Of Human Bondage: U.S. policy and international sex trafficking.

Every year, at least 700,000 human beings are traded for profit like so much property. In his battle against this international human trafficking, Chris Smith -- a Republican congressman from New Jersey -- has undertaken retail rescue operations as well as wholesale policy reforms. Two years ago, La Strada, a Ukrainian group that assists victims of traffickers, appealed to Smith to help eight young women from Ukraine who had been recruited to work as waitresses in Montenegro. They were actually being forced to work in local brothels and were fearful of the local police -- who were apparently complicit in the operation, which was run by one of their former colleagues. He held the girls' passports after they were "sold" to him. Smith immediately contacted Montenegro's prime minister, who ordered a raid of the brothel that freed seven of the Ukrainian girls as well as a young woman from Romania. The eighth Ukrainian had disappeared, having reportedly been "resold" to an individual in Albania.

Hoping to rescue the tens of thousands of women held in similar sexual bondage, Smith wrote landmark legislation to pressure countries to end this barbaric practice. In the past, Smith's efforts were dismissed by a complacent international community, and opposed by the Clinton administration. But in 2000, when Smith's bill passed unanimously in the Senate (with the indispensable help of Kansas senator Sam Brownback), and nearly unanimously in the House, President Clinton took credit -- characteristically -- for the legislation his administration had strenuously opposed. Clinton's Interagency Council on Women (honorary chairman: Hillary Clinton) had lobbied unsuccessfully to narrow the definition of prohibited sexual trafficking to exclude "consensual" prostitution. The Clinton view that prostitution is a legitimate career option for women reflected the position of some feminists, notably Ann Jordan, director of the International Human Rights Law Group's Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons. Last year, Jordan offered an analogy, quoted in The American Prospect: "We don't support a woman's right to choose because we think abortion is a great thing, but because we believe fundamentally that women should have control over their own reproductive capacity. The same argument can be made for prostitution. Women who decide for whatever reason to sell sex should have the right to control their own body."

The Clinton administration's position -- pro-choice on prostitution -- met a firestorm of criticism from William Bennett and Chuck Colson, but also from Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland, and Eleanor Smeal. Critics on both right and left agreed that desperate women were unable to give meaningful "consent" to their own sexual exploitation, and would (in the words of an angry letter anti-prostitution feminists wrote to President Clinton) "shield many traffickers in the global sex trade from prosecution."

And the trade is thriving. The U.N. estimates that human trafficking reaps $7 billion a year. Even the watchdogs themselves bear watching: Members of the U.N.'s International Police Force in Bosnia, where sexual trafficking has become an international scandal, have been accused of transporting young girls from Eastern Europe to local brothels. And the traffickers are a domestic as well as an international problem: An estimated 50,000 trafficking victims, overwhelmingly women and children, are brought to the U.S. every year. In February 1998, there was a raid of brothels in rural south Florida where Mexican girls, some as young as 13, were forced to have sex with dozens of men a day. The evidence of beatings, drug addiction, and forced abortions prompted one federal judge to call this trafficking case "one of the most base, most vile, most despicable, most reprehensible crimes" he had ever encountered. A trafficking ring in Atlanta imported nearly 1,000 women from Asia who were forced to work in debt bondage as prostitutes.

Over President Clinton's objections, the 2000 law mandated a yearly assessment of countries' anti-trafficking efforts, and provided for sanctions against both destination and source countries that fail to meet minimal standards in discouraging trafficking. Last July, secretary of state Colin Powell released the first of these annual reports. Countries are rated according to their records on prosecuting traffickers and protecting victims. Among those on the "Tier 3" list of countries that fail to meet even minimal standards are Greece, Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea. (Vietnam and Cambodia were inexplicably spared Tier 3 status, despite the widespread corruption in both countries that contributes to widespread trafficking.) In two years, Tier 3 countries will be denied non-humanitarian aid unless President Bush grants a "national interest" waiver. The next list is to take into account opinions from human- rights groups in assessing whether countries that meet minimal legal standards, like Germany and Japan, are making real progress in reducing the incidence of trafficking within their borders.

Laura Lederer, now a deputy senior adviser to Powell, published the first comprehensive report on human trafficking when she directed the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University. Lederer documented the sale of thousands of young Vietnamese women to agents in China, where men have trouble finding wives. (Congressman Smith points out the reason for the shortage of women in China: the regime's one-child policy, combined with the social prejudice against girls.) In Cambodia, the sex industry has grown along with the tourist trade, and girls are commonly sold into prostitution; studies have found that up to 40 percent of "sex workers" in Cambodia test HIV positive. Last year, Lederer reported that the number of children in prostitution in Cambodia has rapidly increased. The price tag for children in the sexual marketplace, however, rapidly decreases: A young virgin is sold to rich clients for between $400 and $700 a week, then quickly winds up in the open red-light district where the now-damaged goods command only $1.50 to $2.50 per client.

Administration officials note that the first annual report on trafficking is having its desired effect, with Tier 3 countries eager to take the necessary steps to avoid showing up on the sanctions list. According to Paula Dobriansky, under secretary of state with responsibility for a new anti-trafficking office, "the report has been one of the most significant tools we have used in elevating this issue internationally."

Other recent developments will help. Changes in U.S. law that increase prison terms for traffickers and provide new protections for their victims are being cited as a model for other countries. And in January, attorney general John Ashcroft announced that special "T visas" will be provided for those who suffer the most serious trafficking abuses, to protect them from deportation so they are available to testify against their captors.

Despite the laudable work of Powell and Ashcroft, the administration's human-rights allies believe that the new team hasn't moved aggressively enough to counter the legacy of Clinton-era policies in the bureaucracy. Meetings with the career diplomat who heads the State Department's anti-trafficking office have raised doubts about her experience with the issue and her commitment to the cause. In congressional testimony last fall, Dobriansky told wary lawmakers that, unlike its immediate predecessor, the Bush administration opposes all forms of prostitution; but career bureaucrats who enthusiastically promoted the Clinton administration's policies remain in key staff positions, grants continue to be awarded to groups that support "consensual" prostitution, and Ann Jordan remains a federally funded speaker on the international anti-trafficking circuit.

President Bush helped to rally support for the war in Afghanistan by highlighting the Taliban's oppression of women. While the toppling of the regime has liberated women from the burka, Bush has yet to speak out against the sexual bondage that enslaves tens of thousands of women around the world. The campaign to end all international trafficking in all forms of prostitution is supported by the feminist Left as well as the Christian Right. This is an effort Bush should be leading -- by forcefully and unambiguously declaring his support for the principle that women are not to be sold.