Statement prepared by Roseny Fangco, delivered by H.E. Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. Permanent Representative, Item 29: Advancement of Women, Third Committee, 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, October 8, 2018, Conference Room 1, UN Headquarters, New York.
“Thank you, Mr. Chair.
“To the victor belong the spoils is a war cry that has resounded for millennia, and women are part of the spoils—for sex, for slavery, for both. War rape had been downplayed as regrettable but inevitable when men go to war. But that is not true: the Duke of Wellington whipped or hanged soldiers for pillage and rape; which is how he got the Spanish population to help him defeat Napoleon in the Peninsula. Indeed, the more severe the discipline outside the battlefield; the greater the fire discipline on it. The strength of the disciplined Chinese Red Army, in contrast to the rampaging Kuomintang, lay in the contrast. Behavior before battle prefigures behavior after victory; and so people incline to the victory of disciplined as opposed to rowdy, rampaging and raping forces.
“It has been argued1 that war provided men with the perfect psychological backdrop to give vent to their misogyny. We are not slaves to our psychology; the greater proof is that men do respond to discipline.
“The problem is between the basic and the right. The basic desire to violate, to pick on the vulnerable; and the deeper desire to avoid being hurt for picking on the weak. It is the same with the trafficking of women and girls, and small boys, for sex and commerce. There must be a marker for full grown men, but the traffickers know better, and so do their customers. The strong can take it out on you when you are taking your pleasure from them.
“Repulsive as it is, trafficking exists in all societies whether developed or developing; in good and bad economic times—because the demand is constant, and the profit is great. But this is not a demand and supply problem. No significant number of women and girls, let alone boys, would willingly supply themselves to the slave trade. But in conflict and humanitarian crisis, women and girls have no choice: either starve or be murdered, or take your chance in the sex trade. But in good times, women are simply abducted, sold and kept in curtained cages.
“The Philippines supports the proposal that achieving the SDGs addresses sex trafficking; we sponsored a side event with this title last September 20. But eradicating poverty will not solve trafficking; there will only be more money for the commodity. Isn’t there a study done by the EU that shows that the wealthier people are, the more prone they are to sexually exploiting women and girls?
“Reaching the SDGs is only half the solution. Yes, educating imparts greater sense of self-worth in vulnerable women and girls. But when the situation is dire, education is useless: either go with your abductors or die; either stay in captivity or be tortured if you try to escape.
“It is a puzzle why the solution to this awful problem is still addressed to men. They are the culprits. No progress will be made unless the power to solve the problem of the trafficking of women and girls is devolved entirely to women. Women qualified in police and law-enforcement work. As city mayor, my President had the common sense to turn over sex-related crimes and their victims to women police officers. Cases moved faster, and chances of revictimization were reduced. In our culture, as I cannot speak for others, women offer a unique perspective—a comfort that victims need in order to confide; and a rage, an imperative rage impelling the wheels of justice to turn.
“The other half of the solution is the criminal justice response. Get the traffickers, I forbear to call them what I am tempted, after a part of the human anatomy. And their customers, who should be called by the same body part. Get them by any means sufficient, bearing in mind human rights and international laws, of course; but get them so they can harm no more. We prefer that they be put in small cages similar to where they’ve kept their victims for years—until they disposed of them. Thank you.”
1By Susan Brownmiller in her book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975)