Trafficking - the selling of women and children for
monetary profit, most often leading to bonded
prostitution - is one of the most visible topics in
South Asia. The media is saturated with stories of
women and children sold into sex slavery, where they
are deprived of their most basic human rights. Social
movements in the sub-continent are now actively
working with this issue.
The debates, however, still see no clear-cut division
between trafficking and prostitution. As the
phenomenon of large numbers of women working as sex
workers in urban areas continues to increase, this
issue must be taken beyond the discourses of
trafficking to include larger issues of the economics
of migration and labor and the difference between
forced and voluntary prostitution.
For our first discussion on Bol!, we have invited
Meena Poudel, the Programme Coordinator of Oxfam Nepal
and a longtime activist, to discuss what the South
Asian activist networks have been doing on the issue.
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