Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech to kick off a conference on the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, in which she addressed the urgent need to combat sexual slavery, forced labor, and other forms of exploitation by cracking down on human traffickers. Combating human trafficking is an integral facet of Clinton’s overall foreign policy agenda. She has expressed that human trafficking represents a profound moral crisis that must not be sidelined or ignored.

While persons are trafficked and coerced into diverse forms of forced labor, the largest segment involves individuals, mostly women and young girls, who are trafficked for purposes of sexual exploitation. A broad array of interest groups, from liberal secular feminists to conservative evangelical Christians, worked together to enact the 2000 Victims of Violence and Trafficking Protection Act, which established the State Department Office on Human Trafficking. The ability of such a motley crew to collaborate may inspire optimism. Reverend Jim Wallis views the urgent need to stop human trafficking as an issue on which both liberal and conservative Christians can potentially agree: “When I talk and write about finding common ground and shaking off the old categories of left and right, liberal and conservative, this is what I am talking about. Conservative Christians have sounded the alarm about our culture's sexual depravity tearing at the fabric of our society. This is one of those issues. Liberal Christians have decried male dominated public policy that results in oppressive and abusive structures for women and just plain bad policy. This is one of those issues.” However, while all parties may agree on the evil of forced sexual exploitation, the relationship between human trafficking and the commercial sex industry has made such a moral consensus unstable.

Cracks in the coalition include contention over the provision of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003 that restricts anti-trafficking funds only to those groups that express opposition to prostitution. While there are secular and religious organizations that see eradicating prostitution as a necessary component of combating human trafficking, some secular anti-trafficking activists argue that defunding humanitarian organizations that do not explicitly call for the abolition of prostitution hampers both efforts to help trafficking victims, and HIV/AIDS prevention activities. In February 2007, a District of Columbia appellate court upheld the provision as applied to an organization seeking USAID funding for its efforts to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. The government had decided that the effective means for countering the spread of HIV/AIDS include speaking out against legalizing prostitution and fostering behavioral change. The court ruled therefore that the funding restriction is not a violation of the First Amendment rights of groups requesting funds. The government is entitled to take steps to ensure that its message is not distorted, especially on matters with foreign policy implications. In the court’s view, the government was not compelling the organization to share the government's position; it only required that if the organization wanted to receive grant funds, it had to communicate the message the government chose to fund.

The endeavor to combat human trafficking (like efforts to combat HIV/AIDS) is tied up in moral debates about human sexuality and the sinful nature of prostitution, and pragmatic debates about the most effective solution. These pragmatic debates may invoke questions about whether the best approach to combating sex trafficking involves cracking down on the commercial sex trade, legalizing and regulating sex work, or decriminalizing prostitution by enforcing anti-prostitution laws against traffickers and purchasers of commercial sex rather than the purveyors of sex themselves. Pragmatic considerations also involve questions about which types of organizations ought to receive federal funding for their efforts. For example, who is best situated to address the conditions of trafficking victims: the labor-rights-focused International Union of Sex Workers or the faith-based International Justice Mission?

The State Department position is that the demand for commercial sex is a leading cause of human trafficking and that prostitution should not be legalized or regarded as a legitimate choice of work for any human being. However, it is unclear at this point how Secretary Clinton’s recent remarks will be received by those European nations that favor legal or government-regulated prostitution as a more effective model for building international consensus and combating exploitation and abuse. In Europe today, countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, France, and Italy are experimenting with legal regulation of prostitution. Any attempted rapprochement with these nations on this issue may either raise the ire of states and groups who seek to address exploitation, abuse, and the spread of AIDS without condemning sex workers, or invite moralistic outrage from those who are fearful that working with nations in which prostitution is legal not only amounts to a foreign policy that effectively promotes prostitution abroad, but is at cross-purposes with the aim, often religiously framed, of combating sexual depravity.

References:

Jim Wallis’ comments, from January 27, 2009, can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/clinton-promises-action-a_b_161372.html.

Jennifer Block, “Sex Trafficking: Why the Faith Trade is Interested in the Sex Trade,” Conscience, Summer/Autumn 2004.

Dkt Int’l, Inc. v. USAID, 477 F.3d 758 (D.C. Cir., February 27, 2007).

“Trafficking in Persons: U.S. Policy and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, July 2, 2009:http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/126528.pdfciting U.S. Department of State 2008 TIP Report.

Barbra Barnett has a PhD in Ethics from the University of Chicago Divinity School and teaches at Elmhurst College.