Despite these significant anti-trafficking steps, victims continue to face punishment for moral offenses resulting from their trafficking experience, including imprisonment, beatings, and execution (Hughes, 2006). Other significant problems are the lack of enforceable anti-trafficking mechanisms and that substantial disjunctures persist among policy, the judiciary, and law enforcement (UNODC, 2007; ODVV, 2009).
IRAN AS A DESTINATION AND TRANSIT NATION
Migration to, through, from, and within a nation must always be considered when examining the trafficking scenario of a country. Iran has some of the highest emigration and immigration flows in the world. The country is also acutely susceptible to cross-border and transnational crime because of economic, political, and geographic factors. Both human trafficking and migrant smuggling have become sources of increasing regional concern (IOM, 2009). Bordered by seven nations, Iran is a frequent destination for people fleeing those countries; it has become a refugee haven for Afghanis, Iraqis, and Pakistanis. Iran is also an ideal transit location for persons who voluntarily migrate or are trafficked to Greece, the Gulf states, Europe, and Turkey (IOM, 2009; IRIN, 2010; U.S. Department of State, 2010).
Young Afghan men in particular take serious risks to travel to Iran, where they pay smuggling networks between $400 and $600 and seek informal jobs, often with construction companies. Determining the exact number of persons who immigrate to Iran from Afghanistan is challenging. What is known is that from 2006 through 2009 Iran deported roughly 1 million Afghan illegal migrants (IRIN, 2009). Some Afghan deportees claim that they faced incarceration for weeks and physical abuse at the hands of Iranian security forces prior to deportation. “I was working on a construction site when the police arrested me … they beat me up with bats and then put me in a cell for three days, after which they sent me back to Afghanistan without allowing me to collect my salary and settle debts in Iran,” one deportee told IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (IRIN, 2009). Smuggling is not the same as human trafficking, but smuggled persons are vulnerable to human rights violations, including human trafficking. In 2010 the Iranian government continued to deport Afghanis without any screening to determine whether they were in fact trafficking victims (U.S. Department of State, 2011).
Throughout the world the terms
smuggling
and
human trafficking
are commonly conflated. For instance, in 2010 it was reported that Rahman Malek, Pakistan’s interior minister, had ordered an inquiry into reports that human traffickers were using the porous Baluchistan border with Iran to transport people to Europe. This statement came immediately after Iran had deported 85 persons back to Pakistan. The Pakistani citizens were caught living in Iran without valid immigration documents (IANS, 2010). The Pakistanis were likely smuggled into Iran across the Taftan border. Although smuggling is not the same as human trafficking, it can certainly turn into a situation of human trafficking. Men and women voluntarily migrate to Iran from Bangladesh, Iraq, and Pakistan for construction, agricultural, or domestic work. Once in Iran some of these workers find themselves in scenarios of debt bondage or involuntary servitude where they face threats, abuse (sexual or physical), nonpayment of wages, and/or restriction of movement. Similarly, women from Azerbaijan and Tajikistan migrate to Iran to find employment and subsequently face forced prostitution (U.S. Department of State, 2010).
In March 2008, 23 victims of human trafficking were returned to Pakistan from Iran. The victims (men, women, and children) had been forced to work on a banana orchard in the agricultural Zarabad area of Iran by their trafficker, Iranian national Umer Makrani. “We were taken to Iran by Umer Makrani’s agents, who assured us that we would get paid in Iran and would not have to bear travel expenses,” Hashim, one of the victims, told
Dawn
(Kahn, 2008). Hashim stated that when they reached Iran, they were provided with food but were not paid any wages for their work. “The landlord used to threaten us against venturing out of his agricultural land, warning that the Iranian police might arrest [us] as illegal immigrants,” Hashim said (Kahn, 2008).
The smuggling experience into Iran is treacherous. In 2009 a transport container was discovered at a truck stand in Quetta, Pakistan. The container held roughly 105 Afghanis headed to the Iran border. At least 45 persons in the container died from lack of oxygen. Shams-ur-Rehman, one of the passengers, said the air conditioner in the container was not working: “After an hour-and-a-half into the journey, we began to feel suffocated. We desperately tried to inform the driver by banging on the container, but maybe he couldn’t hear us because there was a big gap between the container and the driver’s cabin. I saw people falling over each other due to suffocation. One could see death close at hand. It was frightening” (Wahab, 2009).
Despite the dangers, the Baluchistan border will likely continue to be the transit point to Iran for those fleeing Pakistan and Afghanistan. One Pakistani man hoping to be smuggled to Iran and then to Europe is Muhammad Fayyaz. “I saw a sign saying 2,256 km to Tehran as we left Quetta, and I realized how long my journey would be,” Fayyaz told IRIN. “But I am determined to make it out to Iran, and then to Europe” (IRIN, 2010). Akbar Sarki, an Anti–Human Trafficking Cell senior officer, said that talks were under way to fence the Pakistan-Iran border with barbed wire in order to stop human trafficking. “We are coordinating with border patrol officials of neighboring countries to stop this activity,” Sarki told the
Daily Times
(Khan, 2010).
Once people are in Iran, the nation’s ports are a means to transport them to the Arabian Peninsula and the southern Mediterranean region. Children from Afghanistan and Iran are trafficked to the Persian Gulf region for camel jockeying and sexual exploitation (Vaidya, 2008; Hosseini-Divkolaye, 2009). Women and girls are trafficked from Afghanistan and Azerbaijan to Iran for forced marriage, commercial sexual exploitation, or involuntary servitude as laborers or beggars, while Afghan boys are forced to prostitute in male brothels in southern Iran (U.S. Department of State, 2008a, 2010). Yakin Ertürk, a former United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, stated in a 2006 report that there had been a worrying increase in the trafficking of girls and women. In his report he said: “Most of the trafficking is said to occur in the eastern provinces and mainly in border towns with Pakistan and Afghanistan where women are kidnapped, bought, or entered into temporary marriage in order to be sold into sexual slavery in other countries” (UNODC, 2006).
Although inadequately protected borders create an opportunity for both smugglers and traffickers to transport their victims, reports also cite collusion among Iranian authority and security agencies as a contributing factor. While experts believe the problem to be widespread, the actual extent of corruption is unknown. However, it is clear is that criminal organizations are somehow able to consistently transport human trafficking victims, migrants, drugs, and arms across the Iranian borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan (U.S. Department of State, 2010).
INTERNAL TRAFFICKING WITHIN IRAN AND TRAFFICKING ABROAD
The minimal access to Iran by NGOs and international bodies hinders the collection of full and accurate data on human trafficking and anti-trafficking efforts there (U.S. Department of State, 2005, 2007, 2008b, 2010; Hughes, 2006).
1
Within Iran there is little comprehensive field research on the methods and number of Iranian persons trafficked, though there has been some research conducted on the status and forms of human trafficking that affect its citizens. One such study reveals that Iranian females are most commonly trafficked to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (Fehresti, 2010). The victims who are taken to Pakistan are typically from poor families. They marry in Iran and are then taken to brothels in Pakistan. The majority of these girls have no idea that they are being trafficked. While they are forced to prostitute, they are not paid; their husbands or family receive the profits. The victims who are trafficked to Dubai (UAE) are generally young—ages 10 to 16—and have greater social standing and education than the girls trafficked to Pakistan. The girls trafficked to Dubai commonly become engaged to prominent Arab individuals, or the girls’ families grant the trafficker(s) permission to take the girls across the border in exchange for money. Some of the girls travel to Dubai knowing that they will work in prostitution while others are abducted and taken out of Iran without their families’ knowledge (Fehresti, 2010). Experts estimate that every day 45 Iranian girls run away from home for reasons such as poverty and maltreatment. A significant portion of these girls are picked up by human traffickers and end up in brothels abroad (Fehresti, 2010). The Women’s Freedom Forum states that thousands of Iranian girls, many of whom are between 13 and 17 years of age, are sold to men in Afghanistan. Trafficked women and children have also been sent to France, Germany, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, the UAE, and the United Kingdom for commercial sexual exploitation, forced marriage for the purpose of sexual servitude, drug trafficking, and forced labor (Hughes, 2006; Hosseini-Divkolaye, 2009; U.S. Department of State, 2010).
Trafficking within Iran occurs as well. Women and girls are primarily trafficked internally for the purpose of forced prostitution or forced marriage. In circumstances of forced marriage, “husbands” sometimes force the women and girls into prostitution and involuntary servitude as beggars or laborers to provide income, pay debts, or support the drug addiction of family members (U.S. Department of State, 2010). One means of trafficking Iranian women within Iran or to other nations is through a temporary marriage
(sigheh)
. Iranian women have also been subjected to forced prostitution through temporary marriages to men from Pakistan and the Gulf states (U.S. Department of State, 2010). Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president of Iran, explained the intent and purpose of
sigheh
as a way to organize a potential corruption of ethics in a controlled and legal manner. “It has been considered that under certain circumstances when a man and a woman are not able to marry on a permanent basis they need to satisfy their instincts,” Rafsanjani told
60 Minutes
. “It is not possible for everybody to have a permanent marriage” (Rafsanjani, 1997). Rafsanjani stated that there are multiple reasons that a traditional marriage may not be possible, such as financial obstacles or geographic ones. He also noted that widows who lose their husbands still need to satisfy their instincts on a temporary basis:
This could be accomplished through an official agreement or contract between two parties. For whatever the time. This brings an order to the relations. Faith of the children would be clear. It addresses the issue of the woman in respect to her expenses as she will not be able to marry for a while. Psychologically speaking, this is a legal act, not a forbidden act that everyone is fearful of. In the Shiite school of thought, everybody accepts it. We believe this is a solution to sexual problems. (Rafsanjani, 1997)
Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, Iran’s former interior minister, has said that marriage is a human need and that people should use temporary marriage to solve social problems, not just for sex. Overall, temporary marriages are highly taboo in Iranian society; they are perceived as merely a cover for prostitution (Harrison, 2007). Nahid Persson Sarvestani’s 2004 film
Prostitution Behind the Veil
highlights the use of temporary marriages within Iran. In the documentary, Habib, a 65-year-old man, decides to obtain a
sigheh
, an extra “wife” whom a man can marry for a fee. His new “wife to be” is Leila, a 17-year-old girl. “She is my third
sigheh
,” Habib tells the mullah who is to marry them. “My second one ends in two days. She was my
sigheh
for a year and a half. She was a teacher.” The mullah who presides over the marriage discusses the issue of runaway girls in Iran. “There are many young runaway girls—I say this confidentially,” the mullah says. “More than 4,000 young girls have come to our city. That’s a lot. On any street corner I can pick up ten girls.” The mullah then asks Leila how long she wants to be married to Habib. She says, “Two months.” The mullah responds by stating that he will not perform a temporary marriage of less than six months. Leila agrees to the fixed period. Habib and Leila discuss the fee he must pay her. For the six-month period Habib will pay Leila $200. In the end, the
sigheh
lasted only two weeks, as Leila left for another city once she obtained the money (
Prostitution behind the veil
, 2004).
For many Iranian girls and women, prostitution is the only way to earn an income. Despite the fact that prostitution is strictly illegal, in 2004 there was a 635 percent increase in the number of teenage girls in prostitution in Iran. In Tehran alone there were an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution. Unemployment of roughly 28 percent among youths 15–29 years of age and 43 percent unemployment of women ages 15–20 created a particularly economically vulnerable population. The rising number of drug addicts, street children, and young female runaways contributed further to create a highly marginalized population (Hughes, 2004, 2006).
Men who work within trafficking networks often target poor families, offering to marry their daughters—some no older than 12 years old. These girls are often forced to prostitute or to beg for money (Hughes, 2006). Attorney Norma Ramos, the executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women–International, stated that gender apartheid has created a social-political condition not hospitable to equality for women and girls. The enforced segregation of men and women is pervasive in all aspects of public life. In addition to using separate entrances to public buildings, women must sit in reserved sections on the bus, and they must follow a strict dress code or face lashings and fines. Segregation and inequality affect all facets of the female experience in Iran, ranging from the age of criminal responsibility, which is age 8 years, 9 months for girls compared to age 14 years, 7 months for boys, to a woman’s limited right to divorce and limited freedom of movement (Hepburn & Simon, 2007; Reporters Uncensored, 2010; Biklou, 2012).