CAIRO: Egypt has come in second place in the trading of women, according to Azza Soliman, the national coordinator of fighting female human trafficking and trade. Soliman said that Egypt has turned from a transit country to a “residence country” for the women, adding that the government has taken notice and started building 9 shelters for those women caught in human trafficking, Soliman said on al-Ashera Masa, a news TV program. She raised the issue that many women are trafficked into Jordan where they work as sex workers or in casinos. She said many trafficked girls escape or take refuge in the Egyptian Embassy in Jordan. Experts say the number of women trafficked into neighboring countries is on the rise as wealthy Arabs take advantage of difficult economic situations, marry young girls with the intent to use them in the sex trade. Makram Ouda, executive director of the Jordanian Women Union said that they have found 70 Egyptian women who were trafficked into Jordan and kept there as part of the sex trade network after their husbands “bought” them from their parents. And while the marriage contracts are legitimate, these new brides find themselves working either as beggars or as sex workers. The phenomena of forcing young girls to marry rich men is not new in Egypt. Many reports have exposed the practice that allows fathers facing difficult living situations to “give their daughters away” for an amount of money. Later the young girl, sometimes as young as 14-years-old, according to some news reports, find themselves in a foreign country with a stranger as a husband, disconnected from all they know. They are abused in the worst ways possible and the lucky ones seek help and return home.
