“All trafficking is not sex trafficking,” argued Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow Pardis Mahdavi, at a recent Middle East Program event. Drawing on her ethnographic research in the United Arab Emirates, Mahdavi analyzed the policy implications of the latest Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The TIP report offers information on modern day slavery–human trafficking–and includes comprehensive data on policies and enforcement in 155 countries and territories.

The TIP report paradoxically hurts the people it tries to protect, claimed Mahdavi, by placing too much emphasis on sex trafficking and failing to take into consideration other types of abuse, such as those against men and migrant labor workers. Mahdavi pushed for a “breakthrough of the labeling and politicizing of sex traffickers as women and children,” which depicts women as passive and helpless, while excluding male victims.

According to Mahdavi, in Dubai, 80 percent of the population are migrant laborers. Often, these foreign workers do not trust the government to protect them against trafficking abuses, particularly if they are working in the host country illegally. Thus, civil society organizations, and not the state government, serve as the major source of protection and recourse for abused migrant workers. In the Persian Gulf region, Mahdavi argued that the “TIP report needs to be rewritten…to include increased labor inspectors and police training,” and called for the increased “accountability and transparency” of civil society organizations.

Mahdavi cautioned countries against using the TIP report to enact policies that make migration illegal. Tightening borders forces workers into the informal economy, she maintained, where it becomes difficult to track and protect these individuals.

Although the TIP report has weaknesses, it does pressure countries to act, as Mahdavi has witnessed in the United Arab Emirates, where it has provided opportunities for dialogue on the various aspects of trafficking.

Here in Morocco, where I am attending the IUSSP conference on population, if you never went to elementary school or if you married at a young age, you are likely to have more children.

A Bangladeshi couple is more likely to have a third child if they have 0-1 sons, but a European couple is increasingly likely to prefer daughters because they take better care of their aging parents.

Globally, a forthcoming Harvard study shows that the “Reproductive Health Laws Index”—which includes the legal framework governing abortion, condoms, IUDs, and birth control pills—can predict fertility (more liberal laws = fewer children) and potentially increase female participation in the labor force.

Such causes of population growth are favorite topics for demographers and family planning experts here at the conference, and were quite well attended. However, perhaps due to the large number of European attendees, the panels on this popular topic were empty in comparison to those examining aging, fertility decline, and migration—issues at the forefront of European policymakers’ agendas.

A Message From His Majesty

“One of the characteristic features of our population policy stems from our firm belief that [its] impact … cannot be determined in isolation from economic, social, cultural and political factors,” wrote Morocco’s King Mohammed VI in a welcome letter delivered to the conference, which also discussed aging, climate change, food security,natural resource scarcity, the economic crisis, and growing levels of income inequality.

Morocco is taking steps to tackle this complicated set of problems. The government has launched a National Initiative for Human Development to fight poverty and social inequalities, and help Morocco meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). He also notes that the country’s “political and social reforms aimed at increasing the scope of democratic participation and ensuring the advancement of women.”

Like all leaders, Morocco’s will be measured not by his words—eloquent as these may be—but by his deeds and the country’s progress. Morocco has some work to do to reach the MDGs and other social and economic goals.

“Although a half million women die each year, that doesn’t get attention, because the victims invariably have three strikes against them: They are poor, they are rural, and they are female,” journalist Nicholas Kristof says in a video interview about his new book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

“If men had uteruses and were dying at this rate, every country would have a minister of paternal mortality, the security council would be meeting, this would be a real international priority,” he says.

“Poor countries can’t begin to deal with food issues, with economic pressures, with conflict and shortages of water and grassland that may lead to social conflict, unless they begin to deal with population problems,” journalist Nicholas Kristof tells ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko in a video interview.

“Contraception is the cheapest way to combat climate change,” read the headline of The Telegraph in mid-September, announcing the release of “Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost,”a study from the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) and the London School of Economics (LSE). Similar stories appeared in newspapers around the world.

Though there has been near-universal agreement that the OPT-LSE paper oversimplifies the link between demography and climate change, the buzz among the family planning and environment communities has continued during the IUSSP conference in Marrakech. Perhaps this is because demographers are not used to appearing in the press except when discussing census results. More likely it is the timing of the report, with the Copenhagen conference on climate change coming in December.

Demographers often get a bad rap for being boring. There’s a saying that demography is all about sex—but the details aren’t as much fun. To find out, I’m in Marrakech, Morocco, reporting on the biennial gathering of number crunchers, the 26th conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). After the first day, I have only 4 days, 86 panels, 327 presentations, 5,340 PowerPoint slides, and 426 poster presentations left to go.

To most of you, this may not seem exciting. But it is terrifically important. For example, at a panel on maternal health, the presenters offered easier, more accurate, and less expensive ways to collect maternal mortality data, which led to a discussion of strategies for meeting MDG 5 and for improving maternal and infant health throughout the world. Similar panels addressed the challenges facing scientists and programmers working on issues as disparate as water, migration, and the effect of armed conflict on children.

For its 50th Anniversary, IUSSP also indulged in a bit of navel-gazing. Wolfgang Lutz called for more research on predictions and more policy recommendations—what he dubbed the “Demographers’ Transition” (an inside joke, to be sure). Ndola Prata’s “Opportunity Model” (developed jointly with Malcolm Potts and Martha Campbell), argues that use of contraceptives may increase simply if they are more available. Borrowing from marketing theory and such examples as remote controls and Post-It notes, the model generated quite an uproar. A UNFPA-hosted plenary on “After Cairo” closed the day with a strategic discussion about future population, family planning, reproductive health, and development strategies.

A Visit to the Hospital

At the Ibn Zohr Hospital’s crisis center in Marrakech, victims of sexual, physical, and psychological violence are treated and counseled free of charge. Though only founded in 2006, the clinic has defied expectations by helping hundreds of women and children each year, thanks in large part to an effective referral network comprising NGOs, media (especially radio), the police, hospitals, and health professionals. “Listening centers,” local outposts offering basic education on health and rights, are responsible for 56 percent of all referrals.

Ibn Zohr’s services are funded by the Moroccan government and UNFPA. Data has been collected since service delivery began, and shows that the overwhelming type of abuse suffered by women is physical (86 percent), while children under 15 report a mix of sexual (40 percent) and physical (43 percent) abuse, with more sexual abuse occurring among boys than girls.

Other IUSSP site visits included a rural reproductive health clinic, a center for abandoned children, and a house for female students. Too often, site visits are far away from the conference and before or after the main events, costing attendees extra time and money. Instead, the IUSSP site visits are here in Marrakech, where even the most experienced practitioners can learn more about Morocco’s unique blend of modernization and religious and cultural conservatism. These trips are truly unique and invaluable learning opportunities—organizers of similar conferences take note.

Gib Clarke reported from Marrakech, Morocco.

Photo courtesy flickr user DavidDennisPhotos.

A vast symphony of natural processes sustains our life on Earth. Recognizing the complex interdependence of nature’s concert reminds us of a simple fact: the social, economic, and environmental challenges we face are not isolated from one another, and neither are their solutions. Tom Friedman drives this point home in a recent New York Times op-ed, “Connecting Nature’s Dots.”

“We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems—climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and the need to grow enough food to feed the planet—separately,” Friedman argues.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have blamed sinister “foreign powers” for fomenting post-election civil unrest in Iran, but some analysts have fingered another culprit: demography. According to Farzaneh (Nazy) Roudi, program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Population Reference Bureau, two phenomena “provide a backdrop for understanding Iran’s current instability.” First is the country’s youthful population age structure, or “youth bulge”; over 30 percent of Iranians are between the ages of 15 and 29, and 60 percent are under the age of 30. Second is Iran’s surprisingly comprehensive family planning program, which has empowered women to make their own reproductive choices and enter higher education en masse.