Legal Systems of Prostitution across the Globe are Failing our Women

The room was overflowing with conference participants, with many sitting on the floor and others crowding the doorway and hall outside. At the front sat a panel of six women, all with a testimony to share with us. A testimony demonstrating their personal realities as women who have survived prostitution.

The panel was titled “Impact Testimony: The Reality of Prostitution’s Legal Frameworks on the Ground,” sponsored by SPACE International (Survivors of Prostitution-Abuse Calling For Enlightenment), The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, and The Women’s Front of Norway. The stories the panelists told brought to life jarring truths about prostitution in Canada, the United States, England, and Germany. Although each had different experiences, there were commonalities among all of them. Many of them were victims of child exploitation, and were led into prostitution through family, abusive relationships, and severe poverty. Prostitution, a panelist remarked, is not a choice.

In all contexts, lack of government and legal support inhibits women and girls in prostitution from breaking free, and in many cases, works against them. In the countries discussed in the panel, the common legal frameworks are either prohibition or legality of prostitution. In either case, it is the women being prostituted and trafficked who are silenced, marginalized, and criminalized, while the buyers of sex and pimps remain free.

All panelists supported that prostitution and trafficking are one in the same, and strongly advocated for the implementation of the Nordic, or Abolitionist, Model as the most adequate for bringing justice for women being prostituted and trafficked. This model supports laws which criminalizes the person who buys the sex, and decriminalizes the sellers. The reality is this: current legal structures regarding prostitution in some of the world’s most powerful countries serve to marginalize and imprison girls and women, the victims. It is time for this to change.

Prostitution is the Oldest Oppression

Prostitution, Sex-Trafficking, and the Human Rights Abuse Inherent to the Sex Trade panel was the most emotional of the CSW 2015. The panel was arranged by SPACE International (Survivors of Prostitution-Abuse Calling for Enlightenment) and Women’s Front of Norway. In her introduction, the chair provided examples of Norway and Sweden where prostitution is illegal. In Sweden, purchasing sexual services, pimping, procuring, and running a brothel are prohibited. In addition, Norway legally banned advertisements of sexual services. The panel called other countries to follow Scandinavian example.

Some statements from the panel: “Prostitution is a fundamental violence of human rights. Prostitution is a torture. Prostitution denies women rights. Prostitution is a slavery.”

Among panelists I saw wonderful, active, and cheerful ladies. The chair introduced some of them as survivors of the sex exploitation. Each of them shared their own personal story. They faced the other side of the society where everyone turned away from them.

After years of torture, violence, and abuse, she decided to start a new page of her life and get a higher education degree. She applied and was refused twice because of her past. “I was not seen as a human being with a heart and soul,” she concluded. Now, she has a degree in social work and got a job where she is not beaten and hurt.

A girl from Canadian First Nations did not choose it, she was forced to this at the age of 12. She got a trauma, it was a hell, her dignity was taken away. She become pregnant. “The birth of a little girl stopped me from prostitution. I decided that my girl will not go through this.” Society has failed to protect her. It labelled her as a parasite, a dangerous offender. She was beaten and tortured. He broke her jaw and arm. “I want to be reborn.” Her pimp is still free and continues to kill young girls’ future. In Canada, she says, indigenous girls are sold at the age of 8 and 9. They are called "blueberries because they are wild". Comparing to other girls, they are paid less. Human trafficking, prostitution, and pimping should be criminalized in every country. It can be stopped. Think of slavery or a death penalty.

Panelists ended saying: “Prostitution is not the oldest profession, it is the oldest oppression.”   

“Let’s criminalize sex purchases!”

Perhaps the most powerful panel I attended at the 59^th annual Commission on the Status of Women was entitled “Criminalizing Sex Purchase: A Method to Combat HIV/AIDS?”. This session was sponsored by National Organization for Women’s Shelters, Young Women’s Shelters in Sweden, and Unizon, and its impressive panel included women physicians/healthcare workers, activists (such as Rachira Gupta, recipient of Clinton Global Initiative Award and an Emmy Award), and retired sex workers themselves from around the globe.

Boldly, these women began their presentation challenging the stance of the United Nations/UN Women in their effort to legalize prostitution. This, they argue, does not at all help protect or empower sex worker women for many reasons, the most important of which being that most women do not want to be sex workers at all. It is impossible to delineate prostitution from human trafficking and as long as prostitution continues to take place, so too will women being forced, captured, or sold into sex work because the demand for their services remains no matter where, why, or what conditions the women workers come from. Therefore, decriminalization of prostitution more times than often ends up decriminalizing pimping and brothels, and giving sex purchasers impunity while leaving sex workers alone with no support of the law behind them.

Furthermore, legalizing prostitution is flawed, the panel insisted, because it assumes that women possess equal status and opportunity to exercise choice in the matter of involving themselves in sex work in the first place, which disregards whether they are trafficked, monitored by pimps, or left with no other options to support their family. Additionally, it also disregards these women’s ability to exercise choice in the critical decisions that are part of such work such as using condoms, untraditional/violent penetration, or knowing whether their partners are infected with sexually transmitted infections. Unfortunately, many sex workers perceive their status as subordinate to their pimps and their purchasers, or are in desperate financial situations that lead them to silence their opinions, no longer consider their own health, and accept more money for riskier clients/behaviors.

Optimistically, the “Nordic Model” approach to prostitution has shown promising results in Europe after widespread enforcement of laws decriminalizing sex workers themselves, but criminalizing sex buyers for their purchases. Here, legislation attacks the overwhelming demand for prostitution by assigning punishment and accountability to purchasers, scaring them away and leading to less instances of prostitution altogether – a step towards the ultimate goal of total abolishment of sex work. Specific data on Nordic societies with this legislation, such as Sweden, compared to similarly cultured societies that legalized the transaction of prostitution, such as Germany, is striking. There is a steep decline in instances of sex work in Sweden where buyers are targeted, but a blooming industry in Germany under open purchase laws, with about 4,000 women catering to about one million men each day, with an increasing amount of those 4,000 women being trafficked into the industry.

Ultimately, the panel acknowledged that the eradication of prostitution is a long, hard battle, but they emphasized the importance of absolutely terminating such work, and offered a few strategic steps towards achieving this lofty goal. Firstly, they asked that more data, and more recent data be gathered on prostitution and its effects. This is important because current decisions to legalize prostitution are being made based on outdated and overall minimally available information on the trends and consequences of the industry. Secondly, the panel begged for the true lack of agency women are able to express to be acknowledged, and that these fundamentally unequal grounds in which they stand against men do not allow them a fair opportunity to exercise choice in sexual matters. And further, they called for the recognition that it is this societal inequality that causes the legalization of prostitution to continue to cultivate a culture where men believe women are items that can be used and bought under their own demand. Lastly however, the panel underscored the fact that the fight against prostitution should most importantly be recognized as every person’s battle that is in every person’s best interest, since it not only the sex workers and the sex purchasers that are at risk for adverse consequences such as sexually transmitted infections, but also these people’s own spouses and other partners that remain oblivious and not considered in the decision-making of such risky behaviors.