WUNRN
Prostitution & Trafficking -
Violence Against Women & Girls - Sport Event Cautions
August 21 2008
'Protect women forced to sell sex'
By
Ella Smook
Moves to
legalise the sex industry that suggest women voluntarily choose prostitution as
a viable profession should be vociferously opposed, a multinational conference
focusing on the impact of the 2010 World Cup on trafficking of women and
children was told.
Gunilla
Ekberg, of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, on Wednesday told 80
delegates from six continents that all paid-for sex was in fact a form of
violence.
The
three-day Cape Town conference is highlighting the 2010 World Cup as an
important opportunity to develop a response to violence against women
generally, but more specifically to the trafficking of women and girls.
|
The
normalisation of the idea that women were 'for sale' affected all women |
Conference host
and director of the Masimanyane Women's Support Centre, Lesley Ann Foster, said
it was necessary to actively develop and enforce effective legislation which
would offer safety and security to victims of trafficking and reduce the
vulnerability of women and children.
Ekberg
told the delegates that any country wishing to call itself democratic was
obliged to put in place laws and policies to close down legal and illegal
brothels, and to strongly enforce those laws in a bid to target the root cause
of prostitution, men who buy sex and human traffickers.
It was
an "offensive idea", she said, to suggest that some women voluntarily
chose prostitution as a viable profession.
The
reality was that most women were forced into the business from a position of
inequality and disempowerment.
She
warned that instability and oppressive conditions, as found in many developing
countries, drove women to prostitution because they were left without
alternatives. The normalisation of the idea that women were "for
sale" affected all women in a country that condoned such views, Ekberg
said.
Intensive
research into trafficking and prostitution was required, as well as the removal
of legislation which criminalised women involved in prostitution.
Rather,
legislation which addressed all forms of violence against women, including the
violence perpetrated by the buyers of sex, and the violence and inequality
enshrined in religious and traditional practices, should be implemented.
The
conference, presented by Norwegian group Fokus Forum for Women and Development,
continues on Thursay and Friday.
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