Many routes are used for trafficking women around the world. Most trafficking for sexual exploitation is regional and takes place over short distances (Lehti and Aromaa 2006). In most areas of the world, including Europe, trafficking takes place inside the region. People are trafficked for sexual exploitation from rural areas and economically poor regions to cities and rich regions. Most victims are trafficked in and between third world countries and only 15 per cent of the esti-mated global trafficking has the industrialised world as a destination (Lehti and Aromaa 2006).
In northern Europe as well, trafficking is largely regional. The des-tination areas in northern Europe are the Nordic countries and the source countries in most cases are the Baltic countries and Russia (Lehti and Aromaa 2006). Mainly Russian and Estonian criminal net-works control the Finnish sex market. Trafficking operations target the Finnish market from Tallinn or Russia (Leskinen 2003).
The northern route is used for trafficking Russian women from the Murmansk region in northern Russia, who are trafficked across the
border from Russia to Finland, Sweden and Norway (Socialstyrelsen 2004, Leskinen, 2003). Regional patterns within a country may vary slightly due to various geographical routes and proximity to differ-ent countries. It has been reported that men travel from some cities in northern Sweden in the opposite direction and cross the border as “sex tourists” to Finland, Norway and Russia to buy sexual serv-ices in those countries, as well as to the Baltic countries, Stockholm and Thailand.13 According to a study on prostitution in Estonia, ap-proximately 25 per cent of purchasers of sexual services in 2006 were tourists, mainly from Finland (Pettai et al. 2006). There are Swedish reports of men living in the southern regions travelling to Denmark to buy sexual services (Socialstyrelsen 2007).
Transports are dependant on the route the trafficker chooses. The organisation of transports of trafficked women also varies depending on costs, immigration regulations in destination countries and avail-able modes of transport.
Trafficking takes place by land, sea or air (Schloenhardt 2001:
223–224). Trafficking by land using buses, trains or lorries may be seen as the easiest way. Transport ranges from the simplest means of walking women over borders to more sophisticated ways of arrang-ing transport by land, e.g., by train. One of the more brutal exam-ples of transporting trafficking victims refers to the sex industry in Israel, where due to more stringent passport controls the Bedouins guide large groups of women accompanying them through the Sinai desert on foot (Monzini 2005:111). A less brutal but nearly as eas-ily arranged Nordic example of trafficking by land is that of women trafficked from Murmansk in Russia to northern Finland, who cross the Finnish-Russian border by car, driven by one or two Russian men (Leskinen 2003).
Trafficking by sea (boat) has many advantages. First, the risks for being detained and arrested are lower than for either trafficking by air or land (Schloenhardt 2001:223–224). Second, it is easier to transport many people and the logistics are not as sophisticated as trafficking by air. For example, there is no need for travel documents or bribing offi-cials (this may not be the case regarding ferry traffic between northern European countries, see further below).
Trafficking by air requires more sophisticated planning and is the fastest-growing mode of transport, due to weak border controls and expansion of international air traffic (Schloenhardt 2001:223–224).
13 In a study of single men living in rural northern Sweden, Swedish social anthropolo-gist Lissa Nordin (2007) follows some of the men’s travels across borders to Russia to meet women, who are described as prostitutes. However, Nordin does not problema-tise this phenomenon as sex tourism; instead, she mainly describes it from the perspec-tive of their lives as single men in rural Sweden and mainly as an expression of these men’s search for a woman to share their lives with. In some of the cases described, the Swedish man and the Russian woman form a relationship and she visits him in Sweden.
One of the disadvantages is that it is difficult to transport large num-bers compared to boat transport. In addition, if the trafficked persons are illegal migrants, the transport must be carefully planned.
Routes identified in the survey
Several routes emerged in the empirical findings in all three countries.
The study shows that proximity is one of the major factors that de-termine what geographical routes the traffickers choose. This study also confirms that trafficking involving Sweden, Finland and Estonia mainly takes place regionally inside of Europe.
Russian and Baltic route by ferry
Russia (or Estonia) – Finland – Sweden is one of the main routes found in the survey, since the majority of women working in the Swedish and Finnish sex industry are from either Russia or Estonia.
When Sweden is the destination, Finland is often used as a transit country on the way from both source countries, Russia and Estonia.
An informant in the Swedish survey who was convicted of procuring gave an example of how travelling this route may be organised in the easiest way, which was to book a ticket on a charter tour from the major cities in Russia to Sweden. The charter tour included going by bus through Russia and Finland and then taking the ferry to Sweden.
Officially, there was only a one-day stop in Stockholm, but the wom-en would leave the tour in Swedwom-en and stay illegally without a visa.
Ferry is the most frequently used mode of transport for this route. The Estonian survey also confirms that Estonian women mainly take the ferry to Scandinavian countries. However, taking the ferry in north-ern Europe may have the opposite effect to the abovementioned argu-ment that going by sea does not require as much organisation as other routes may require, since there are borders to be passed.
In some cases, trafficked women have been smuggled by lorry driv-ers from Estonia and Russia to Sweden.
The interviews and pre-trial investigations in Sweden provided no confirmation regarding the northern route, but there are reports that it may be more common for men in northern Sweden to travel as sex tourists to cities in Russia (Nordin 2007, Socialstyrelsen 2007).
There is evidence in the Finnish survey of three major routes over which women are transported from Estonia and Russia to work in the Finnish sex industry. The first applies to women from Estonia, who travel by ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki. There are two routes from Russia: either by bus or train from the St Petersburg and Vyborg areas to eastern and southern Finland, or by car or bus from the Murmansk area to northern Finland. There is one large Finnish case involving women from the Murmansk area in the 1990s and early 2000s when regular drivers in organised mini-bus tours drove women to northern Finland (and occasionally to Norway and Sweden). There is also
evi-Figure 3. Routes found in the survey.
dence in the Finnish survey of women transported from Latvia and Lithuania and through Estonia to Finland.
The Balkan and eastern European routes
The route from the Balkan or eastern European countries appears only in the Swedish survey. There is no evidence of women from east-ern Europe being trafficked to Finland or Estonia. The route goes through the countries of eastern Europe, through Poland or Germany and Denmark, and then by ferry to Sweden, the destination. Regard-ing this route, the Swedish survey shows that the journeys in most cases are easily organised and arranged by car (either a driver or a trafficker driving the women), or the use of cheap bus tours (Roma-nia) with budget bus companies. There is a Swedish bus company ar-ranging these cheap trips between Romania and Sweden. There are also some reports of women going by train as well.
Women from these countries travel by air in only a few cases, which involved the more organised sex businesses operating from source countries (such as the Czech Republic).
Long distance routes
Since the majority of women come from countries within the region, modes of transport are often very simple. Buses, ferries and trains are the most commonly used modes of transport but women who travel longer distances from non-European countries need to travel by air, which may require more planning and organisation. The sur-vey shows that air travel is involved mainly in cases involving wom-en from non-European countries such as Thailand and Nigeria. The Swedish border police also report that there is evidence that Chinese migrant children have travelled by air, as was the case in a few cases involving people trafficked from India. The situation is the same in Finland, which seems in many cases to be a transit country for long distance trafficking of people from India and China for forced labour exploitation.
Transit
The traffickers use transit countries for some routes and for several reasons. Finland is the only country in the survey that may be regard-ed as a genuine transit country. There are some reports in Swregard-eden that confirm this, while Estonia seems to be the least used as a transit country.
Finland as a transit country
The Swedish survey shows that Finland is in several cases used as a transit country for trafficking and transporting women from Russia and Estonia to Sweden. According to the interviews and pre-trial in-vestigations, the reason for this is that it is much easier for Russian
nationals to obtain visas to Finland than to Sweden, which was also confirmed by a civil servant in Finland. The official called the Finn-ish consulate in St Petersburg a “visa factory” because approximately 1,500 visas a day – 400,000 a year – are issued there.
This was also expressed in an interview with an informant convict-ed of procuring:
Informant (I): For example, they can only get visas to Finland, not Sweden, but no visa is required to travel from Finland to Sweden.
At the border, they show their passport in Finland and stay there, or from Finland they can get to Germany or Denmark.
Interviewer (I): Is it common to get a visa for Finland?
I: Hmm.
I: Is it easier than to get one to Sweden?
Ip: Yes.
Later in the interview the procurer said it was very difficult to get a visa to any of the Scandinavian countries. She knew of women who went to other countries, such as Turkey, because no visa was required.
She also said that Spain and Italy were easier.
An informant representing the Swedish police confirmed that many avoided travelling directly to Sweden and therefore chose to go through Finland from Estonia, since there have been no controls at the ports where ferries from Finland arrive. On 21 December 2007, Esto-nia, Lithuania and Latvia entered the Schengen Agreement, which has eliminated systematic border controls also between Sweden and those countries.
Long-distance transits
The survey findings also indicate that expanding air traffic from Asia to Finland may become a pull factor in the future. Finland has be-come a transit country for trafficking people from China heading to other parts of Europe like the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany. Italy also emerges in the Finnish survey as a destination in some cases.
Sweden is transited on long-distance travels. One of the more fre-quent uses of Sweden as a transit country is for trafficking Nigerian women (through Skavsta Airport) to Oslo. There are reports of wom-en wom-entering one of the smaller airports where a low-price airline is op-erating. This is believed to be mainly due to the cheap flights. There are reports of people meeting the women at the airports and accom-panying them to Norway, where they are destined. These women are reported to be very frank about the purpose of their journeys. The border police have also noticed other persons transiting at the air-ports, most likely trafficked for other purposes than sexual
exploita-tion. An informant representing the Swedish border police expressed it as follows:
For instance, we had a major case with Indians last year, where trafficking could be suspected but for other purposes, such as forced labour [exploitation]. The same thing may be happening to the Chinese children disappearing into Italy.
According to informants, Finland may currently be more interesting as a transit country than a destination country. Due to the distant lo-cation, cold climate and small size, Finland is not an attractive desti-nation country to human traffickers. Another reason mentioned was the lack of an ethnic community.
Sweden as a transit country
There are only a few reports of Sweden being used as a transit coun-try because in most cases the trips were arranged directly from source to destination, which only has entailed passing other countries on the way.
A second example of transit, also called the transit case by the po-lice, involved a woman who was recruited by her main traffickers in her home city in Romania by offering her work as a housemaid in Sweden. She was sold to traffickers in Sweden, a male/female couple, who then took her to Oslo.
Transit can also be seen in a couple of cases where women have been somewhere before and from there have continued their jour-ney to Sweden. An example of one such transit is described in a case where a woman reported in the police interrogation that her traffick-ers had transported her through several transit countries. She started her trip in her home country in eastern Europe and travelled on her own to a neighbouring country, where two men met her and where she stayed for a month. At first she was in the country legally, since she had a visa, but it expired. In the police interrogation she described her situation as uncertain; first because she did not know what would happen and second because she was in the country illegally. After a month another man drove her to a third country, where he took her to a photographer and helped her get a fake passport. From the third country she was driven into the EU and Austria, where the main traf-fickers took her in hand and drove her by car directly to Sweden.
There are also examples of less complicated transits in cases where the women had previously been engaged in prostitution in other coun-tries. There are reports of women coming out of prostitution in Fin-land, Denmark and Germany. In cases where Finland was the second country, it seems that women vary their destination countries, going to both Finland and Sweden from time to time. This was seen espe-cially in cases involving Estonian women.
In cases where the main organisation operates from the source country and sends women alone to the destination countries, the on-line advertisements show that these women tour from city to city and this kind of trafficking is sometimes called “city tours.” In other, simi-lar cases the police only suspect arrangements of this kind.