PrintSomaly Mam was born in the Mondulkiri Province of Cambodia in the early 1970s. Her family, part of the minority Pnong ethnic group and living in abject poverty, abandoned her at an early age. Bouncing between caretakers during her prepubescent years, Mam faced discrimination on the basis of her ethnic heritage. At the age of 15, she was sold into sex slavery by a man claiming to be her grandfather. Mam was subsequently raped and tortured on a regular basis and witnessed firsthand the murder of one of her close friends at the brothel where she was forced to work.
Last Monday night, the Veritas Forum at Columbia hosted a discussion to shed light on the plight of women like Mam. The featured guests of the evening were Nicholas Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist for the New York Times, and Kaign Christy, a legal professional and director of operations for Southeast Asia at the International Justice Mission. Moderating the event was Mirta Ojito, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and professor at Columbia’s Journalism School. As the speakers made clear, Mam’s sad story is quite common. The United Nations estimates that between 700,000 and 2 million women are trafficked across international borders and forced into prostitution or servitude every year. Of course, these numbers do not even include those women who are sold into slavery within their own countries. There is documentation of girls as young as 5 being forced into brothels, and many of them never live past their 20s after succumbing to HIV/AIDS.
Christy, who began Monday night’s proceedings, is currently working to combat this global phenomenon through his work with the IJM. The organization has only been operating for 13 years but already has a presence in 10 countries worldwide. For Christy and the IJM, the key to solving the problem of human trafficking and sex slavery is in effectively enforcing laws that are already on the books in much of the world. To that end, IJM primarily works with foreign nationals operating within their own countries, as well as with local law enforcement agencies, to provide relief for victims, hold perpetrators responsible, and make structural changes to, in Christy’s words, “ensure that justice systems protect the poor from oppression and violence.”
Kristof took the stage next and framed his talk around the notion that the central moral issue of the 21st century will be that of women’s liberation and empowerment around the world, likening the oppression of women today to slavery in the 19th century and totalitarianism in the 20th. Having written about human rights abuses on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times for eight years and with a new book out (“Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide”), Kristof was warmly received by the audience. Peppering his speech with a series of anecdotes about his world travels on journalistic assignments, Kristof emphasized both the moral and pragmatic dimensions of the subjugation of women. “The greatest unexploited resource in the world,” Kristof told the audience, “is its women.” Returning to the main theme of the evening, Kristof emphasized the importance of fighting sex slavery and providing women with economic and educational opportunities in order to equalize their social standing with men throughout the world.
Throughout the evening, the two speakers used compelling anecdotes to emphasize the importance of seeing cruelty and oppression firsthand to motivate them to carry out their work. While these vignettes were emotionally gripping, they also framed a discussion that shied away from more contentious ethical issues. Problems such as the appropriate role for Westerners in activism in underdeveloped countries, the importance of cultural context, and the role of poverty in shaping the conditions that make sex trafficking a viable economic option were not thoroughly explored. Occasionally, these issues were addressed via Ojito’s questions or the audience’s articulated concerns. Kristof talked about the malleability of cultural norms, and both he and Christy agreed that even seemingly minor structural changes can have profound cultural impacts. Christy mentioned poverty as a motivating factor for brothel owners and human traffickers, but also pointed out that countries in worse economic conditions than Cambodia have had much better records in terms of sex slavery. And while they did speak of the United States and Latin America when prompted by questions, both Christy’s and Kristof’s expertise on the sex trade seemed to be geographically limited to Southeast Asia.
Still, the discussion provided encouragement for those looking to take a proactive stance against human trafficking and sex slavery. Christy asked the audience to “look at what you have in your hands,” to use what skills and expertise are at their disposal to fight sex slavery, just as he put his legal knowledge to work at the IJM. Recalling Mam, who was able to escape her brothel and start an NGO providing care to former sex slaves, Kristof said that his work was “profoundly enriching, not a burden at all,” and attested that every time he returns to Cambodia or another country plagued by sex slavery, his spirits are lifted when he sees the courage of those who stand up against it.