The helpers and the women

In Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, trafficking of women and girls into forced prostitution has become a lucrative industry. Members of international troops, even of the UN and aid organisations operating in the area frequent the bars where abducted women work as forced prostitutes. Their financial ressources make the trafficking particularly lucrative. Even when the U.N. starts investigating the trafficking of women, their plight does not improve. The film shows how the women remain objectified - they are being bought and sold, and when there are police raids, Western customers of the raided bars are being treated with more respect than the "ladies" working there. The film questions whether the UN strategy of just raiding a few bars will work as the police seems to fail to identify forced prostitution. As long as the women are correctly registered with the authorities as prostitutes, everything is fine. The film avoids to become exploitational itself. Director Karin Jurschick takes on the cinematically difficult task to expose the structures enabling the trafficking rather than just focussing on individual victims and perpetrators.