The Greek economic crisis and the austerity policies that have stemmed from it, in addition to having thrown millions of families onto the streets, have resulted in a revival, just as sudden as intense of prostitution. Since 2010, since the crisis exploded in all its drama, what is considered to be the oldest profession in the world has increased by 180%, a record figure for Greece and for Europe as a whole.
According to a study conducted by Panteion University of Athens, Greek prostitutes are generally called “the daughters of the crisis” and they go as far as to selling their bodies for just a two Euro sandwich. It is mostly young girls who have lost their jobs in recent years and had to turn to prostitution in order to continue earning some money. Many are also willing to travel abroad to carry out this activity, and among them are those who do it out of their own free will as well as those who, instead, enter circles of organized crime that has once again become one of the most promising markets from a financial standpoint. EKKE, the Hellenic National Centre for Social Research, highlighted just how much Italian and Balkan organized crime is exploiting the Greek crisis in search of new prostitutes at a low price. “The amount of boats that depart from Albania to go to Puglia are constantly increasing and there is no inspection by the Greek authorities, probably due to insufficient funds to combat trafficking,” said the National Centre for Social Research, stressing that by now the sex trade, both in Greece and in Italy as well as in all other European countries involved (or not) by the economic crisis, is one of the richest and most dynamic.
The sad phenomenon that is prostitution is part of the wider framework of human trafficking, which is, in effect, a form of modern slavery. Trafficking of human beings, on a global level, has assumed dramatically large proportions especially in the last decade and the rate at which this phenomenon is expanding into Southern and Eastern Europe is worrying. Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and Montenegro: the crisis affects the poorest countries and increases the trafficking of children, as well as workers. It’s just from Greece where the most dangerous trend comes from, with men and women heading for the rest of Europe without any kind of monitoring. The OSCE report, like the one of the research centres, however, went almost unnoticed, and the International Labour Organization has estimated 12 million 300 thousand to be the amount of people subjected to labour and sexual exploitation for a total volume of profits of 32 billion a year.
That the current economic situation is therefore a breeding ground for the proliferation of the global business of slave exploitation in the hands of transnational mafia organisations or powerful lobbies has been a known fact for some time. Just like slave drivers in the past, these criminal groups “capture” their victims using force, threats or deception, but also by more subtle means, by taking advantage of the conditions in which they find themselves. Priced, sold and bartered, these people end up in the hands of their final exploiters after having already been completely stripped of their dignity. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is widespread around the world and perfectly integrated into the broader and multiform circuit of the “sex market” that, under the pressure of globalization, has been redefined as an international consumer market. The large mafia organizations have created a transnational network to be able to act in more countries and to move people. The trans-nationality of these organizations lies in the ability to network creating in the individual states, of transit and of destination, lean and specialized structures, while the leaders of these organizations are located elsewhere, well-protected in their home countries.
In trafficking for sexual purposes Nigerians have reached a high standard, by completely managing every step from the moment of recruitment until the sorting in the various sectors of exploitation. The Nigerian groups are characterized by an organization of the horizontal type, by extreme secrecy and by a mystical-religious component through which they carry out grave conditioning on their adepts.
It was the Eighties when the first foreign prostitutes were seen on Italian streets. Mostly girls from Latin America, mainly from Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Santo Domingo; a few years later the Nigerians make their first appearances and then the Albanians. Once the flow from Albania was reduced, the gates were opened to Romania, Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Ukraine and Latvia. This is the historical divide which signalled the beginning, in our country, of the trafficking of women, men and children for sexual exploitation. According to Massimo Di Bello, a criminal law expert with particular regard to offenses against the person, the rapid growth of non-EU women on the streets is mainly recorded between the three years of 1989 to 1992, in relation to two factors of a different nature: the destabilization of the political system in Eastern Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the conflict in Yugoslavia that opened migratory flows towards the West, and the widespread awareness of the transmission of AIDS through unprotected heterosexual intercourse, which favours the withdrawal of Italian women from prostitution and opens unlimited possibilities for work with the new sex slaves. From this moment onwards, the trafficking of foreign women relentlessly increased, bringing in a growing number of African girls, of Eastern European girls and from all those economically disadvantaged countries. In Italy, like elsewhere in Europe, the real boom, and it really did in the nineties, coincides with the birth of criminal networks specialized in the business of trafficking entire populations fleeing from countries of the former Soviet bloc.
The geographical location and the instability that characterizes the area of the Balkans make Italy the perfect crossing point and a final destination for sex traffickers. Our country, in fact, together with Germany and Austria, is the Eastern “gateway” of the European Union, and sea border for both the Balkan states and for those bordering on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The latest report published by the US State Department about the reality of our country states that: “Italy is a destination, transit, and source country for women, children, and men subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour. Victims originate from Nigeria, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Albania, Greece and Ukraine, but also from Russia, South America, North and East Africa, Middle East, China and Uzbekistan.”
There is no precise number or estimate for the number of trafficked people that end up in the Italian market of prostitution. According to the World Organization for Migration, the amount of annually trafficked people in Italy oscillates between 19,000 and 26,000; approximately 7% of the victims are children, mostly coming from Romania.
Ending up in the net of sexual exploitation in Italy, however, are not just women. It also happens to the transexuals. According to the estimates of the association “Free Woman”, there are approximately 40,000 transsexuals of which about 10,000 live by prostituting themselves in Italy. Of these, 60% are of South American origin: they mainly come from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Argentina. The business of transsexual prostitution exceeds 20 million Euros per month.
Being mainly transnational phenomena, human trade, trafficking of people, exploitation of prostitution and slavery must be combated through a strong collaboration between states. Something to this regard has already been done. In Italy, for example, Article 18 of the Consolidated Law on Immigration states that “protect the victims of trafficking for sexual or labour exploitation releasing a residence permit that recognizes the full legal subjectivity, thus taking away the constraints of secrecy”.
