The Kachin conflict that has displaced at least 100,000 people in Kachin and northwestern Shan states has “exponentially increased the risk of human trafficking along the China-Burma border”, according to the report.

Trafficking of women and children was a serious problem along the China-Burma border prior to the outbreak of fighting in June 2011. Since the conflict started it has forced more than 50,000 people to flee to underequipped camps along the border in Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) territory creating a situation where there many more women now vulnerable to exploitation, says KWAT.

"The villages from which women were trafficked (before the conflict) have now moved en masse to the Chinese border, bringing them to the very doorstep of a country with multiple migration pull factors,” stated the report.

The conflict is escalating human trafficking along the border, according to KWAT spokesperson Julia Marip.

"Push tens of thousands of people to China’s doorstep, deprive them of food and status, and you’ve created a perfect storm for human trafficking,” she wrote in a press release for the new report.

Many young women registered in internally displaced persons camps in KIO territory have crossed into China looking for jobs to support their families because there is a serious shortage of food in the camps after an unofficial aid blockade enforced by Burmese military authorities. Once in China with little money or official ID documents these women can quickly find themselves in dire circumstances.

One mother interviewed by KWAT revealed how her teenage daughter was sold after a brief trip to China went horribly wrong. “We were staying in an IDP camp near Laiza when my (15-year-old) daughter was sold. She was studying at the school in the camp, but had taken three days off school to collect coffee on the China side. There she met Ma B., a Kachin woman living in China, who told her Chinese men liked her and wanted to marry her” the mother told KWAT;  this a story that is becoming all too common.

KWAT’s report that was released this Wednesday documents 24 cases of actual or suspected trafficking involving refugee women displaced by the war. Many of the women were tricked, drugged, raped, and sold to their Chinese husbands as brides for sums that exceeded 40,000 Yuan (US $6,500). Others were sold into bonded labor.

While most of the cases documented by KWAT involved women who ended up in China's southern Yunnan province, which borders Kachin and Shan states, other women were sent as far east as Shandong and Fujian provinces.

One teenager interviewed for the report escaped from her captors when they were separated at a Chinese checkpoint. “When the policeman came to check for our IDs, I didn’t have any ID and they took me to the police station. When they asked me questions, I was not able to understand Chinese. Then, they called someone who can speak Burmese. I told them that I was sold to the two Chinese men. They arrested the two Chinese men and got me a ticket back to Yin Jiang (a town close the KIO capital of Laiza).” But many other women were not so lucky, and their relatives have had little success in tracking them down.

The report includes the testimony of the mother of an 18 year-old woman who was a poorly paid migrant in China. “M. worked as a housekeeper for a Chinese woman…Since the war started, M. was not able to return home and stayed at Lah Ying…the Chinese woman invited her to visit a place in China. No one could contact M. for two weeks. After two weeks, she made contact and reported that the sister of the Chinese woman had sold her in China,” the mother told KWAT.

China's heavily criticized one child policy is identified as a major contributing factor to the trafficking crisis along the China Burma border. The policy that has been in place for more than 3 decades has resulted in many Chinese families opting to terminate their female babies, distorting the male to female ratio, and causing a serious shortage of Chinese brides. As a result many desperate Chinese men have opted to buy brides from Burma, or from other impoverished communities in Vietnam and Laos, through marriage brokers and middle men.

While some of the arranged marriages by brokers occur with the brides’ consent, many others don’t. The KWAT report describes that many of the Kachin women who were trafficked were lured by the promise of well-paying jobs that turned out to be completely fictitious.  By this time they realize, it’s too late and they are forced into a marriage completely against her will.

In some cases the victim's own relatives are alleged to have orchestrated the trafficking of the Kachin refugees themselves. One KIO soldier interviewed for the report describes how he came back to the internalIy displaced persons (IDPs) camp where his family had been living to discover that his wife had sold his 16 year old son and youngest sister.

“My son and my youngest sister were sold to China in June 2011 after the war started. Their whereabouts are still unknown. My wife is now staying with a Chinese man in Yin Jiang, China. Only after I came back from the front line, I learned about this situation. I have unspeakable feelings to know that my wife herself sold my younger sister and son,” the man told KWAT.

The report notes that while Burma's nominally civilian government has received praise from the West for battling human trafficking - including a better rating on the recent US State department’s annual report card on trafficking - little, if anything has actually changed in northern Burma. In fact, the army's military campaign in Kachin and Shan states has created a situation where even more women are vulnerable to human traffickers.

Although there is an official anti-trafficking office in Loije, a government controlled border town that is very to the KIO's second largest town Mai Ja Yang, no Kachin trafficking victims have actually reported their cases. This is likely due to the fact that very few people trust the government while the military continues to target Kachin civilians for persecution. The government human trafficking office has done little, if anything, to address the problem or help the victims.

KWAT documented 24 cases involving human trafficking in the report, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, most cases go unreported by the victims’ families.