WUNRN
INDIA - CAMPAIGN CHALLENGES UN WOMEN
POSITION TO DECRIMINALISE PIMPING, BUYING SEX, BROTHEL KEEPING
January 3, 2014 - Kolkata: A group of organisations have
launched a campaign against a move by UN Women, a United Nations organisation
dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, to decriminalise
pimping, buying sex and brothel-keeping.
"Such a move will fuel huge sex-trafficking as those
who buy and sell women will get off scot free," Ruchira Gupta of Apne Aap
Women Worldwide, an anti-sex trafficking NGO, told reporters here today.
More than 1,000 individuals and organisations representing victims and
survivors, women and dalits have signed a petition that the NGO would submit to
UN Women in Delhi on January 7.
The petition addressed to Phumzile Mlambo Ngucak, Executive Director of UN
Women, said "We think that the attempts in UN documents to call us 'sex
workers' legitimises violence against women, especially women of discriminated
caste, poor men and women, and women and men from minority groups, who are the
majority of the prostituted."
Gupta said the UN Women note and the UNAIDS recommendations were in violation
of agreed upon protocols and conventions that India and other member states of
the UN were party to.
"This back door attempt to push through policies without getting the
formal agreement of member states is a dangerous precedent," she said.
The UN Women was recommending decriminalisation of pimping and brothel-keeping
to reduce HIV/AIDS of those in prostitution.
The activists held that the recommendations were a violation of UN Protocol to
End Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children 2000, and Convention for
the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of
Prostitution of Others, 1949.
Petitioners also objected to UN Women recommending that sexual exploitation be
termed 'sex work'.
It was estimated by the CBI that there were three million women and girls in
prostitution in India, of which 1.4 million were women.
The average age of entry into prostitution was between nine and thirteen,
according to the National Human Rights Commission.
The majority of the prostituted were girls and women from scheduled castes and
other backward classes.