In June, Sanctuary’s Director of the Anti-Trafficking Initiative, Jessica-Wind Abolafia, spoke at a UN multi-stakeholder hearing on the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons. Drawing from over a decade of representing trafficking survivors, Jessica called on member states to confront the misogyny and racism embedded in the commercial sex trade — and to address the demand that fuels it.

Watch a recording of Jessica’s speech and read her full remarks below.

Thank you, Madamme Chair and UNODC. Good Morning, Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, and Colleagues.

My name is Jessica Abolafia. I am honored to speak before you on behalf of Sanctuary for Families, New York’s largest provider of services to survivors of gender based violence. As Director of Sanctuary’s Anti-Trafficking Initiative, I oversee attorneys, case managers and clinicians who exclusively serve trafficking survivors. For over a decade, I have personally had the privilege of providing direct legal representation to thousands of trafficking survivors and their families.

Outside these walls, on the ground, day after day, I hear my clients’ stories; of survival and extraordinary resilience. My clients do not want pity nor saving. They want to heal, they want to be heard. Not just of being sold, but of being purchased. When my clients disclose it is not just about surviving pimps and traffickers, but the extensive victimization of the men who purchase them for sex. Violent, dehumanizing, and indifferent to consent. The list of harms inflicted by sex buyers on our clients are long – rape, torture, burns, broken bones, strangulation, Femicide. The resulting physical and emotional impacts, such as traumatic brain injury, chronic reproductive maladies, and trauma are profound and often life-long.

Article 9.5 of the Palermo Protocol directs member states to “discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children, that leads to trafficking.”

Sex buyers are the market force that fuel the multibillion dollar business of buying and selling women and girls, who are mostly of color.

When a survivor relays being sold over and over again 10, 20, 30, 50 times in a day, why is it that we so comfortably ask who is selling but not who is buying? We speak about push factors and victim vulnerability but dampen or rid our remarks of the person with the money, the power the privilege: the buyer.

This is not moralism, it is misogyny.

It is racism. Black, Brown and Indigenous women are disproportionately represented in the commercial sex trade.

Article 5 of CEDAW calls on state parties to achieve the elimination of prejudices based on perceived inferiority of women or stereotyped roles of men and women.

This means directly addressing the very cultural pillars – the pervasive subjugation – on which the buying and selling of women and girls is at very least permitted, in some cases, even sanctioned.

I respectfully urge member states to address the demand for commercial sex, for without the buyers, there would not be stories of sex trafficking to tell.

Thank you.