Today's guest Bloggers: Christie Edwards & Susan Tiefenbrun

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Christie Edwards (left) and Dr. Susan Tiefenbrun (right) as today's guest bloggers.

► A 2003 recipient of France's Légion d'Honneur, Susan is Professor of Law at San Diego's Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she also serves as Director of the Center for Global Studies; Director of the Summer Program in Hangzhou, China, conducted jointly with Zhejiang University College of Law; and of the Summer Program in Nice, France, conducted jointly with Hofstra University and the University of North Carolina.

Susan earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees magna cum laude from the University of Wisconsin, her J.D. from New York University School of Law, and her Ph.D. magna cum laude from Columbia University, magna cum laude. After attending law school Susan -- who speaks 10 foreign languages -- practiced international commercial law in paris and New York. She's an expert in eastern European joint venture laws, as well as the laws of the European Union, China, and the former Soviet Union. Before joining the faculty at Thomas Jefferson, she taught at Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, Michigan, and Hofstra. Susan has written frequently on human trafficking; her other interests include international law, corporate law, securities law, international intellectual property, women and international human rights law, and law and literature. Susan is past President of the Law and Humanities Institute and currently the Vice President of its West Coast branch.

► Christie earned her J.D. in 2007 from Thomas Jefferson, specializing in international human rights law. She also has a B.A. from The Master's College, where she spent most of her studies abroad in Israel, Switzerland, and interning in Washington, D.C., and is now pursuing her LL.M. degree at American University's Washington College of Law, with specializations in International Human Rights and Gender. Christie is currently working on several research and writing projects concerning human rights issues that affect women in North Africa, and has just been awarded the prestigious Arthur C. Helton Fellowship of the American Society of International Law in order that she may further her research.

Susan and Christie currently are collaborating on a new casebook on women and international human rights law. In their guest post below, they discuss their recent co-authored article, Gendercide and the Cultural Context of Sex Trafficking in China.

Heartfelt welcome!

Gendercide, sex trafficking in China

(Our thanks to IntLawGrrls for this opportunity to guest post on the article that we recently published in the Fordham University International Law Journal)

There is a demographic crisis in China that arguably rises to the level of "gendercide."
Women in China are bought and sold, murdered and made to disappear, in order to comply with a governmental policy that coincides with the cultural phenomenon of male-child preference. Demographers estimate that there are between 50 and 100 million missing women in China. In answer to the resulting scarcity of women, gangs, "specialist households," and "specialist villages" have been working in an organized chain to kidnap and sell women in China.
Several factors work interdependently to cause a serious shortage of women in China. Women are disappearing because of:
► social pressures of male-child preference;
► zealous enforcement of China’s "One-Child Policy" by local government authorities; and
► murderous responses to this policy undertaken by millions of ordinary people in China, who are desperate to have a son.
(credit for Reuters photo of above-right mural extolling One-Child Policy)
The 2000 Chinese census reported that 117 boys were born for every 100 girls, compared to the global average of 105 or 106 boys to every 100 girls. This disparity may be linked to the practice of aborting female fetuses and killing female babies.
This gender imbalance has caused an increase in prostitution and human trafficking in China.
Sex trafficking in China takes many forms:
► purchase of women for brides;
► purchase of a male son; or
► sale of unwanted female children.
Many men, primarily in rural China, desperately seek brides in a country where women are in short supply. These men will resort to purchasing a trafficked woman for marriage. Couples seeking a male child will sell or even murder their girl child in order to make room for the purchase of a trafficked baby boy. Young women and infants are bought and sold like cargo.
Human trafficking in China is a lucrative international business that is expanding due to several factors:
► the aggressive implementation of the One-Child Policy;
► a faulty legal system, and
► the blind adherence to longstanding cultural traditions that devalue women.
In China, Communist Party directives overshadow the legislative and judicial process. The primacy of government policy results in the ineffectiveness of laws that theoretically protect women and female children in China.
In order to reverse the deleterious effects of the One-Child Policy and its commodification of women, the Chinese government must make a commitment to implement laws and policies that can reverse longstanding cultural trends and combat discriminatory traditions against women.

(credit for China map, courtesy of International Labour Organization Mekong Sub-regional Project to Combat Trafficking in Children and Women)

Since 1979, China has instituted economic reform policies that miraculously work in harmony with a Communist political system. Now China needs to perform another miracle: the adoption of cultural reforms that produce gender parity and that stop the marginalization of women in Chinese society. Only then will the lucrative business of trafficking in women be reduced, if not eliminated entirely.