Mongolia Trafficking through Marriage Arrangements
Trafficking through Marriage Arrangements In the context of human trafficking, marriage migration is another serious issue that demands examination. By 2005 data of the Center for Citizen Registration Bureau, 2,233 Mongolian citizens – 95 percent of whom are women - registered their marriages with foreign citizens, Mongolian-Korean marriages accounting for 65 percent of all international marriages. The overwhelming majority of the marriages were between Mongolian women and Korean men: 98.8 percent of 1,668 Korean-Mongolian marriages, while the number of registered marriages between Mongolians and Germans was 155, followed by Chinese-Mongolian marriages at 137 and Japanese-Mongolian marriages at 119. In the case of Korean-Mongolian marriages, a number of cases have been documented of women being essentially trafficked to lower income, often rural and middle-aged or old Korean men, through marriage arrangements. GEC reports that women are recruited by marriage brokers through media advertisements saying that “marriages shall be arranged with foreign citizens with higher than average incomes and living conditions.” Women are married off 1-3 months within turning to a marriage broker and see their would-be husbands 1-2 times before their marriages or never see them until they are married. The majority of the women (78 percent of the 30 women interviewed) stated they went through a marriage broker and a majority (23 out of 30) stated their husbands paid the brokers US$3,000-5,000 . The average age of the 30 women married to Koreans interviewed by GEC was 24.9, whilst their husbands’ was 44.5 percent (or about 20 years) older than the women. Two of the women interviewed were as young as 18-19 years old. A Majority of the women (56.3 percent) did not know their husbands’ educational levels, while 1/3 of the rest stated their husbands have blue-collar status. When women did know their husbands’ educational levels, their own educational level was higher than their husbands’. Over 88 percent of the women stated they had married Koreans in order to obtain Korean visas and work permits, 59 percent stated they married to be able to send money home and 35 percent to be able to save money for their education. Several of the women had run away from their husbands, 13 were living in Seoul, several women did not know in what state or city they were living in Korea. Fifty percent of the women did not have their passports on them– their documents were kept by the broker, husband or in-laws. A majority (24 out of 30) were dissatisfied with their lives, their financial situation had not improved, they were financially dependent on their husbands, and were practically unable to send money home. Women did hard household work, took care of their husbands and relatives, provided sex to their husbands, assisted in earning household income (including heavy and unfamiliar farm work) and half of the women reported they did this work because they were forced. Women also reported high level of physical and sexual abuse by their husbands and verbal and psychological abuse by their in-laws. Women are beaten, punished and confined inside the homes for poorly performing household chores, for not cooking Korean food, for “wandering” outside and for calling Mongolia on the phone. In some of the cases, husbands were reported to be mentally retarded or addicted to narcotic substances. Sixty percent of the women reported a deterioration in health, especially in mental health. They felt high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety. They felt isolated. Very few women had social support through church groups; the rest received no support from any organization or individual while in Korea. Despite such harsh living conditions, none of the women wished to return home because they had no home of their own, no job prospects, no sources of income in Mongolia and feared that wide-spread corruption would make it impossible for them to make a living in Mongolia. Therefore, while only seven women reported they plan to stay with their husbands, the rest hoped to escape their husbands and find work in Korea. While many marriages between Mongolian women and foreigners are based on mutual affection, it is clear that marriage has become a form of trafficking in women and girls for forced labor and sexual exploitation. Women are forced to choose migration through a marriage arrangement because of desperate financial and living conditions and no hope for any opportunities to make a living in Mongolia. Marriage brokers and foreign husbands who benefit from this double and triple exploitation (sexual services, domestic work, household income generation work) are currently outside regulation by Mongolian laws. State and NGO Responses, Legal Framework Despite clear violations of human rights and evidence of transnational criminal operations, the national legal framework and law-enforcement institutions have been slow to respond to the growing problem of human trafficking, especially in women and children. Much needed services for the victims such as legal aid, shelter, and psychosocial support have been provided exclusively by a small number of NGOs such as the CHRD, the Mongolian Gender Equality Center, the National Center against Violence and a few child rights NGOs (primarily members of the ECPAT National Network in Mongolia). These services have been limited due to the limited capacity of NGOs while demand is increasingly growing. Legal and policy framework have improved thanks to active advocacy by NGOs. Thus, in 2008, the Criminal Code’s Article 113 was amended so as to include the full definition of trafficking according to international standards and the parliament has ratified the Palermo protocol. In 2006, the National Program on Preventing and Combating Human Trafficking, Especially in Women and Children, was adopted but shelved until recently. Most recently, the national council on the implementation of this program has been formed involving governmental and non-governmental stakeholders. Until recently, most of the reported cases of trafficking were dismissed prior to reaching the courts: in 22 percent of the reported 24 cases in 1999-2005, criminal files were never opened and 60 percent were dismissed during investigation. Only 11 percent or three cases were resolved by the court, two percent were suspended, and five percent were under investigation during the time of the CHRD study. Only 35 percent of the cases had been uncovered by the police operative work, 40 percent were reported by victims’ family members, and 25 percent by victims themselves. Difficulties faced by the police in investigating human trafficking included lack of gender-sensitive and rights-based understanding of the victim’s situation and consequently blaming of the victim, lack of financial and other resources to go abroad to interrogate the suspected perpetrators, and lack of a clear definition of human trafficking in the law prior to the amendment of Article 113, and the requirement to prove that money had exchanged hands to establish criminal content. It is also important for Mongolia to sign mutual legal aid agreements and strengthen cooperation in law enforcement with countries that serve as major destinations for trafficking in Mongolian women and children. Currently, Mongolia has agreements with 20 countries that are a part of the Vienna Convention of 1963 on consular relations (Germany, Kazakhstan, Russia, Poland, South Korea, Turkey, Hungary, China, Czech Republic, etc.), agreements on repatriation of criminal offenders with four countries (Kazakhstan, South Korea, China, India), and consular conventions with 15 countries including the USA, Russia, Hungary and Czech Republic. Despite these improvements, the environment is still extremely hostile towards victims of trafficking. They are viewed by both law-enforcement personnel and general public as prostitutes, i.e. as women who voluntarily consented to prostitution in order to make an easy living. Police response to the case of the girl who escaped her traffickers in February, 2008, clearly demonstrated that the police are far from being able to adequately address the problem of trafficking. Instead of seeking to assist the girl and apprehend her victimizers, the police exerted significant energy to denounce the 17-year old girl as a prostitute, her mother as a fraud and women’s rights activists as liars. The police had openly declared the girl’s name, the place of her residence and the fact that she lives with her mother and two younger siblings, with no adult male to protect her. This disclosure affected the younger siblings of the girl, who were insulted by their schoolmates and teachers as siblings of a prostitute. Consequently, the younger brother and sister refused to attend school. Sustained and coordinated media interventions by women’s NGOs, other stakeholders and media cooperation forced the police to admit that the crime of trafficking exists and is growing in Mongolia, and that the police had not been able to adequately deal with this situation. Nevertheless, mistreatment and further victimization of trafficking victims by the police, unethical coverage by the media and hostile public attitudes are common in Mongolia. This attitude is closely related to the general attitude towards prostitution and patriarchal notions that regard women who have had multiple sexual partners as impure and unworthy of respect. THE UB POST |
