Whether called trafficking, prostitution, sexual entertainment, or sex work, the commodification of the female body for sex has grown from a local practice to an international business that reaps billions for global entrepreneurs. The contemporary crisis of sexual exploitation has profound implications for the four topics of this meeting. Not education and skills but degradation and sexual abuse, followed by destitution, disease and early death.
Sexual exploitation is inextricable from gender-based violence.
Girls running away from sexually abusive fathers or other male relatives often run directly into the snares of pimps. Women fleeing abusive marriages often find themselves exchanging one form of abuse for another, as they try to support themselves and their children through prostitution. Pimps are often batterers, who force their girlfriends to sell their bodies as an exercise in power and control, while customers become batterers or murderers when prostituted women refuse to submit to their brutal desires. We must acknowledge that the very act of being treated as a commodity in marketplace sex is an act of violence against a woman's body. Whatever form it takes, sexual exploitation infringes on the human rights of all women, not only of those who are directly commodified but of those of every woman and girl who lives in a society in which female bodies are trafficked and traded with impunity.