(Un)Told Stories of Post-War Prostitution: Challenging Hegemonic Narratives on Human Trafficking and Peacekeeping in Kosovo

Abstract

Sex industries worldwide tend to flourish during United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions. The hegemonic discourse claims that women engaged in prostitution in the context of peacekeeping missions are singular victims of trafficking who meet the demand of peacekeepers. The suggestion that UN peacekeepers engage in (forced) prostitution in war-torn and other vulnerable regions where they are expected to “do good” has provoked concerned reactions in academic and popular publications alike. However, assertions that, first, international peacekeepers create the demand for prostitution and, second, that this demand tends to be met through the trafficking of women for sexual purposes are poorly substantiated by empirical data that takes insider perspectives into account. This ethnographic study, conducted amongst women engaged in post-war prostitution in Kosovo, contributes to filling this knowledge gap. Findings show that a sole focus on peacekeepers as clients obscures other contextual factors that enabled the growth of the post-war prostitution business in Kosovo. These factors include weak law enforcement, corruption, socio-cultural attitudes adopted during the (prelude to) war that did not simply disappear when hostilities came to an end, the existence of regional smuggling and trafficking rings, Northern Kosovo as a nexus point for smuggling and trafficking and, finally, the establishment of a peacekeeping economy. Moreover, clients of prostitution have been more diverse than international peacekeepers alone. Aside from peacekeepers, the international clientele has been comprised of civilian and police staff, diplomats and relief workers dispatched in Kosovo. Nevertheless, the majority of the clients were local men and the diaspora, who return to their motherland in large numbers during the summer and winter holidays. The study concludes that these factors together make prostitution inherent to peacekeeping missions, as opposed to the result of actions of some undisciplined peacekeepers that can be dismissed. Moreover, the insider perspectives of women engaged in prostitution in the context of the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo show that the attention paid to alleged victims of negatively impacts those defined as such, as well as those who are not considered to be victims of trafficking and consequently ignored. On the one hand, the foreign women who engaged in prostitution in the wake of the war in Kosovo were primarily considered to be victims of trafficking. An exclusive focus on the victimhood of these women does not do justice to their lived experiences. For many of the foreign women involved in this study, prostitution in the context of the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo proved to be a way to resist structural inequalities and negotiate their situations. On the other hand, the local women engaged in prostitution in bars in Kosovo – who increasingly took the place of foreign women some years after the war had ended –were largely considered “voluntary prostitutes”. Consequently, these women have to deal with stigma and are denied healthcare attuned to their needs, as well as legal protection. Assumptions about foreign victims of trafficking and local “voluntary prostitutes” are nonetheless brought to the fore as they can prove effective for various actors.