Report: 2006 World Cup Sex Trafficking Overblown

You remember the stories leading up to the World Cup in Germany. The millions of testosterone-filled men would converge on a country where prostitution is legal and all hell would break lose, including 40,000 foreign women being forced to so sex work. Thankfully that did not turn out to be the case.

A report by the International Organization for Migration concluded that only five people were confirmed as having been trafficked. And that the dire predictions were just that. Now, undoubtedly there were more than five women trafficked, but the fact that the number is so low tells you that it was indeed overhyped. Was that a bad thing? Perhaps, but it did bring attention to the issue and in some cases it might have prevented women from being exploited.

The thing I take away from this is to take everything that is written leading up to South Africa 2010 with a grain of salt. Undoubtedly you will be reading a lot about the country’s crime and various other problems and all of them should be taken seriously. But as we saw in Germany what is a major story leading up to the World Cup can turn out to be not a story at all during it.

By the way, I am still waiting for a report that says that the officiating at the 2006 World Cup wasn’t worse than expected and that the quality of play was not as dire as what we saw.