Abstract:

This article examines policies adopted by the League of Nations’ Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children (CTW) toward Europe’s Middle Eastern and South Asian colonies. It argues, first, that, under the pretext of protecting women from traffic, the CTW provided colonial powers with justification to monitor and restrict the international mobility of women traveling alone. Second, it demonstrates that the League adopted colonial racial assumptions about the sexuality of colonized women, and thus perceived them as less deserving of protection from forced prostitution. Third, it argues that the CTW thus helped perpetuate and justify differential treatment of foreign and indigenous women in Europe’s overseas colonies. The article relies on the CTW’s protocols, on the traveling commissions it initiated, on country reports to the League, and on protocols of the conferences it initiated dedicated to traffic in women in the “East.”