Vijeyarasa, Ramona --- "Roadblocks to counter-trafficking: A comparative analysis of Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine" [2014] UTSLRS 26; (2014) Women Past and Present: Biographic and Interdisciplinary Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press)

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27

ROADBLOCKS TO COUNTER-TRAFFICKING: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF VIETNAM, GHANA AND UKRAINE

Ramona Vijeyarasa | University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
rvijeyarasa@gmail.com

Introduction

The exploitation of migrant women abroad through trafficking and trafficking-like conditions is a global phenomenon. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight global similarities and differences in the main barriers to countering the traffic of women through a comparative study of Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine. This chapter is based on fieldwork carried out in the three countries from July 2009 to November 2010, including 52 interviews with key informants and first-hand data collected from 109 returned victims of trafficking. This research identifies the political, legal, socio-cultural and economic road-blocks that continue to hinder efforts to counter trafficking using a human rights and migration-centred framework in all three research countries.
Governments, NGOs and other stakeholders have been engaging in counter-trafficking activities for years, particularly since the enactment in 2000 of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol). The Protocol specifically calls for a “comprehensive international approach” to “prevent and combat trafficking in persons” (preamble). Nonetheless, an array of barriers to combating trafficking exists, ranging from shortcomings with national trafficking laws and access to justice for victims, to the reality that some governments fail to play an active and positive role in the countering of trafficking. In other instances, negative perceptions held about individual victims or their own unwillingness to self-identify as a trafficked person present obstacles. An on-going emphasis on a criminal justice rather than human-rights centred approach is an overarching challenge. The purpose of this chapter is to outline some of the similarities and differences in these barriers to preventing trafficking and identifying and supporting victims. I focus on three key issues:

Overall, the findings of my fieldwork provide the basis for recommendations for political reform, legal amendments and socio-cultural change in order to ensure more effective counter-trafficking efforts.

This study is based on fieldwork carried out in Ukraine, Vietnam and Ghana from July 2009 to November 2010. As part of the qualitative phase of this research, I conducted interviews with fifty-two key informants in all three countries, bringing together the views of experts in the areas of counter-trafficking and migration more broadly; access to education; labour rights and access to the labour market; and gender equality. The interviewees included thematic specialists and management-level staff in UN agencies, international organisations, local and international non-government organisations (NGOs), donors, and if accessible, government authorities, in the three countries.
Informants were contacted via email and provided in advance with a standard set of questions to aid a semi-structured interview. The interviews addressed non-personal aspects of the interviewees’ areas of professional expertise (such as gender equality and access to education). The questions spanned the profile of victims and traffickers in each of the research countries, as well as how trafficking is understood by different stakeholders. Informants were also asked about the process of movement, and their views on the causes of trafficking and on existing challenges in ending human trafficking. Attention was paid in interviews to both push and pull factors and the different roles these play in driving movement. This aspect of the data collection involved both face-to-face interviews (44) as well as email interviews (8). While face-to-face interviews are preferred, the validity of email interviews has been elsewhere recognised (Bampton and Cowton 2002).
In addition, I collected first-hand data from 109 returned victims of trafficking, who, having returned to their country of origin (i.e. Ukraine, Vietnam and Ghana), had accessed or were accessing, shelter and/or non-shelter reintegration support. Reintegration is a process that follows the initial stages of identification of a trafficked person. Using a definition that refers to reintegration of “refugees and exiles”, Catherine Zimmerman describes it as consisting of a long-term and multi-faceted process that is not complete until the person becomes an active member of the economic, cultural, civil and political life of a country and perceives that she has reoriented and is accepted by her community (Zimmerman 2007, 153). In many instances, a person may “integrate” into a new community rather than reintegrate into their former community.
For the purpose of this data collection, I designed a questionnaire that explored several topics:

Participants were contacted with the support of NGOs in Ukraine and Vietnam. During the course of fieldwork, no shelters existed specifically for trafficked adults in Ghana, as is currently still the case. According to my informants, including the Ghana Police Anti-Trafficking Unit, Ghanaian women who are identified as trafficked are offered temporary stays in hotels. This made collecting first-hand data, through the use of shelters and NGO support, impossible in Ghana.

Country	Completion of Questionnaires by Trafficked Returnees		Key Informant Interviews
	Male	Female	Male	Female
Ukraine	14	90	3	15
Vietnam	0	5	8	9
Ghana	0	0	9	8
TOTAL	14	95	20	32
TOTAL	109		52

Approval was granted to conduct this research from the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of New South Wales on 21 July 2009 (for Ukraine and Vietnam) and 1 June 2010 (for Ghana). All research participants were given a Participant Information Statement (and consent form in the case of interviewees) to ensure that they were fully informed about: the purpose, methods and intended possible uses of the research; why their participation in the research was requested; the confidentiality of information supplied and their anonymity if desired. Finally, it was specifically stated that their participation was purely voluntary. I also explained my independence from staff at the International Organisation for Migration in Ukraine, who put me in contact with the relevant NGOs and shelters in the country.

In earlier papers, I have explored how trafficking is a highly stigmatised issue, exacerbated by the stigma associated with sex work (Vijeyarasa, 2010) and where trafficking for sexual exploitation heightens risks of HIV infection (Vijeyarasa and Stein 2010). Counter-trafficking efforts are directly hindered by the stigmatisation of individuals associated with both sex work and trafficking. While it is important to highlight the differences between trafficking and sex work, the stigma experienced by trafficked returnees who have been forced into providing sexual services in many respects parallels the social marginalisation, violence, discrimination and harassment often directed towards sex workers. Stigmatisation is intimately connected to criminalisation. In this respect, it is important to note that the buying and selling of sexual services is prohibited in all three research countries, although selling sexual services is treated as an administrative offence in Ukraine. Capital gain from sex work is also prohibited.
The concept of stigma is often associated with Gail Pheterson’s writings on “whore stigma” in which she discusses women’s socialisation about sexual practices and concepts such as dishonour. Her categorisation of “whore” and therefore those practices which are stigmatised is broad, spanning “prostitutes”, women engaging in sex with multiple partners, and “victimised women” who are unable to handle brash, drunk or abusive men (Pheterson, 1993: 46).
More recently, Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton have added to this earlier focus on categorisation and labelling the notion that stigma is about power relations. Stigma plays a role in “producing and reproducing relations of power and control” (Parker and Aggleton 2003: 16). By causing some groups to feel devalued and others superior, stigma is centrally linked to the question of social inequality and social exclusion (ibid). Culture is central to this analysis, particularly in relation to how we understand social order and therefore disorder (ibid: 17-18). Through the use of words, images and practices, certain groups and their behaviours are marginalised, with stigma used to establish a social hierarchy and social order (ibid: 18). Stigma also plays a role in exacerbating pre-existing inequalities, whether in relation to race, gender, religion, ethnic status, etc. (ibid: 19).
Stigmatising approaches to both sex work and trafficking act as a barrier to self-identification by victims who have been forced into providing sexual services abroad. Such approaches further act as a barrier to public recognition that trafficking for sexual exploitation is actually taking place, particularly where an individual may have been aware that they would be providing sexual services in the destination country but was unaware of the conditions. Combating stigma would not only reduce the rights violations suffered by male and female sex workers, but further, changing social norms is a crucial precursor to the successful reintegration of returned victims of trafficking.
In Vietnam, for example, the designation of sex work as a “social evil” has corrupted attitudes in Vietnamese society towards sex workers generally but also towards victims of trafficking, who in turn, suffer stigma upon their return, exacerbated where sex workers and trafficked persons are found to be HIV positive. Underlying this nexus between trafficking, sex work and HIV-related stigma in Vietnam is gender inequality (see Vijeyarasa 2010b for a more detailed discussion). Given the Government’s long-standing (although changing) focus on trafficking in women and children (that is, excluding trafficking of men) and female sex workers, women bear the greater weight of these forms of stigma. Trafficking is understood in Vietnam as an “urgent and pressing problem, badly affecting the society, customs, tradition, social morals and Government laws, destroying family happiness, increasing the risks of HIV/AIDS transmission and resulting in potential impacts on national and social security” (National [NPA] Action, Part I, § 1: Government of Vietnam 2004), with the agency responsible for trafficked returnees being the Department of Social Evils Prevention (DSEP). This approach serves to incriminate victims of trafficking and to stigmatise further an already stigmatised population (see further Vijeyarasa, 2010a). In turn, this policy hinders individuals from self-identifying as victims. As one shelter staff noted (Vijeyarasa 2010a: 93):

Returnees seem too often affected by stigma with all their surroundings. They generally walk the streets wondering who knows of where they’ve been and what they’ve done. One female told us about how she was refused nail service because the nail technician knew that she had been in Cambodia and that anyone who had come back from Cambodia must be HIV/AIDS infected. Families of the victims also have been known to be ashamed of their daughters and reject them upon return (Shelter staff, Vietnam).

The Government of Vietnam adopted a new law on trafficking on 29 March 2011, which entered into force on 1 January 2012, but the law continues to group trafficking with “other social vices” (Article 5(1)) which is only a minimal improvement over the former language of “social evils”.
Victim blame is similarly an issue in Ukraine, where the media was critiqued by one of my informants for making:

stigmatised statements...very often the blame is still on the victims which is a big problem because then that leads to victims not being able to come out and identify...Victims suffering deeper trauma and are not able to reintegrate back into society (Tatiana Ivanyuk 2009)^[1]

The issue of stigma surrounding both sex work and trafficking has arguably had the most extreme impact on Ghana. For many actors working in this field in Ghana, including legislators, judiciary and policy makers, as well as civil society, trafficking is synonymous with child labour and exploitation. Movement and exploitation of men and women are simply unknown, unseen or ignored in Ghanaian trafficking debates. However, movement of adult Ghanaian women has in fact been documented by the police and the Ghanaian Human Trafficking Unit, with women seeking economic betterment and suffering exploitative working conditions in Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Cameroon, as well as Holland, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.^[2] I contend that the discomfort in Ghana with discussing the choices and experiences of Ghanaian sex workers (whether working domestically or abroad) leads to a tendency to turn a blind eye to migrant sex workers who experience exploitation outside of Ghana.
I discussed at length the issue of research on sex work and sex workers in Ghana with one informant. He referred to his previous attempts among a group of researchers to obtain first-hand empirical data from Ghanaian sex workers working in Koforidua, in eastern Ghana, who at other times of the day worked in a local hairdresser. Stating that it was “difficult to find [the sex workers]”, he explained to me how he contacted the manager of the hair salon, the woman presumed to be “their madam”, shared the information he had regarding the existence of sex work in the area and requested her to help to contact sex workers in the area:

“She denied it. She was even angry. How can you associate that with my workers?” (Anon, Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana, 18 November 2010).

The informant’s story raises a range of issues that cannot be explored at length in the present study. This includes the risk that researchers may undermine the chosen anonymity of sex workers as they pursue their own research goals^[3] but also the silencing of discussions about sex work that result from criminalisation.
Discussing more recent research on the irregular migration of women from the Brong-Ahafo region to Libya, elsewhere in Africa and to Europe, the informant further noted that

“most of [the women] become commercial sex workers. But even if there are many there, they find it difficult for the women to come out [to researchers] because of that stigma” (Anon, Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana, 18 November 2010).

The tendency not to discuss any activities related to sex work (whether voluntary or forced) was affirmed by another informant:

“If they [society?] find out, only then there is stigma... but if they do not know?... if you come back with money?” (Margaret Sackey, 2010).^[4]

Consequently, I would contend that in Ghana, the desire to avoid admitting and talking about known sex work has silenced discussions about the issue, resulting in a failure to publicly acknowledge and directly address the trafficking of women abroad for sexual exploitation. The impact on counter-trafficking is reflected in the lack of resources, data and debate on the traffic of Ghanaian women, particularly when compared to child trafficking.

It is frequently assumed that trafficking is gendered and the gender is female. Consequently, men are largely or entirely excluded from trafficking debates, data collection and responses. At other times, it is ethnic minority populations who are considered most vulnerable, while in other instances the focus might be on child victims (see for example Lawrance 2010: 74 on Ghana). A narrow understanding of who constitutes a victim of trafficking was evident in all three countries. Counter-trafficking initiatives that target the “quintessential victim” are consequently skewed. In the following section, I outline the victim archetype that emerged from my fieldwork in each of the three countries.
In Vietnam, many field workers associate trafficking with the sex industry and exploitation of women and children (Anon., Program officer, international organisation, Vietnam, 5 October 2009). However, trafficked women are frequently required to provide sexual services in conjunction with other exploitative labour (Kelly 2005: 235). This multi-dimensional aspect of trafficking is often neglected. In addition, a major factor contributing to this narrow understanding of trafficking has been the lack of legal protections for male victims of trafficking until the recent legal amendments noted above. To the contrary, anecdotal evidence about the trafficking of men for labour exploitation has been documented, particularly from Lao Cai, a northern mountainous province of Vietnam, to China as well as for factory work in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia (Hoang 2008; Duong and Hong 2008: 119).
In addition, a strong connection is often drawn, including by NGO activists and government authorities, between ethnic minorities’ status and trafficking. It is presumed that the mountainous ethnic minority communities of Vietnam are particularly prone to trafficking. I argue that this assumption, unjustifiably, assumes that Vietnam’s ethnic minorities experience patterns of trafficking similar to that of Thailand’s ethnic minority population and in fact conflates migration among ethnic minorities with trafficking. As one donor informant noted:

We do not have a clear picture of what is really the issue and how serious it is and where are people coming from. Of course, there is an assumption. As far as I know, most of the victims or survivors are from ethnic minorities” (Elena Ferreras, 2009).^[5]

Referring to a shelter based in Hanoi sponsored by the Spanish Government, she questioned whether ethnic minorities are more vulnerable or if the shelter’s database shows a high correlation between victims and ethnic minority status purely because of the shelter’s northern location:

However, our clients are from the north. The north is Sapa, Lao Cai, they are primarily Hmong people.

Certainly, ethnic minorities are among those who have been identified as trafficked in Vietnam. What is problematic is the assumption that ethnic minority status heightens vulnerability to trafficking.
I contend that there is a widespread conceptualisation of Vietnamese victims of trafficking that is both narrow and stereotypical. I questioned all interviewees about whether it is possible to sketch a profile of a typical victim of trafficking. While participants in Ukraine frequently responded that it is impossible to do so, respondents in Vietnam were more willing to offer a description. In the words of a district level government official, the “typical” Vietnamese victim of trafficking is

... a 17-year-old-girl of Tay ethnic community from a commune targeted by the Provincial Program 135 [a program to support especially difficult communes]. Her family’s economic situation is very difficult. The majority of its earning comes from farm work. She is not able to go to high school and stays at home to help their parents with the farm work (Anon., District level official, Department of Social Evils Prevention, Vietnam, 1 October 2009).

This picture can be contrasted with Ukraine, where there is increasing recognition of the traffic of men. Of the 104 surveys I collected, 14 men participated (13.46%). Among my informants, several pressed upon me the extent to which the profile of Ukrainian victims falls outside the scope of the presumed demographics. However, a number of authors continue to promote a narrow understanding of Ukrainian victims (see for example Hughes and Denisova 2002; Hughes 2001), whose demographic is presented as poorly educated. This picture was at odds with the views of my informants:

“[The] level of education is quite high and there is no specific relationship between trafficking and the level of education of victims” (Dr Irina Lysenko, 2009).^[6]

Dr Lysenko continued by noting that it is not possible to even make a “psychological profile” of victims

“because really different people go and different people are trafficked. The only common thing is that they all have some kind of difficult situation and they did not know where to go and did not know what to do” (Dr Irina Lysenko, Medical doctor, IOM Rehabilitation Center, Kiev, 20 August 2009).

Arguably most surprising is the case of Ghana, where public attention is skewed away from adult victims altogether. The dominant understanding of human trafficking is the traffic of children into the fishing or cocoa industry, a narrow response that has spawned the “industry regulation” model (Lawrance 2010: 73-74), epitomised in the regulation of the West African cocoa industry under the auspices of the International Cocoa Initiative in an effort to prevent exploitative child labour. While extensive evidence exists documenting this traffic of children (Tengey and Oguaah 2002; ILO-IPEC 2001; Rissøen, Hauge, Hatløy and Bjerkan 2004), there is only limited research on adult victims. Even empirical data collection is very limited when it comes to trafficking of adult Ghanaians. For example, the International Organisation for Migration in Ghana focuses on child trafficking, while the Center for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana is not yet conducting research on trafficking. Consequently, trafficking is frequently understood to emerge in the following circumstances:

It is due to the irresponsibility of fathers. So we have single mothers who in a bid to make ends meet, traffic their children....We found in the baseline survey that mothers do not even know the final destination of their children, because they are told that their children will be taken to Akotombo, but that is the transit point. So at Akotombo, they are sold to various communities. The parents are sitting in Ga West while the child is at Akotombo. [In reality],some of them end up in the Gambia, some in Nigeria, some in dotted islands along the Volta lake (Anon., Program Manager, Human rights, HIV and trafficking, Christian Council Ghana, 18 August 2010).

In the cases of Ghana and Vietnam, narrow and often skewed understandings of trafficking are pervasive, with many victims (males, non-ethnic minorities or even broadly adult victims) falling outside of the framework. This lack of an evidence-based understanding of who could become a victim of trafficking and who might have experienced trafficking and trafficking-like conditions abroad consequently leads to misdirected efforts in terms of prevention, laws, policies and reintegration support.

A major and often neglected consideration in trafficking discussions is the “pull factor” of success stories emerging from host countries. Whether true, exaggerated, or entirely false, these stories play a major role in encouraging irregular migration. While I certainly argue against unjustified barriers to migration and resulting closed borders for potential migrants, this imagery can lead to false expectations about the conditions of work and life abroad, and thereby help to stimulate irregular and possibly risky migration.
In the case of Ukraine, the role of success stories was labelled by one informant as the “Cinderella syndrome”:

I call it the Cinderella syndrome, from the magazines. These girls hear a success story and it only takes one or two success stories that they hear anecdotally to make them think, ‘You know what, I think that is the way.’ And the situation they are living in is so bad, so why not do it? (Anh Nguyen, 2009).^[7]

Anh Nguyen continued by noting how migrants would “come back and parade around their village as a success story”, or, if able to remit money home, provide enough success stories to motivate others to go abroad. We can add to this view the imagery offered by another Ukrainian informant about life abroad, with Ukrainians seeing:

endless soap operas from Brazil, and they are interested to go and see this way of life. People expect it to be a very rich country because of what they observe in the soap opera. They see expensive villas, expensive houses, and so they believe that in Brazil everybody lives like this, which is not true (Oksana Horbunova, 2009).^[8]

When questioned about people’s understanding of risk and danger, my informant noted that people:

“know about the problem, but they think that it will happen to other people, never happen to them” (Oksana Horbunova, 2009).

Similar views were shared with me about Ghana. Several informants referred to the concept of the “burger”, a positive term that was originally used to refer to Ghanaian migrants who had lived and worked in Hamburg, Germany. The term was later extended to all Ghanaians who had migrated to Europe and North America for work and had since returned to Ghana (Awumbila, 2010: 4). One informant noted how having children abroad is a “status symbol”, with a mother of migrant children referred to as a “burger mommy”: “So there is status for her as a mother”, as Judith Dzokoto, a senior expert from the Ghana Immigration Service noted (Judith Dzokoto, 2010). Ms Dzokoto did claim, however, that some people are beginning to question this imagery:

because we have come across people who have lived out there, who are not working, who are not making money, they have families back home”. Nonetheless, she noted that some continue “dreaming... not questioning why their father is not remitting.

The imagery identified by these informants is frequently neglected in research on trafficking. This is particularly the case where trafficking is not seen as resulting from attempted migration and where the agency and decision-making of the individual victim is ignored or excluded from the discourse which focuses instead on the naïve, kidnapped woman. Consequently, pull factors such as the Brazilian soap opera, the Cinderella story, or desire for “burger” status are ignored as drivers of trafficking and therefore, neglected in formulating responses designed to combat the exploitation of migrants abroad.

Conclusion

Numerous factors inhibit counter-trafficking. Indeed, if trafficking is driven by a desire for economic betterment, coupled with at times false expectations about the possibilities of work and life abroad, it is difficult to identify a means of countering this form of movement. This is clearly the case where inequality at a micro (individual) and macro (country to country) level prevails and drives the migrant search for economic betterment outside of the migrant’s place of origin.
Nonetheless, governments, NGOs and others have engaged in counter-trafficking activities, particularly over the last ten years. Despite these efforts, my research has identified several obstacles to counter-trafficking in Ghana, Vietnam and Ukraine. As identified above, sexual stereotypes continue to shape the view that trafficking is an issue largely impacting women. In many respects, only limited success has been achieved in ending stereotypes about who constitutes a victim of trafficking, with Vietnam particularly focused on the trafficking of women and children and/or ethnic minorities and with adult victims largely neglected from Ghanaian discourse altogether. Cultural attitudes concerning economic betterment abroad also drive migrant movement, particularly in Ukraine and Ghana where the image of the successful migrant worker living abroad plays a significant role in circulating migrant myths and undermining awareness-raising regarding risks of exploitative labour. While potential migrants should be supported in accessing labour migration opportunities, exaggerated stories of the successful migrant create a barrier to a more realistic appreciation of the opportunities and challenges facing potential migrants, particularly those who are undocumented.
Other barriers to counter-trafficking exist that are beyond the scope of this paper. In some instances, the reliability of government data remains an issue, as does the extent to which governments actually play an active role in combating trafficking and supporting victims. In Ukraine, the lack of strong involvement in prevention or even direct service provision by the government to support the reintegration of its country’s victims undermines the sustainability of counter-trafficking efforts.
Reforms are required to ensure that counter-trafficking efforts actually challenge existing stigmas, particularly in relation to sex work, adopt an evidenced-based response to trafficking in order to include all victims (adult men and women, and children) and ensure an approach to awareness-raising that recognises that migration is inevitable. Counter-trafficking measures should not attempt to put an end to migration but instead foster a realistic appreciation of life and work abroad among potential migrants.

Thanks to my supervisor, Dr Helen Pringle, at the University of New South Wales, and to José-Miguel Bello y Villarino, for their very valuable comments on earlier drafts. I bear sole responsibility for the opinions expressed in this chapter.

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^[1] Tatiana Ivanyuk is a Counter-trafficking specialist, International Organisation for Migration, 3 September 2009).
^[2] See also Taylor (2002) and Adomako-Ampofo (2001), two of the only authors that I have identified that document the traffic of Ghanaian women and girls, including for sexual exploitation, although both are now out-of-date and, at times, lack first-hand data to support the claims made.
^[3] On this point, see Harrison (2006), and Andrees and van der Linden (2005), but on trafficking for sexual exploitation and not sex work.
^[4] Dr Margaret Sackey is the former ILO-IPEC Ghana National Programme Coordinator; Ex-Director at the Ministry of Information; and Ex-Executive Secretary of the Ghana National Commission on Children (GNCC), 22 July 2010.
^[5] Elena Ferreras was the Programme Director for Multilateral Cooperation and Gender at the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), 9 October 2009).
^[6] Dr Irina Lysenko is a medical doctor working at the IOM Rehabilitation Center in Kiev, 20 August 2009.

^[7] Anh Nguyen was the Counter-Trafficking Coordinator, for the International Organisation for Migration Mission in Ukraine, interview, 13 August 2009.
^[8] Oksana Horbunova is the Deputy Coordinator for the Counter-Trafficking Program of the International Organisation for Migration Mission in Ukraine, 31 July 2009. According to another informant, who I specifically asked about the role of Brazilian soap operas following my interview with Horbunova, these soap operas may have played a significant role but they were discontinued several years ago. On the one hand, Horbunova could be wrong in drawing this correlation. On the other hand, soap operas in Ukraine could continue to remain an influencing factor even after their discontinuance, thereby demonstrating what a significant role they played in shaping expectations. At the very least, they continue to be perceived as an influencing factor by one of the experts working in the field of trafficking.

University of Technology Sydney Law Research Series

Vijeyarasa, Ramona --- "Roadblocks to counter-trafficking: A comparative analysis of Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine" [2014] UTSLRS 26; (2014) Women Past and Present: Biographic and Interdisciplinary Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press)