62
124
Prostitution and Human Trafficking
and Human Trafficking
and Human Traf
total number of registered victims is 938 and if we multiply this figure by the
minimum coefficient of 10, we would obtain at least about 10,000 girls for these
4 countries alone. It is unclear, however, what percentage of these girls were reg-
istered as victims more than once. The data from European criminal services indi-
cate that 30 to 50% of the victims have previously worked in another country.
206
In order to minimize risk, the procurers and prostitutes often change cities and
states. Interviews with Bulgarian officers have revealed that a definite number of
the girls have sought assistance in two or more EU countries. In this connection,
it remains uncertain what proportion of those registered in 2000-2005 in Belgium,
the Netherlands, and Germany sought assistance in more than one country. By
estimates of Bulgarian officers working with trafficking victims, hardly more than
20-30% do so on more than one occasion. Therefore, within a five-year period
in all 4 countries, the likely number of victims seeking assistance for the first time
is 600 to 700. In turn, using the minimum coefficient of 10,
207
this means a total
of 6,000-7,000 girls.
In addition to these four countries, it should be borne in mind that there is
also a considerable Bulgarian presence in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and
particularly in France, Italy and Spain. Unfortunately, only fragmentary data are
available for countries such as England, Ireland, Portugal, and Scandinavia in
general. According to the interviews conducted within the present study, in the
period 2002-2005, France, Italy and Spain in particular, have become preferred
destinations for prostitution. In view of the demographic characteristics and based
on what little information is available from police services in these countries, the
number of girls working there can be estimated at about 7-8,000. Adding less
popular destinations, but nevertheless known to host Bulgarian prostitutes, such
as Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, the total
estimate would be about 18-21,000 women.
This quantitative framework finds confirmation in unofficial estimates by the po-
lice of the number of procurers and pimps by town. In the large Bulgarian towns
(with population of 50-100,000) where prostitution is weak in intensity, such as
Pazardjik, the number of procurers is in the range of 100, and the number of
prostitutes, about 300; in towns characterized by higher intensity, such as Sliven,
there are about 500 procurers and 1,000 prostitutes. Based on these unofficial
estimates for the 30 largest Bulgarian towns
208
(more than 40,000 residents), the
number of prostitutes would be approximately 21-22,000. If the 40 largest (more
than 20,000 residents) towns
209
are considered, their number can be estimated at
25,000. Furthermore, at least 70-80% of these girls are believed to work abroad
on a permanent or temporary basis. When using these police estimates it is
important to take into consideration two opposing factors. The first one is that
the police continue to take into account prostitutes and procurers who have left
206 See Trafficking in Human Beings, Fourth report of the Dutch National Rapporteur, Bureau NRM,
Trafficking in Human Beings, Fourth report of the Dutch National Rapporteur, Bureau NRM,
Trafficking in Human Beings
The Hague 2005
207 In this estimate it is assumed that all of the victims of sexual exploitation sought help, which is
hardly likely to be the case.
208 These towns manage to attract the girls ready to engage in prostitution from the smaller settle-
ments.
209 According to official national statistics, the thirty biggest towns of the country have between them
approximately 4.1 million inhabitants or 48% of the country’s population; the respective figures
for the forty biggest towns are 4.85 million or 56%.
51
Organized Crime in Bulgaria: Markets and Trends
125
the sex trade and thus the figures constantly increase with the addition of new
people. The second factor works in the opposite direction. As a rule, at the local
level, the police manage to get an idea of the lowest segment of the market –
street and highway prostitution and the brothels, to some extent. They fail to take
in the brothels whose owners pay bribes,
210
as well as the entire class of the elite
prostitutes. However, the largest group escaping attention is made up by the girls
who have directly started prostituting outside the country.
In addition to estimating the Bulgarian share in the market, trafficking victim data
also make it possible to examine the evolution of export in time. It can best be
described as having snow-balled over the years. It was found from the interviews
with officials from domestic security institutions in the Netherlands and Belgium,
as well as in Bulgaria, that after the initial establishment around 1993-95 of pro-
curer base centers in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria, the activity
gradually expanded, moving to the Netherlands and Germany,
gradually expanded, moving to the Netherlands and Germany,
gradually expanded, moving to the Netherlands and Germany
211
Italy and Spain,
with the number of prostitutes increasing slowly yet steadily until the end of the
1990s. With the realization that the revenues from prostitution are times higher
than in Bulgaria, there occurred a chain reaction, with procurer networks sending
an increasing number of girls who had started prostituting in Bulgaria. A genuine
snow-ball effect was observed in 2001-2003 after the lifting of Schengen visas in
April 2001. These observations, as expressed in the interviews, find a most elo-
quent confirmation in the data from IOM and Germany on Bulgarian trafficking
(the large number of cases guarantees data reliability).
The data from IOM and Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, which cover
longer periods of time, point to concurrent tendencies in human trafficking. The
initial growth rate was almost 300% in 2001 and 2002 in Germany. After a peak
in 2003, there was a downward trend. The same development was observed in
2001 and 2002 in Belgium and the Netherlands. As suggested by respondents
from the main groups involved in Bulgarian export, the drop occurred because
the recruiter networks and prostitutes had adapted to the new situation rather
than a depletion of the sources of women and girls.
At the same time, the Bulgarian participation in the prostitution market in
the EU has undergone notable changes. Whereas in the late 1990s, the typical
Bulgarian prostitute in Western and Central Europe had previous experience in
Bulgaria, in the new situation there is a veritable boom of participants without
such experience. Moreover, prostitution is now found in all social groups wishing
to emigrate and looking for steady or temporary jobs in the European Union –
from maids and nurses to students at prestigious universities. What is more, short-
term entry into the sex trade is so widespread that it is difficult to make even a
rough estimate of this semi-professional periphery.
210 See ”I pay 15 grand a month .....”
211 As mentioned above, the first procurer structures formed around the networks of car thieves in
Central Europe. After the German police cracked down on their organization in Germany, they
moved on to Italy and Spain. The procurer networks followed.
57
126
Prostitution and Human Trafficking
and Human Trafficking
and Human Traf
Mass Prostitution outside the Country
The estimate of the number of prostitutes outside the country at 18-21,000 at
least, raises a number of questions in view of the demographic characteristics of
a country such as Bulgaria. Set against the number of Bulgarian citizens working
and living abroad, these figures may seem rather paradoxical. Considering that an
estimated 500,000 Bulgarians have been living abroad since 1990 (excluding those
who moved to Turkey in 1989) and based on survey findings that 60-65% of
that population are male, there are about 175-200,000 women living outside the
country. This would mean that 9-12% of the female population abroad works in
the sex industry. And if it is recalculated in terms of the female population aged
15-35, the percentage would be even more shocking. Naturally, the proportion
is probably considerably smaller since about 30% of the prostitutes in Western
and Central Europe live permanently in Bulgaria and another 40% come back
regularly and are registered as permanent residents in their respective home-
towns in Bulgaria. At the same time, if we consider the number of prostitutes
in proportion to the general population, Bulgaria is by no means a country with
exceptionally high share of prostitutes. Based on the estimate of 25-30,000
prostitutes (including those practicing inside the country), 0.32-0.39% of the
country’s population would appear to be engaged in prostitution.
212
In com-
parative terms, in countries like Germany and the Philippines with about 400,000
prostitutes,
213
the proportion is 0.49% and 0.47%, respectively; in South Korea,
for example, the 1.2 million engaged in prostitution represent as much as 2.45%
of the population.
214
It should be borne in mind when comparing the data that
in Western Europe the official estimates based on special government surveys are
considerably lower. Thus, for instance, a survey by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of 2000 reported 20-25,000 engaged in prostitution (with a population
of 16.4 million, this means barely 0.12-0.15%); Austria officially estimated the
proportion of prostitutes at 0.21% in 2003; Belgium, at 0.12-0.29%, etc. These
official estimates, however, have been criticized as seriously understated by law-
enforcement and academic institutions alike. The critics argue that the official
estimates fail to take in the unregistered prostitutes, who represent a huge per-
centage. They do not seek legitimization since it would create family and profes-
sional problems once they decide to withdraw from the sex trade.
Nevertheless, the surveys in these West-European countries suggest that, on the
one hand, these are data that do not concern illegal prostitution, which is esti-
mated to be 3-4 times larger, and on the other hand, that 70 to 90% of those
engaged in prostitution are foreigners.
To analyze the mass scale of prostitution in demographic terms it is necessary to
use finer optics capable of magnifying the details. In this respect, for the scale
of Bulgaria, a town such as Sliven is a good example of the large provincial
town model. It is particularly suitable because of the publicly known facts con-
cerning access to almost legal work in the sex windows in Brussels. In most other
212 According to the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute (NSI), the population numbered 7,679,290
in 2006. See http://www.nsi.bg/Population/Population06.htm
213 See ”http://www.hydra-ev.org
214 ”Sex Work in South Korea”, Asia Monitor Resource Center. Accessed on February 10, 2006
(http://www.amrc.org.hk/Arch/3309.htm)
49
Organized Crime in Bulgaria: Markets and Trends
127
large towns, the export of prostitutes and work in the sex industry are part of
a covered-up, non-transparent process and only criminal incidents may lead to
occasional public disclosures. There are about 200-210 windows registered in
Brussels, operating in two shifts. It is estimated that 90% of the girls come from
Bulgaria and that 90% of the Bulgarians are from Sliven. In the opinion of Bul-
garian and Belgian officers, this Bulgarian town has managed to take over the
window prostitution in Brussels from the Albanian pimps owing to its specific and
effective procurer organization. Based on the data on Sliven there emerges an
interesting demographic framework of the prostitution phenomenon. The town
has a population of 100,000, of whom roughly half are women. The number of
girls and women aged 15 to 30 would thus be about 15-17,000. As noted above,
the number of procurers is in the range of 400-500 and of prostitutes, 800 to
1,000. Therefore, one in 15-17 women is likely to be engaged in prostitution. If
only those with ”marketable looks” are considered, as the interviewed procurers
put it, the proportion might reach 5-6 to 1. In addition, it should be noted that
the prostitutes are no longer recruited from the socially disadvantaged sections
alone. For example, there are hardly more than 30-40 prostitutes from the very
large Roma ethnic minority in town (in excess of 20% of the population).
Unlike Sliven, in the other large towns it is usually the procurers with criminal
records and the prostitutes from the low social strata that tend to be more trans-
parent. Those registered with the police are typically girls of Roma origin, from
socially disadvantaged families, from problem families, girls with deviant behavior
before reaching legal age. The findings are that almost nothing is usually known
about the procurers or prostitutes in their hometowns after they moved to anoth-
er place. Most of the time, the local police officers know the tale told to family
and friends. As a rule, when these persons return, they buy property in locations
other than the ones where they used to live (except for those of Roma origin and
the lowest social groups). In this context, if in a town such as Dobrich, Pazardjik,
Vidin, or other with a population of 40-50,000, the police are aware of 300-400
women engaged in prostitution, this number does not include the persons from
the middle social groups known to work elsewhere in Bulgaria or abroad.
If the proposed estimates are accurate, the high rate of prostitution puts forth
a number of social and criminological questions. In the long history of pros-
titution there have been towns half of whose female population was engaged
in prostitution. There are equally countries such as South Korea, Thailand, the
Philippines, and some countries in Central America that nowadays have a high
proportion of women engaged in prostitution compared to the general popula-
tion. The question is how did Bulgaria, which in its modern history up to 1989
was a country with predominantly conservative mores and where prostitution
used to be highly limited, end up with such mass-scale prostitution over a period
of 16-17 years.
The analysis of the statistics on human trafficking suggests that the transition from
a deviant and marginal occupation to the perception of prostitution as a ”normal”
job by average Bulgarians took place around 2000-2001. Up to 2001, prostitution
abroad more or less passed through criminal channels, often directly or indi-
rectly controlled by organized crime. Owing to the legal restrictions, leaving the
country called for special efforts (securing legal or illegal documents), arranging
59
128
Prostitution and Human Trafficking
and Human Trafficking
and Human Traf
transportation, housing, residence permits, (with regular or false documents), etc.,
which was carried out through the well-developed market for criminal services.
After the lifting of the Schengen visa requirements, however, the opportunity for
free access to the grey sector of the EU labor market without recourse to
criminal middlemen eventually led to the discovery of the highly profitable
European market for sex services. According to the survey by the Women’s
Alliance for Development, 12-13% of those engaged in prostitution have higher
education and 34%, secondary education.
215
This is a very different profile from
the one of trafficking victims. The opportunity to earn €15-20,000 - versus a typi-
cal €1,000-2,000 for unskilled labor – is an incentive for 90-95% of the Bulgarian
emigrants who left the country in large numbers in 2000-2003 and work in the
lowest segment of the West European labor market. It is difficult to say exactly
what transforms girl working as a babysitter, for instance, into a prostitute; or a
young man working as a construction worker into a procurer. A specialized study
would probably provide better answers to that question. What appears certain is
that in 2002, the models of Bulgarian prostitution abroad changed - instead
of girls who started prostituting in Bulgaria and were exported by club owners
or procurers, the predominant model became the small and family business one
and that of self-employment, with women who engaged in prostitution for the
first time in the territory of the European Union.
Attributing the cause to the difficult Bulgaria transition and deep economic crisis
is the most straightforward and common explanation but such a far-reaching
social deformation calls for much more specific answers. Regrettably, most of
the explanations that emerged in the course of the research drew on a limited
number of interviews and a few journalistic investigations and analyses. Many of
the factors seem to have acted conjointly in the period between the economic
crisis of 1996-1997 and the lifting of the Schengen visa requirements. Below is
an attempt to outline some of the more notable ones.
In the interviews conducted within the present study, the most commonly cited
reason for entry into the profession (for both prostitutes and procurers) was
unemployment and the lack of income to ensure even a minimal standard of
living. This finds confirmation in the data on unemployment since 1990. Large
sections of the population came under particularly hard pressure in the period
1998-2001. Up to 1997, the labor market reforms were slow-paced and radical
job cuts were put off. It was only with the aggravation of the crisis under exter-
nal influence, particularly on the part of IMF, that drastic layoffs and enterprise
liquidations began. In comparison, whereas in the summer of 1996, the rate of
unemployment was about 10%, by the spring of 2001 the unemployed had in-
creased to 19.3%.
216
According to surveys by NGOs, the rate was even higher
and exceeded 23.6%.
217
Moreover, the rise was not evenly distributed – in some
regions of the country unemployment reached 30-40%. As an outcome of the
radical and chaotic enterprise liquidation after 1997, a huge number of small
settlements with only one or two enterprises were left without any employment
opportunities while the big towns lost between half and two-thirds of the jobs.
215 ”Market for sex services on the rise.....”
216 The data are from the Employment Agency, see ”http://www.az.government.bg
217 See Early Warning Report, January-February, 2001, UNDP.
Early Warning Report, January-February, 2001, UNDP.
Early Warning Report
68
Organized Crime in Bulgaria: Markets and Trends
129
A similar situation is found with respect to income levels. Bulgaria is probably
the only country in Eastern Europe (except countries in armed conflict areas such
as Serbia, Georgia, and Armenia) where household incomes shrank so drastically.
By various estimates, in 1997 the average income was about 30% of the 1989
level. Even though in the late 1990s there were countries in Europe with lower
average income (such as Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine), Bulgaria – in addition
to ranking among the poorest European countries – was the one with the most
dramatic drop in income.
218
The severe and long-lasting economic crisis had a grave impact on the funda-
mental institutions responsible for the socialization of children – the family and
education.
In the period 1990-2003, the Bulgarian family went through deeply destructive
processes. Whereas in the last pre-crisis year of 1989 the annual number of
marriages was 63,000, by the late 1990s they had dropped to about 35,000 and
in 2001-2002, to under 30,000 a year. In 1989, out-of-marriage births made up
11%. By 1995 they had reached 25.8%, in 2000, 38.4%, and in 2003, amounted
to 46.1%.
A similar adverse impact of the economic crisis of 1996-1997 and the stagnation
that followed in 1999-2001 was to be observed in secondary and higher educa-
tion. Compared to the countries of Eastern Europe, in 1996-2000, Bulgaria had
the highest school dropout rate among the 15-19 age group – about 38-39% on
average, versus 16% in Poland and 19% in Hungary and the Czech Republic.
219
Surveys in that period found the average absentee rate in secondary schools to
amount to about 20%.
220
Data from international comparative studies on the
state of secondary education conducted by UNESCO Institute for Statistics and
the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) suggest that
Bulgaria was unique in terms of the drop in its education level.
221
According
to the TIMSS survey, from ranking fifth in 1995 in science, Bulgaria fell to the
17
th
place in 1999 and ranked 24
th
in 2003. None of the 40 countries surveyed
displayed a drop of such magnitude.
222
These data suggest that while it still had
some inertial force in the first 3-4 years of the 1990s, the secondary education
system steeply deteriorated after 1996-1997. Many of the respondents’ accounts
of their first experience with prostitution were associated with their high-school
years precisely in that period.
Another aspect of the crisis in the Bulgarian family and society conducive to the
mass spread of prostitution is the lifting of the sexual inhibitions fostered by the
traditional cultural and value system. While it has long been known that Bulgar-
ia’s population is among the least religious in Europe, up to the end of the 20
th
218 The contrast is only comparable to some countries engaged in military operations, in the Cau-
casus and former Yugoslavia.
219 ”Education at a glance OECD Indicators”, OECD, 2002; NSI.
220 See Kolyo Kolev, Andrey Raichev, Andrey Bundjelov, School and Social Inequality, Friedrich-Ebert-
School and Social Inequality, Friedrich-Ebert-
School and Social Inequality
Stiftung, Social Democratic Institute, 2000
221 A Policy Note, Bulgaria – Education and Skills for the Knowledge Economy, World Bank 2006, see also
A Policy Note, Bulgaria – Education and Skills for the Knowledge Economy, World Bank 2006, see also
A Policy Note, Bulgaria – Education and Skills for the Knowledge Economy
Overview of Public Expenditures; Education - State, Problems, and Opportunities, Ministry of Finance,
Overview of Public Expenditures; Education - State, Problems, and Opportunities, Ministry of Finance,
Overview of Public Expenditures; Education - State, Problems, and Opportunities
2004.
222 See http://nces.ed.gov/timss/
53
130
Prostitution and Human Trafficking
and Human Trafficking
and Human Traf
century sexual mores still remained rather conservative. With the onset of the
1990s, the number of sexual partners rose sharply. One of the most commonly
used indicators of these processes in the remaining East-European countries is the
rate of syphilis infection. In the Czech Republic, for example, where the number
of those engaged in prostitution is estimated at 10,000 to 25,000, a record-high
increase was registered, from 1.6 per 100,000 population in 1990, to 13.7 per
100,000 in 2001. In comparison, there was talk of a syphilis epidemic
223
in Bul-
garia, with the rate of infection reaching 32.6 per 100,000 in 1998 from 4.3 per
100,000 in 1990. Even though Romania had a similar syphilis rate in 1998 – 34.7
cases per 100,000 population – the dynamics were less pronounced as the in-
crease started from 19.8 cases per 100,000 in 1989.
With the end of Schengen visa restrictions in April 2001, Bulgarians wishing to
work in the European Union gained a great tangible advantage over the rest of
the Balkan states (in Romania, the visas were lifted nearly a full year later) and
the former Soviet Union. The record-high unemployment and extremely low
income levels combined with access to the Schengen area in fact created the
model of mass emigration. Whereas in the preceding period, between 1991
and 2001, about 19,400 people left the country each year, in 2000-2003, the
processes acquired the dimensions of a natural disaster with the average annual
number of non-returning migrants to the EU reaching close to 100,000.
Even though the process of mass transition from job-seeking outside the coun-
try to prostitution and procuring remains unexplored in many respects, certain
insights were gained from the interviews with respondents with first-hand expe-
rience. Poor education and the related lack of qualification came up against
labor market constraints in the EU. Moreover, the Bulgarian short- and long-term
emigrants were late to enter this market compared to those from Poland, Czech
Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Baltic republics. These difficulties led a huge
number of Bulgarian job-seekers to take up activities requiring little qualification
and paying just as little.
It was established in the interviews that in the very period between 2000 and
2003, the sex trade offered times higher remuneration compared to unskilled
jobs and proved an irresistible temptation in economic terms. The most com-
monly shared opinions accounting for this phenomenon cited as the main reason
the exceptionally high level and the security of the income. These opinions
were practically identical across the entire range, from the lowest segment of the
market – Roma girls working in the streets of Italy and Southern France, to the
high-end segment of prostitution in the Netherlands and Germany. To the Roma
girls, ”this is the best job for a Gypsy”, ”you make more money in a single day
than in a whole month in Bulgaria”, ”you have more money than the neighbor-
hood moneylender”. The same was told by Bulgarian students working in two
different Dutch cities as escorts: ”The only really high-paying job accessible here
is that of a prostitute”. The other motive that often came up concerned the con-
trast between real consumption afforded by wages of low-skilled workers and the
purchasing power that can be secured by prostitution. In the words of a girl who
223 Dencheva R; Spirov G; Gilina K; Niagolova D; Pehlivanov G; Tsankov N, ”Epidemiology of
syphilis in Bulgaria, 1990–1998,” International Journal of STD & AIDS, Volume 11, Number 12, 1
December 2000, pp. 819-822
Documents you may be interested
Documents you may be interested
