Trafficking in women and the feminization of migration : the Canadian context.

Abstract

In the last five years the phenomenon of in to Canada has emerged from relative obscurity to become one issue that has received considerable attention among Canadian governmental policymakers law enforcement officials and academic scholars. In 1996 when the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) Canada began preliminary research aimed at developing a Canadian profile of trafficking in women as part of an international report being compiled by GAATW (Bangkok) and the Foundation Against Trafficking in Women (STV based in the Netherlands) we found that there was a dearth of available information about women who had migrated to Canada for the purposes of marriage or to work in the sex industry or had been trafficked into these sites. In stark contrast to many countries of the South and in Europe we also realized that trafficking in women had received little notice among Canadas governmental agencies a situation compounded by a general lack of public awareness about the issue. Furthermore the few non-governmental organizations in Canada and the United States that had gathered information on or were working with trafficked women and migrant workers were scattered across North America and had little or no contact with each other. (excerpt)