UNITED NATIONS, Oct 03 (IPS) – Reem Alsalem, the UN Particular Rapporteur on Violence Towards 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 acquired over 300 submissions for the report from a number of stakeholders, together with civil society teams, academia, specialists, policymakers, and, importantly, ladies from around the globe with lived expertise.
The world over, the exploitation of ladies and women via prostitution and intercourse trafficking is a pervasive difficulty that threatens their security and rights. Alsalem remarked that many techniques of prostitution are constructed on patriarchal norms that place the abuse of energy by the hands of principally 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 ladies and women from techniques that may have protected and empowered them.
Alsalem remarked that efforts to normalize or acknowledge prostitution as a type of labor, corresponding 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 inside the system, such because the bodily and psychological hurt they expertise below this umbrella of “labor.”
Pornography must also be labeled as a type of prostitution and violence towards ladies at giant, in line with Alsalem. She famous that its proliferation has solely normalized acts of violence and dangerous attitudes in direction of ladies and women. Alsalem advised 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 is predicated on the commodification of the physique to endure bodily exercise and below that there can’t be consent, Alsalem argues.
“Attempting to faux that there’s in some way consent in prostitution, that ladies need 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 techniques 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 ladies could have—or a minimum of a few of them—is extorted via bodily coercion, manipulation, and violence.”
In relation to the authorized frameworks round prostitution, this additionally reveals the contradictions inside international locations on the letter of the regulation versus its regulation in observe. The report signifies that below sure approaches, little is definitely finished to de-incentivize “patrons” or “organizers” in partaking in prostitution techniques.
Criminalizing prostitution is extra more likely to punish the prostituted individuals via persecution and incarceration, social ostracization, and even additional abuse by the hands of regulation enforcement. Actually, below this method, it’s uncommon that the ‘patrons’ are punished or that the third events are held accountable. Below the regulation method, authorized prostitution ensures management to the state via business institutions and federal or nationwide legal guidelines, together with tax legal guidelines that they revenue from, usually on the expense of the intercourse employees. Decriminalizing prostitution permits for all events to function with out the worry 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 method, in any other case referred to as the “Equality mannequin” or the “Nordic mannequin.” Below this mannequin, third events (the ‘organizers’) and the patrons are criminalized for partaking within the shopping for and promotion of intercourse, whereas the intercourse employees don’t face felony persecution. As a substitute, 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 customary on sexual exploitation and trafficking in individuals by criminalizing third events, and that it acknowledges nearly all of prostitutes are ladies and women.
This method 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 they usually nonetheless face the chance of policing. For migrant intercourse employees, their standing prevents them from accessing social protections, and below immigration legal guidelines, prostitution will be grounds for deportation.
The problems current within the present authorized fashions for prostitution mirror a few of the institutional constructions that keep the established order the place intercourse employees are exploited and left unprotected. On the identical time, additionally they mirror a wider cultural difficulty 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 difficulty,” mentioned Taina Bien-Aimé, Government Director of Coalition Towards Trafficking in Ladies. She added that different acts of violence towards ladies, corresponding to intimate companion violence, sexual violence, and harassment, are actually acknowledged as types of abuse.
“However for some purpose, as a result of cash is exchanged in prostitution, in some way it’s seen exterior of the context of male violence and discrimination, significantly towards ladies and women.”
In her report, Alsalem affords suggestions to governments on how they’ll reshape their laws and insurance policies on prostitution in 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 handle the basis causes behind prostitution and the elements that depart ladies and women at a better danger of it.
“The significance of this report is in its suggestions as effectively, the place the Particular Rapporteur is asking jurisdictions and member states around the globe to search out legislative and coverage options to this egregious human rights violation,” mentioned Bien-Aimé.
When requested to elaborate on the steps that have to be taken by worldwide actors just like the United Nations, Alsalem referred to the advice that UN businesses must also 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 Ladies’s Fund, and native civil society teams play an vital function in spotlighting the problem. Alsalem advised IPS that they should come collectively to hearken 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, at any time when the problem is mentioned, the regulation 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 features. Whereas these which can be advocating for the abolition mannequin… can not get the identical entry, and that features survivors.”
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