SPEECH/06/156
Margot Wallström
Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Institutional Affairs and Communication Strategy Forced prostitution in the framework of world sports events
Seminar on the International Women’s Day European Parliament 8 March 2006
I would like to thank Mrs Záborská and the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality for inviting me to this seminar on “Forced prostitution in the framework of world sports events”.
I accepted the invitation because I want to voice my deep concern and my outrage over the situation that thousands of women and young girls, mainly from poor countries, risk being forced into prostitution in conjunction with the Football World Cup events being held in Germany this summer.
I come from a national background where treating women as commodities is an insult to all women. And also to all men.
Perhaps one may be able to buy the body of a person for a price lower than that of the ticket to the football arena?
According to the UN trafficking in human beings is believed to be growing fastest in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Europol states that the nature of the crime makes it difficult to estimate exactly how many victims are trafficked in the European Union but there are reasons to believe that they should be counted in the hundreds of thousands. In any case, the pimps, the traffickers and the drug dealers are likely to make huge profits from this market in a trade that is, all too often, linked to organised crime.
By the way, this word “trafficking” can be very misleading. It sounds like something to do with transport, but it really is a modern form of slavery we are talking about.
Many of these women and girls risk being deprived of their freedom, locked in, subjected to violence and being used and sexually exploited.
They risk loss of self-respect and respect from others, in addition to their vulnerability to all sorts of diseases.
The women will be poor and – whichever way you look at it – many of them will in reality be forced to come, either by exploiting their vulnerability or, in some cases, by violence and physical threats.
Let’s put faces on the figures.
Let me tell you about 16 year old Dangoule Rasalaite from Lithuania who was brought to Sweden to serve men with cheap sex some years ago. She was beaten and held as a prisoner, and she saw no escape route out of her misery but to commit suicide. She died after having jumped from abridge on to a motorway in southern Sweden.
Or 20 year old Dunja Borovic from Bosnia, who was tricked by a nice lady who came into the shop where she was working, offering her a job in Italy selling clothes to earn some extra money. When she came to the border her passport was taken from her and she was later left with six men who raped her. Dunja managed to get away after some months and is now safe with her family again.
Or Maria a 30 year old mother from Ukraine who left behind her a husband and two young children to take what she was told would be a job in Italy as a cleaner. For the next nine months, Maria was forced against her will to work as a prostitute. Sometimes she was forced to have sex with 10 different men within a single day. When she refused she was beaten brutally. It was only when the brothel was raided by Italian police that Maria was freed from captivity. The authorities in Italy charged her with prostitution and deported her back to Ukraine.
This was not what we envisaged with the internal market – an area where women are sold by the thousands with no respect for the dignity for human beings!
And a place where women are perceived as inferior to men.
Forced prostitution and sexual slavery are indeed contrary to all the good values the EU stands for and actively seeks to promote throughout the world, for example through the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights.
What then is to be done at EU level?
The European Union is firmly committed to combat forced prostitution, sexual slavery and trafficking, and other forms of violence against women. We have expressed our determination, in particular, in the recent EU plan on best practices, standards and procedures for combating and preventing trafficking in human beings, adopted by the Council in December 2004.
In October 2005 the Commission presented a Communication on trafficking in human beings. It also calls for action to reduce the demand for such activities.
I am sure my colleagues (Mr. Frattini, Mr Spidla and Mr Figel) will tell you more about our various EU initiatives.
And I know that there is an ongoing debate and discussion in Germany right now on how to handle the situation regarding forced prostitution and trafficking. I understand that the German government is taking this very seriously and is preparing to take measures to prevent forced prostitution and to provide support for the victims.
I would also like to underline the importance of focusing attention on the users – the men who exploit these women. They need to understand that this is not OK. Not at all!
All of us – whether the EU, governments, football organisations and football fans, civil society... you and me! – we all have a responsibility to react and to combat this horrendous business of modern sexual slavery.
Thank you.
