 2,606,429 signatures were presented to the House of Commons, and during the same period, more than 900 meetings were held much of this activity being driven forward by Josephine Butler and her cohorts in the Ladies National Association - one of the first female national organisations convened to apply social and political change, addressing parliamentarians and church leaders alike. 
In her long campaign to repeal the forcible examination and detention of women through the Contagious Diseases Act, Butler directly encountered women who had been entrapped into Prostitution, and from her position as a privileged highly educated wife of an Oxford Clergyman and Academic, she made her own journey into confronting the double standards which she saw around the Establishment of her day, in the abuses of legalised prostitution and the trafficking of women in Europe and in India - under the portmanteau of 'White Slavery'.

This piece commissioned on the centenary of Butler's death, explores the continuities of concern which were expressed in the work of the UK based NGO Churches alert to sex trafficking across Europe, which developed over the course of its initiating five years a lively presence in the counter trafficking movement in the UK, with a round table movement amongst the denominations to provide much needed safe housing for women emerging from being sex trafficked into the UK, the Not for Sale movement (marked by a successful mass postcard campaign, numerous meetings across the UK and theatrical commissions) which assisted in bringing together the political will to ratify the Palermo Protocol and to absorb the recommendations of the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, in 2006  and 2009 respectively.
In this Abstract the former CEO in her last year of office at CHASTE (2003 - 2008) looks at the struggles which Butler faced, the way in which she engaged Church and State in the UK, and the multiple challenges which the new definition of trafficking for sexual exploitation emerging from the Palermo Protocols invites the communities which Butler addressed, to face up to and see confronted, and systemic inequalities named and shamed in our time.