SA: is the new report claiming "the number of human trafficking victims is exaggerated" accurate?
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According to a news article, a new study at a South African university says that the number of sex trafficking is exaggerated by nonprofits and church members. According to the researcher, unlike what is estimated 40,000 sex trafficking victims over the soccer game, the number of trafficked individuals in South Africa is around fifty. The research added that such exaggeration is dangerous because it causes more funding sources to be spent in sex trafficking alone when there are other problems such as labor exploitation, sexual exploitation of prostitutes, and sexual violence to be addressed in the country. She also stated that many foreign prostitutes whether they are in South Africa legally or illegally were there by their choice. Yet, the research does not seem to understand that the root causes of both sex trafficking as well as other sexual violence against women, including prostitution and rape, is because of women's oppression in South Africa.
Causes of human trafficking in South Africa and women's disempowerment
Many women in South Africa aren not treated like women in western countries, including Germany. Violence against women are substantially higher than that in Germany. South Africa, unlike Germany, has one of the world's highest rape rates. Also, because patriarchal mindset is so deeply ingrained in the culture, "forcing someone one knows to have sex with him or her is not viewed as violence.
"[1] According to one research, "more than a quarter of women (27%) and nearly a third of men (31%) agreed that forcing someone you know to have sex with you is never seen as sexual violence."
Sex trafficking and patriarchal system
Because women are fundamentally viewed as inferior to men, no one, including law enforcement, takes sex trafficking of women as seriously as it is in other countries. For instance, UNESCO research paper points out a few factors regarding human trafficking of females in South Africa:
the growth of the billion-dollar sex and entertainment industry, tolerated as a ‘necessary evil’ while women in prostitution are criminalized and discriminated against;
The low risk-high profit nature of trafficking encouraged by a lack of will on the part of enforcement agencies to prosecute traffickers (which includes owners/managers of institutions into which persons are trafficked) the ease in controlling and manipulating vulnerable women;
Lack of access to legal redress or remedies, for victims of traffickers; and
Devaluation of women and children’s human rights
South African culture and sex trafficking
In an environment like this, it is unlikely that forced prostitution is accounted as part of the sex trafficking data gathered by the expert in South Africa. Consider women who move to the urban city because their husbands or boyfriends forced or lured them into prostitution. In a cultural setting like that of South Africa, these women are not accounted as sex trafficking victims. If sexual violence against a woman by someone that she knows is not taken seriously, what makes anyone to expect that forced prostitution by their husbands or boyfriends to be taken seriously?
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