Syria starts to tackle sex trafficking

Syria attempts to combat the rise of sex trafficking

A correspondent for Anderson Copper on CNN reports on the legislation Syrian lawmakers are working on to fight international and domestic sex trafficking in their country. As the article reports, "if passed, it will be the first law of its kind in the Middle East."

For a country that America hates, way to go Syria!

I would like to point that each year 15-20,000 women and children are trafficking into the US and 100,000-300,000 are domestically trafficked within the US.

Yeah, it's a problem here. Don't even get me started on All Girls Staff right here on Franklin Street (formally University Massage but they had to change their name because they don't have a massage license. Can we say shady??). There have been reports not only of sex work, but of trafficked women from another "massage place" in Orange country, The Gentlemen's Club. And they have reports of trafficking women from abroad. Too bad our police don't want to get involved in this mess so they continuously refuse to investigate the business. Epic fail on public safety guys.

The issue at hand here is the framework in which sex work and sex trafficking is discussed. A lot of ignorant people will try to argue that sex workers in general choose their work and so should be held responsible. This is a problem because many Countries, even here in NC, don't legally differentiate between sex workers and sex workers who were trafficked. Can women who are trafficked give consent?

The answer is no. The UN definition is that for an adult victim, issues of consent are irrelevant if any threat to the victim is involved. Most sex workers are threatened, beaten and raped by their "pimps" and customers. And sex workers who are trafficked never receive a cent for their "work;" it all goes to their "pimp."

Another issue in the framework is the attention paid to this problem. There often isn't much context for the power hierarchies that cause these women to be in these situations in the first place. Most articles that discuss sex-trafficking (of which there are few) focus on its "criminal" activity or legislation (such as the article i'm giving you above). Most articles don't address global issues or lack of women's rights as frameworks for understanding why sex trafficking exists.

Keep your eyes peeled for news of this in the media. I put my money that you won't hear a thing....