International Women’s Day can have little, or more probably no, meaning to the many Bulgarian women caught up in the sex industry, often through being trafficked abroad or other forms of forced recruitment.

No law enforcement organisation or NGO working in the field can say with any certainty of accuracy how many women have been forced into the industry.

The figure of 10 000 Bulgarian women in the sex industry abroad is often bandied about. It is rooted in a claim made by the international anti-trafficking NGO La Strada at a conference in the year 2000. Whether the current figure is higher or lower depends, among other factors, on the extent to which law enforcement and other organisations have acted effectively against trafficking.

Those who seek to do so are up against forces that are ruthless and powerful. Women forced into sex work are routinely drugged, raped, seriously assaulted, have their passports stolen, are held captive, and are kept from having any cash in hand that could aid a possible escape.

According to a series of law enforcement reports, NGOs, and media reports, Bulgaria is one of the main routes for trafficking in women and children for the sex industry. Not only are Bulgarian women abducted, or lured through misleading advertising, into the international sex industry, this country also serves as a way-station for women similarly exploited. The route runs through southern Bulgaria into Greece. Eastern European women, especially Ukrainians, also end up in Turkey after travelling overland through Georgia and Bulgaria, or after crossing the Black Sea on boats from the Ukrainian port of Odessa.

There are four main routes along which Bulgarian women are lured abroad and subsequently sold into bondage to pimps. One is to Poland and Germany via Romania. Other channels lead to the Czech Republic, and on to Germany and Western Europe again. The third route runs via Macedonia to Albania, and on to Italy and Spain. The fourth and busiest route is to neighbouring Greece, Cyprus and the islands.

It appears that, with the internationalisation of organised crime and the opening up of new sources of “supply” after the fall of communism, no European country can be said not to be involved in the trafficking of women.

Some indications of how the illegal industry operates emerge from various police actions.

In 2005, Brussels police carried out 23 anti-street prostitution patrols and 466 administrative inspections.  They did background checks on 301 prostitutes. About 33 different nationalities were encountered, but one-third of the women originated from Eastern Europe. The Eastern European prostitutes constituted the largest group; most came from Bulgaria.

Such police actions usually find that the women involved are in the country illegally, and they are repatriated. Another side of the coin is that Bulgarian police asked to track down women reported as missing sometimes struggle to do so, because some organised crime networks issue trafficked women with false passports, making it impossible to trace border crossings.

Given the obvious risks to health involved in sex work, whether voluntary or forced, access to health care is crucial. Yet, as a recent report on Bulgarian sex workers in the Czech Republic noted, pimps and bosses prevent women going to health clinics for check-ups.

As regards the situation within Bulgaria, a United States state department report on human rights in Bulgaria, released in February 2005, noted that “prostitution is not prohibited by law; however, a variety of activities often associated with prostitution, such as pimping, are illegal. Forced prostitution is illegal and remained a serious problem. Poor socio-economic conditions contributed to a disproportionate number of Romani women drawn into organised prostitution.”

The rates charged by pimps for access to Bulgarian sex workers within the country are comparably low - averaging 30 leva an hour, according to a 2005 report by the BBC - meaning that whatever money may be passed on to the woman is proportionately scant.

In Bulgaria, recent months have seen a series of police actions against some aspects of the domestic sex industry, including operations against trafficking rings and against domestic producers of, and participants in, internet pornography.

While prostitution is illegal, the Government has responded to the health risk by agreeing to a programme funded by the Global Fund Against AIDS to conduct free HIV tests for sex workers over the next three years.

In the meantime, the industry is rampant and demand in foreign destinations and domestically is strong. Researching this article turned up sites on the sordid side of the internet, including a note from a man who contributed to a site rating sex workers in various countries.

“F...ing a Bulgarian girl is great,” wrote the man, who identified himself as German, and enclosed a table of rates that he said were charged at various hotels and other locales. In such a world, it can be no surprise that whatever values are meant to be promoted on Women’s Day, they can have no meaning for many.