Women `sold into sexual slavery' here

Women are being trafficked into Ireland, mainly from eastern Europe, for prostitution, a conference in Dublin has been told. Ms Geraldine Rowley, outreach manager with the Ruhama Women's Project - a voluntary agency working with women prostitutes - said yesterday that in recent months the project had met a number of women who said they had been brought into Ireland by organised gangs.

"Due to the sensitive nature of our work and our concerns for the safety of trafficked women, we are unable to be specific about case details," Ms Rowley said. She did say, however, that her staff had reported the incidents to the Garda.

Insp Tom Dixon, of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation at Harcourt Square in Dublin, said the Garda had not come across any case of trafficking for prostitution, though he said it was an issue in mainland Europe and would "hit here".

"We work closely with Ruhama and other NGOs and are willing to offer any assistance we can. I've learned something here today," he said.

Yesterday's conference was organised, said Ms Rowley, to highlight that trafficking had begun into this State and to identify the "gaps in the system" that make it difficult to help anyone who had been trafficked. She called for a coherent policy at Government level which would differentiate between women who had been trafficked here for prostitution and women who had been brought here to apply for asylum.

She also stressed the need for Garda protection for trafficked women; for repatriation of those women who so desire it; for safe houses; counselling in languages other than English; health services; training opportunities and legal status for women willing to testify. Prof Dorothee Frings, a lecturer in social sciences at the University of Neadarrhein, near Cologne in Germany, called for an integrated approach by police forces and justice departments across the EU to address the issue.

Where during the 1980s, the majority of women being trafficked into Europe were from Africa, Asia and Latin America, most were now being brought from eastern Europe, said Prof Frings.

"The distances are short and the problem of strict border controls has gone. The profits are therefore much higher," she said. The transition to a market economy had meant high unemployment in the east. Many well-educated young women, desperate to find work, might be promised work and visas by apparently "kind men" to lure them into prostitution in the EU, she said.

Ms Rowley called on the Government to ratify the 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic of Persons and the Exploitation and Prostitution of Others. Ireland is one of seven countries yet to ratify the convention, which states that prostitution and the trafficking of people for it are "incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and endanger the welfare of the individual, the family and the community".