UNITED NATIONS, Oct 03 (IPS) – Reem Alsalem, the UN Particular Rapporteur on Violence In opposition to Girls and Women, calls prostitution a “system of violence” that doesn’t profit society in any respect, particularly the ladies and ladies compelled into this technique.
Alsalem spoke on the Roosevelt Public Coverage Home in New York on Wednesday, October 2, to debate her particular report by which she posits that prostitution is a type of violence in opposition to girls and ladies. The report was first made public in June 2024, the place it was introduced to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Over 60 member states endorsed the report and its findings, together with however not restricted to Ghana, South Africa, Egypt, Norway, Sweden, Colombia, France, Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria.
Alsalem obtained over 300 submissions for the report from a number of stakeholders, together with civil society teams, academia, specialists, policymakers, and, importantly, girls from all over the world with lived expertise.
Internationally, the exploitation of ladies and ladies by means of prostitution and intercourse trafficking is a pervasive subject that threatens their security and rights. Alsalem remarked that many methods of prostitution are constructed on patriarchal norms that place the abuse of energy by the hands of largely males, who’re largely the ‘patrons’ or the profiteers within the intercourse commerce. Deeper financial inequalities and the complexities of emergency humanitarian conditions have solely additional displaced girls and ladies from methods that might have protected and empowered them.
Alsalem remarked that efforts to normalize or acknowledge prostitution as a type of labor, equivalent to referring to it as “intercourse work,” do extra hurt by gaslighting the ladies who’ve skilled it, and it fails to think about the intense human rights violations that may happen throughout the system, such because the bodily and psychological hurt they expertise beneath this umbrella of “labor.”
Pornography also needs to be categorised as a type of prostitution and violence in opposition to girls at massive, in accordance with Alsalem. She famous that its proliferation has solely normalized acts of violence and dangerous attitudes in direction of girls and ladies. Alsalem instructed IPS that the web platforms that host pornographic materials solely additional incentivize and promote these acts and different types of coercive and nonconsensual sexual acts.
Whatever the platform, how it’s branded or how one enters the commerce, the system of prostitution is predicated on the commodification of the physique to endure bodily exercise and beneath that there can’t be consent, Alsalem argues.
“Making an attempt to fake that there’s someway consent in prostitution, that ladies wish to do that, is definitely meaningless in context like prostitution as a result of the idea of consent is definitely not related when there are methods of exploitation and violence,” she stated. “And when the time period of consent is being weaponized whereas we absolutely know that no matter notions of settlement that ladies could have—or not less than a few of them—is extorted by means of bodily coercion, manipulation, and violence.”
Relating to the authorized frameworks round prostitution, this additionally reveals the contradictions inside international locations on the letter of the legislation versus its regulation in observe. The report signifies that beneath sure approaches, little is definitely carried out to de-incentivize “patrons” or “organizers” in participating in prostitution methods.
Criminalizing prostitution is extra prone to punish the prostituted individuals by means of persecution and incarceration, social ostracization, and even additional abuse by the hands of legislation enforcement. In reality, beneath this method, it’s uncommon that the ‘patrons’ are punished or that the third events are held accountable. Underneath the regulation method, authorized prostitution ensures management to the state by means of business institutions and federal or nationwide legal guidelines, together with tax legal guidelines that they revenue from, typically on the expense of the intercourse employees. Decriminalizing prostitution permits for all events to function with out the worry of persecution; nevertheless, this has additionally resulted in an elevated demand, and it doesn’t cease exploitative events from profiting off weak girls and ladies and main them into the intercourse commerce.
The report speaks in favor of the abolition method, in any other case referred to as the “Equality mannequin” or the “Nordic mannequin.” Underneath this mannequin, third events (the ‘organizers’) and the patrons are criminalized for participating within the shopping for and promotion of intercourse, whereas the intercourse employees don’t face legal persecution. As an alternative, extra investments are made in exit pathways for intercourse employees to make sure different work, financial stability, housing, and assist to handle trauma and even substance abuse the place wanted. Within the report, Alsalem notes that the Nordic mannequin maintains the worldwide normal on sexual exploitation and trafficking in individuals by criminalizing third events, and that it acknowledges nearly all of prostitutes are girls and ladies.
This method might have its limitations, nevertheless, as one report from the London Faculty of Economics (LSE) notes that intercourse commerce laws nonetheless varies throughout the totally different international locations that implement this mannequin, the security of intercourse employees stays unsure and so they nonetheless face the danger of policing. For migrant intercourse employees, their standing prevents them from accessing social protections, and beneath immigration legal guidelines, prostitution may be grounds for deportation.
The problems current within the present authorized fashions for prostitution replicate among the institutional buildings that preserve the established order the place intercourse employees are exploited and left unprotected. On the similar time, additionally they replicate a wider cultural subject on how prostitution, and extra broadly, intercourse, is mentioned and perceived.
“Along with being a human rights violation that wants authorized options, what’s talked about very clearly within the report is that we’re coping with a cultural subject,” stated Taina Bien-Aimé, Government Director of Coalition In opposition to Trafficking in Girls. She added that different acts of violence in opposition to girls, equivalent to intimate associate violence, sexual violence, and harassment, at the moment are acknowledged as types of abuse.
“However for some purpose, as a result of cash is exchanged in prostitution, someway it’s seen outdoors of the context of male violence and discrimination, notably in opposition to girls and ladies.”
In her report, Alsalem gives suggestions to governments on how they’ll reshape their laws and insurance policies on prostitution in direction of a route that’s extra conscionable of human rights and that facilities the experiences of the ladies and ladies who’re compelled to take part. Governments additionally have to take measures to handle the foundation causes behind prostitution and the components that go away girls and ladies at the next threat of it.
“The significance of this report is in its suggestions as nicely, the place the Particular Rapporteur is asking jurisdictions and member states all over the world to search out legislative and coverage options to this egregious human rights violation,” stated Bien-Aimé.
When requested to elaborate on the steps that should be taken by worldwide actors just like the United Nations, Alsalem referred to the advice that UN businesses also needs to undertake a rights-based method to prostitution. Alsalem commented that she had reached out to a number of UN businesses. Specifically, she is having “steady conversations” with the World Well being Group (WHO) and the Worldwide Labour Group (ILO), on her advice for these businesses to conduct research into the broader impacts of prostitution on survivors inside their focus of well being and labor.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such because the Frontline Girls’s Fund, and native civil society teams play an necessary position in spotlighting the problem. Alsalem instructed IPS that they should come collectively to take heed to the survivors of prostitution, in addition to interact with all actors engaged on the matter.
“We see that in decision-making locations, together with governments, parliaments, each time the problem is mentioned, the legislation is being ready or the coverage is being revised, some have privileged entry to those decision-making locations, and that may be these which might be advocating for full legalization of all features. Whereas these which might be advocating for the abolition mannequin… can’t get the identical entry, and that features survivors.”
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