WUNRN
Commission on the Status of Women, Fifty-second Session, 2008
NGO Collaborative Statement
Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Women & Girls
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, UNANIMA International, and Mouvement
pour l’Abolition de la Prostitution et la Pornographie urge immediate action to eradicate the
commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls through changes in laws and
policies, including economic and political measures.
Commercial sexual
exploitation of women and girls of all ages, including prostitution,
pornography, the Internet bride industry, and sex tourism, is one of the most
devastating, and escalating practices of gender-based violence assaulting the
human rights and dignity of women and girls.
Victims of the sex industry, often suffer severe physical and mental
health consequences including injuries from beatings and rapes; psychological
trauma; HIV/AIDS; and alcohol and drug abuse either induced by pimps or by
victims’ attempts to reduce their physical and mental pain.
Increasingly, governments prioritize revenue and profit at the expense
of women’s rights and equality. Specifically, they have adopted policies
tolerating, regulating, and, in some places, even legalizing prostitution as a
form of work and legitimate source of state revenue, with the explicit
encouragement of inter-governmental organizations. Such policies fail to acknowledge the
enormous extent to which women and girls in the sex industry have been
trafficked and exploited, nationally and across borders, as defined by the
Palermo Protocol. Prostitution should
not be labeled “sex work,” and accepted as any other job. It is also a mistake
to assume that trafficked children are no longer victims but “voluntary
workers” when they reach the age of 18, or that prostitution no longer poses
the same harms to their well-being.
Trafficking, prostitution and other forms of
commercial sexual exploitation are fueled by male demand. Codifying male sexual privilege by legalizing
or regulating prostitution gives men permission to increase the demand for
trafficking for sexual exploitation. Legitimizing prostitution as work thus
commences a vicious cycle in which the sex industry expands, and increases the
demand for sex trafficking victims. Countries that have legalized prostitution activities
should recognize the integral link between prostitution and sex trafficking,
and that they are, in fact, creating profitable markets for traffickers.
We
believe that no society that purports to uphold gender equality should tolerate
and accept the sexual commodification of women and girls. The UN, governments
and civil society must, therefore, shift the moral and criminal responsibility
for sexual exploitation away from the women and girls who are victimized to the
men who harm them, the traffickers who enslave them, and those governments who
countenance such violence. Governments must increase support and services for
all victims of sex trafficking.
Governments must initiate public education campaigns aimed at preventing
victimization and eliminating demand. Governments must create and enforce
effective laws against trafficking and sexual exploitation, as obligated by the
Palermo Protocol, the Convention for the Suppression of the
Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, CEDAW
and other international instruments.
It is unacceptable that a
sub-class of impoverished and socially marginalized women and girls are exposed
to the harms of prostitution in an ill-fated attempt to address development and
the feminization of poverty.
Legitimization and normalization of the sex industry have a profound,
negative long-term impact on the human rights, integrity and dignity of all
women and girls. We therefore urge that
governments prevent the proliferation of the sex industry.
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