Hakary Dzayi, an educator at Salahaddin University in Kurdistan and currently doing work with the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC), on sex trafficking in the Middle East. This interview was conducted via email.
Harvard Political Review: What do you see as the major causes of sex trafficking in the Middle East today? What do you see as the root of this evil, and can you comment on the disproportionate amount of women trafficked in comparison to men?
Hakary Dzayi: The major causes of female sex trafficking in the Middle East are poverty, patriarchy and disgracing women, wars, the rapid change of technology, and the lack of law. In most Middle Eastern communities, men have the primary authority in both the private and public spheres. Women are mostly treated as property. Trafficking first enters homes when the father or brother forces their daughter to marry or when a husband forces his wife to work as a prostitute because he cannot find work. Furthermore, wars in the Middle East have opened doors for criminals to traffic women into sex marketing.
HPR: Are there particular nations in the Middle East that you consider to be more susceptible to sex trafficking?
HD: Female sex trafficking exists in most Middle Eastern countries, from Pakistan to Yemen. As an observer in Iraq, I have witnessed Arabian women in southern and central Iraq trafficked to regional countries and Kurdistan. I have seen many teenage women trafficked in the sex industry then arrested. Regional countries such as those in the Gulf Coast, Jordan, Syria and Kuwait sell Baghdadian and other town’s women and force them to work in night clubs.
HPR: What role do you feel regional governments play in this problem? What have governments done to alleviate this problem, and what current policies facilitate this crime?
HD: In the Iraq and Kurdistan region, there is no specific law to avoid trafficking or punish traffickers. Instead, those in power expedite the way for traffickers because trafficking in females has a big profit; the good bribes motivate them to not follow the cases of the trafficked women. In Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, a local NGO, Al-Mesalla Organization for Developing Human Resources, started to combat female trafficking in Iraq and has worked on more than 20 cases from late-2010 through today. I should also note that a legal project on human trafficking was submitted in the Kurdish National Assembly in 2009 but, through today, the parliament has not worked on this project.
HPR: Looking to the future, what needs to be done to eliminate sex trafficking in the Middle East? Is it more important that governments impose and enforce strict laws, or is it more important for women to be educated about dangers?
HD: Both. There must be a specific law to prevent female sex trafficking and there should also be a punishment for the traffickers. Governments should declare a convention about this serious, and flourishing, problem. Furthermore, raising awareness is an excellent tool for women in the local areas. Most of the families do not have a clue about the consequences of trafficking.
HPR: What do you think can be done in the Middle East today to solve or alleviate the problems of sex trafficking? Has there been a positive or negative trend in sex trafficking in the region in the last few years? Can we expect any positive changes to occur in this region of the world, and do you think that the political, economic, and cultural changes that are occurring in that region will make matters worse or will help in the fight to end sex trafficking, or human trafficking in general?
HD: Activating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be helpful for decreasing trafficking in the Middle East as there is no regional law prohibiting female trafficking inside and outside countries. Human trafficking has increased in the last few years. In Iraq, traffickers are working in two ways, trafficking women from China, Philippine, Ethiopia, and Russia to Iraq, and trafficking Iraqi women to regional Arabian countries.
In general, if governments activate the law, punish traffickers publicly, and don’t allow or accept any legal contract of foreign female laborers in the region then trafficking would decrease. In Iraq particularly, if the political situation remains then female trafficking will increase. The social and economic changes raise the rate of female trafficking.
Photo courtesy of Hakary Dzayi. This interview has been condensed and edited.
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