UNITED NATIONS, Oct 03 (IPS) – Reem Alsalem, the UN Particular Rapporteur on Violence In opposition to Ladies and Women, calls prostitution a “system of violence” that doesn’t profit society in any respect, particularly the ladies and women 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 towards ladies and women. The report was first made public in June 2024, the place it was offered 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, ladies from all over the world with lived expertise.
Internationally, the exploitation of girls and women by means of prostitution and intercourse trafficking is a pervasive problem 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 ‘consumers’ or the profiteers within the intercourse commerce. Deeper financial inequalities and the complexities of emergency humanitarian conditions have solely additional displaced ladies and women from methods that will have protected and empowered them.
Alsalem remarked that efforts to normalize or acknowledge prostitution as a type of labor, akin to referring to it as “intercourse work,” do extra hurt by gaslighting the ladies who’ve skilled it, and it fails to contemplate 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 must also be categorized as a type of prostitution and violence towards ladies at giant, in response to Alsalem. She famous that its proliferation has solely normalized acts of violence and dangerous attitudes in the direction of ladies and women. Alsalem informed IPS that the net 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 relies on the commodification of the physique to bear 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 girls 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 mentioned. “And when the time period of consent is being weaponized whereas we absolutely know that no matter notions of settlement that girls could have—or not less than a few of them—is extorted by means of bodily coercion, manipulation, and violence.”
In terms of 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 achieved to de-incentivize “consumers” or “organizers” in participating in prostitution methods.
Criminalizing prostitution is extra more likely to punish the prostituted individuals by means of persecution and incarceration, social ostracization, and even additional abuse by the hands of legislation enforcement. In actual fact, beneath this strategy, it’s uncommon that the ‘consumers’ are punished or that the third events are held accountable. Beneath the regulation strategy, authorized prostitution ensures management to the state by means of industrial 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 concern of persecution; nonetheless, this has additionally resulted in an elevated demand, and it doesn’t cease exploitative events from profiting off susceptible ladies and women and main them into the intercourse commerce.
The report speaks in favor of the abolition strategy, in any other case often known as the “Equality mannequin” or the “Nordic mannequin.” Beneath this mannequin, third events (the ‘organizers’) and the consumers are criminalized for participating within the shopping for and promotion of intercourse, whereas the intercourse employees don’t face prison persecution. As a substitute, extra investments are made in exit pathways for intercourse employees to make sure different work, financial stability, housing, and help to deal with trauma and even substance abuse the place wanted. Within the report, Alsalem notes that the Nordic mannequin maintains the worldwide customary on sexual exploitation and trafficking in individuals by criminalizing third events, and that it acknowledges the vast majority of prostitutes are ladies and women.
This strategy may have its limitations, nonetheless, as one report from the London College of Economics (LSE) notes that intercourse commerce laws nonetheless varies throughout the totally different international locations that implement this mannequin, the protection 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 a number of the institutional constructions that preserve the established order the place intercourse employees are exploited and left unprotected. On the identical time, additionally they replicate a wider cultural problem 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 problem,” mentioned Taina Bien-Aimé, Government Director of Coalition In opposition to Trafficking in Ladies. She added that different acts of violence towards ladies, akin to intimate accomplice violence, sexual violence, and harassment, are actually acknowledged as types of abuse.
“However for some motive, as a result of cash is exchanged in prostitution, someway it’s seen exterior of the context of male violence and discrimination, notably towards ladies and women.”
In her report, Alsalem gives suggestions to governments on how they will reshape their laws and insurance policies on prostitution in the direction of a course that’s extra conscionable of human rights and that facilities the experiences of the ladies and women who’re compelled to take part. Governments additionally have to take measures to deal with the basis causes behind prostitution and the elements that go away ladies and women 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 seek out legislative and coverage options to this egregious human rights violation,” mentioned Bien-Aimé.
When requested to elaborate on the steps that must be taken by worldwide actors just like the United Nations, Alsalem referred to the advice that UN businesses must also undertake a rights-based strategy to prostitution. Alsalem commented that she had reached out to a number of UN businesses. Particularly, she is having “steady conversations” with the World Well being Group (WHO) and the Worldwide Labour Group (ILO), on her suggestion 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 Ladies’s Fund, and native civil society teams play an essential function in spotlighting the difficulty. Alsalem informed 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 difficulty 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 can be advocating for full legalization of all elements. Whereas these which can be advocating for the abolition mannequin… can not get the identical entry, and that features survivors.”
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