Prostitution or Starvation: Refugees Face Few Options

The New Canaan camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kenya is named to sound like a promised land, but for many of the women living inside, it is anything but paradise.  That's because increasingly, women living in this and other refugee camps in Kenya are faced with a terrible choice: feed themselves and their families via prostitution or risk starvation and death.

Many of the women at New Canaan fled their homes during the post-election violence in Kenya a year-and-a-half ago.  Some were abandoned by their husbands after being raped, demonstrating the polar opposite of the concept of a "supportive partner".  Others left their husbands in search of a man who could provide for and feed their children, which given the abandonment of their victimized sisters isn't surprising.  Either way, once in the camp, these women have very few options to earn a living and to support their children.  They see prostitution as the only viable option, and in their defense, they're sometimes right.  According to Dr. Regina Karega, chairperson of the National Commission on Gender and Development, women who have no food reason that if a man is offering to feed them or their children in echange for sex, they'll "take the risk and feed [their] children.”  What mother wouldn't?

The risk Dr. Karega refers to is contracting HIV/AIDS or another STD via unprotected sex in the refugee camps.  However, women who have entered prostitution out of desperation, such as those in IDP camps, face additional risks, including rape, beatings, severe emotional and psychological trauma, and social isolation. Prostitution is dangerous for women, and often those dangers are exacerbated in camps like the ones at New Canaan.

Because these women are adults and no other person is forcing, coercing, or tricking them into prostitution, they are not considered victims of human trafficking.  But isn't the lack of options for survival other than prostitution a form of coercion? If the choice is prostitution or watching your children starve, is that really a choice?  The women of Kenyan IDP camps (and other refugee camps) are perfect examples of women who enter into prostitution out of desperation and a lack of other viable options.  They can't be called victims of human trafficking because another person or group of people is not exploiting them.  But surely they are victims of circumstance, victims of a gender-biased system, victims of a dearth of choices.  They are not empowered women making active choices; they are fighting for survival despite the terrible risks.

In the Bible, Canaan was supposed to be a land flowing with milk and honey.  New Canaan and the camps like it are lands overflowing with desperate women, hungry children, and increasingly, a coerced form of prostitution.  It's not human trafficking, but it's exploitation nonetheless. Prostitution or starvation is not a choice anyone should have to make.  In fact, it's not even really a choice.