Media Release 20 June 2012
Sex trafficking under spotlight
New Zealand is a source country for underage girls subjected to internal sex trafficking, says the latest US State
Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report released today.
New Zealand is one of 186 countries who have come under scrutiny in the annual report.
The Report states that “A small number of girls and boys, often of Maori or Pacific Islander descent, are trafficked
domestically to engage in street prostitution while some are victims of gang-controlled trafficking rings.”
Stop Demand’s founder Denise Ritchie says “While there is an acknowledged, relatively small underage prostitution problem in New Zealand, our legislation does not
automatically identify all such persons under 18 as trafficked persons, as is the case with the US TIP definition.
“Nonetheless, it is unacceptable that child prostitution persists in New Zealand and that men who are sexually
exploiting our children are not being prosecuted, named and shamed.”
The Report also notes that “Foreign women, including some from China and Southeast Asia, may be recruited from their
home countries by labor agents for the purpose of prostitution and may be at risk of coercive practices.” It states that
while a trafficking investigation identified and provided services to “potential victims” of trafficking, our government
did not formally identify any persons as trafficking victims during the year.
Stop Demand says that this is most likely due to the narrow anti-trafficking legal framework that currently exists
within New Zealand. Denise Ritchie says “In recent years there has been media exposure of the plight of some foreign women, lured to work illegally in New
Zealand’s decriminalised sex industry, yet finding themselves in “slave-like” conditions. Perversely, these women fall
outside our current trafficking framework, which needs to be redressed.”
Aside from sex trafficking, the report on New Zealand also refers to disturbing practices against foreign persons
subjected to forced labour including within the fishing industry.
Stop Demand supports the calls on our government, to expand current legislation to include domestic trafficking and to
broaden its framework to comply with international norms.
The TIP Report forms part of a growing groundswell of agencies in the USA, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, France and Israel
that are taking a “stop demand” approach to sex trafficking. But for male demand for commercial sex services – driving
the endless supply of mostly female bodies of varying ages, ethnicities and characteristics - sex trafficking would not
exist.
The 3-page report on New Zealand can be viewed at http://bit.ly/Mdy7vG
ENDS