44th Session of the Human Rights Council
ID with SR on Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children
44th Session of the Human Rights Council started discussions on Agenda Item 2
Statement by
H.E. Mr. Esmaiel Baghaei Hamaneh
Ambassador and Permanent Representative
the Islamic Republic of Iran
44th Session of the Human Rights Council
Item 2: ID with SR on Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children
Geneva, 2 July 2020
بسم الله الرحمن الرحیم
We thank the Special Rapporteur for presenting her report A/HRC/44/45 entitled: “Trafficking in persons, especially women and children” and the report A/HRC/44/45/Add.1, entitled: “Visit to Montenegro”.
Madam Presidnet,
Trafficking in persons is the darkest manifestation of modern day slavery that continue to stain the human race by reducing human being into an object for monetary benefit through sexual exploitation, forced labor and removal of body organs, among others. The trafficking industry almost always exploits the victims’ situations of vulnerability to coerce or entice them to servitude of varied sorts.
The ILO estimates that around 4.5 million people, or 20 percent of global trafficking victims, are traded for sex. It generates 100 billion annually, just from commercial sexual exploitation alone, meaning that sexual exploitation earns 66% of the global profits from human trafficking. Sex trafficking is huge business, then. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), sexual exploitation can yield a return on investment ranging from 100% to 1,000%.
We need to be frank and straightforward in dealing with major stigmas that are tarnishing the image of humanity and make a travesty of human rights, particularly the women’s rights and the rights of the child. We need to stop pretending that human trafficking for sex is disconnected from the lucrative porn entrepreneurship. It is not. They are inseparably linked. Porn fuels trafficking and trafficking supplies the industry.
The point is that much of society has been gaslighted to deny it or simply get along with that through sophisticated mainstreaming of pornography. The integration of mainstream media with so-called adult film industry explains why and how the pornography is normalized in media.
The involvement of multinational entertainment and media moguls, and even political elites in the porn industry and sex trade must be a matter of extreme concern and shame for all of us who care for human rights and dignity, especially those of women and girls. The case of Jeffrey Epstein’s long and stylish sex trafficking business and his close ties to prominent public figures in the United States, UK and elsewhere should serve as a wake-up call to appreciate the depth and seriousness of what could be dubbed as ‘normalization of misogyny’.
No one can be proud of ‘red light districts’, such as the one dazzling in Amsterdam, for example. They are legalized destinations and transit passages for human trafficking and State sanctioned tax-generating havens for alarming atrocities and rights abuses against victims who are helplessly let at the mercy of their cruel masters with no recourse to justice.
Dutch MP Gert-Jan Segers had once said: “We legalized prostitution in 2000. The idea was it was giving women their freedom and to get rid of the criminality. But we took it away from being linked to freedom and we linked it to human trafficking.”
Madam Presidnet,
Human trafficking could hardly be contained without addressing its root causes, in particular the conditions conducive to deriving people into the hands of traffickers, as well as its demand side, including the porn industry and many red lights districts in developed countries.
I thank you.