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Reports clash on HIV and sex trafficking

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UN reports on HIV, stop sex traffickingTo combat sex trafficking, ‘we must address the demand for commercial sex that fuels it’.

Two UN reports are telling countries that in order to support efforts to reduce HIV/AIDS and to promote the human rights of people in prostitution, all aspects of the commercial sex industry should be decriminalized.

The two reports are the Global Commission on HIV and the Law’s report ‘HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights and Health’ (2012), published by UNDP, and the UNDP, UNFPA and UNAIDS-backed report, ‘Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific’ (2012).

But they not only make recommendations in direct opposition to international human rights standards, but also largely ignore the experiences and views of survivors of prostitution and sex trafficking, says campaign group Equality Now.

There is mounting evidence, Equality Now points out, that decriminalisation and legalisation – including of brothels – does not protect people in prostitution or improve their situation.

Survivors have long said that to combat sex trafficking, we must address the demand for commercial sex that fuels it, including through laws that criminalize the purchase of sex.

And the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) calls for countries to “suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women,” but the reports at issue call for the opposite: the decriminalisation of pimping, brothel-keeping and the purchase of sex.

“When people tell me that women choose this life [prostitution], I can’t help but laugh,” Ayesha, a survivor from India, told Equality Now.

“Do they know how many women like me have tried to escape, but have been beaten black and blue when they are caught?

“To the men who buy us, we are like meat. To everybody else in society, we simply do not exist.”

And Alma, a survivor and activist from the Philippines, has said that “Society’s understanding of human trafficking and prostitution needs to change.

“In my country, people believe that prostitutes are criminals and buyers are the victims. This is wrong…

“We need to change this thinking and educate young girls about the abuses of the sex industry, to let them know that they do have choices. Women are human beings, not commodities to be bought and sold.”

The effectiveness of combating sex trafficking through addressing the demand for commercial sex has been affirmed by the UN Trafficking Protocol, the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women and the former head of UN Women.

The Swedish (or Nordic) model on prostitution addresses demand by decriminalising the person in prostitution and criminalising the buyers and pimps.

This approach recognises the inherent inequality in the power dynamic between the buyer and the person bought in a commercial sex transaction, and that demand for commercial sex is the main driving force behind sex trafficking.

UNDP, UNFPA, UN Women and UN Volunteers issued a report in September 2013 which found that rape perpetration is strongly associated with the purchase of commercial sex, and noted that both stem from gender inequality.

Recognition of the connection between various forms of violence against women and the importance of addressing its root causes has been a central component of the UN’s work.

However, the two UN reports at issue seem to ignore this, instead calling for laws that address the demand for commercial sex to be repealed.

Promoting the human rights of people in prostitution – including their right to health, safety and freedom from violence and exploitation – and protecting them from HIV, is imperative.

However, says Equality Now, the UN reports’ recommendations are in direct opposition to efforts and policies that have been and are widely supported throughout the UN.

They also jeopardize efforts to prevent and address sex trafficking and promote gender equality.

These cannot be side effects of efforts to prevent HIV.

Please join survivors such as Ayesha, Alma, and Michelle and Sam, Equality Now, and a coalition of 97 survivor-led and anti-trafficking organisations worldwide who have been disputing the UN reports since November 2012, in urging UNAIDS, UNFPA and UNDP to:

Clarify their position on the decriminalization of pimps, brothel owners and buyers;

In all future development of policies and programs on issues that affect people in the commercial sex industry, consult, involve and reflect the views of survivors of commercial sexual exploitation as well as a more diverse range of groups working on the issue of prostitution and sex trafficking.

Click here to see who to write to.

For as Rachel Morgan so eloquently wrote in her recent article in the Independent: ‘To be prostituted is humiliating enough; to legalise prostitution is to condone that humiliation, and to absolve those who inflict it’.

Equality Now works to achieve legal and systemic change that addresses violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.

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