Trafficking in women is widely reported to be the third most lucrative branch of international crime after contraband weapons and drugs. It preys on economically desperate women and is fueled by the lure of extraordinary profits and a very low risk of arrest. Between , and , women and children are trafficked annually from post-Soviet states, including some 50, per year from Russia. With the positive exception of the Romanian Orthodox Church, most Christians in post-Soviet territories do not appear to have recognized the seriousness of sexual trafficking from and within the region.
And, while Western Catholic and Protestant responses have been commendable, a great deal more needs to be done. Christians, East and West, must increase their efforts to comfort the afflicted and to afflict those who do such grievous harm to millions of women and children created in the image of God. Before an assemblage of ambassadors, members of Congress, and White House and State Department VIPs, Ambassador Miller related the nightmare of Katya, "a Czech teenager lured to Amsterdam with a promise of a restaurant job, her passport seized, her two-year-old daughter threatened so she would service 10 and 15 men a day in a brothel.
Or in the U. The awful truth is that such cases are all too commonplace. Much-lauded economic globalization has opened doors not only to growth in sanctioned trade, but to burgeoning illicit commerce as well.
Trafficking in women is widely reported to be the third most lucrative branch of organized crime, after international sales in contraband weapons. Miller, "Remarks at Swearing-in Ceremony," U. State Department, 7 September Mark Elliott earned a bachelor of arts degree in from Asbury College and a master of arts and doctoral degree from the University of Kentucky. He is the author of scores of articles, books, and reviews, including the highly esteemed Pawns of Yalta.
Asia, historically, has been the major source for global trafficking of women, as well as the locus of international sex tourism. But the liberation of East European states from Communist rule in and the breakup of the Soviet Union in led to the addition of another major stream of trafficking victims. Millions of destitute women from these regions have been led away in new chains fashioned. Hughes and Tatyana A. Estimates for global trafficking in women range from , to four million per year, with the higher figures including persons trafficked within, as well as across, national borders.
