The Russian capital, Moscow. Sex workers in the country say although public opinion about their work is shifting, they still face marginalisation and criminalisation. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 27 2020 (IPS)

Despite seeing a shift in attitudes towards them in recent years, Russian sex workers say they continue to struggle with marginalisation and criminalisation which poses a danger to them and the wider public.

• Sex work is illegal in Russia and, historically, public attitudes to the women, and more recently men, involved in providing it have been predominantly negative, and often virulently hostile.
• This has led to them being marginalised and with little protection against violence and prejudice not just among the general public and clients, but also the police and wider justice system.
• However, they say they have seen a change in the last two to three years as some of their work campaigning for rights and awareness of their work, has begun to bear fruit in the last few years.

“Media have begun to talk and write much more about sex work. Much of this has been more positive to sex workers, …and both their tone and rhetoric have become more tolerant,” Marina Avramenko of the Russian Forum of Sex Workers, which offers legal consultancy and support to sex workers, told IPS.

She added: “Sometimes media outlets conduct informal opinion polls about attitudes in society towards sex work and according to the results of these informal surveys, it is evident that more people have begun to talk about the need to allow sex work.”

• Sex work, which has been illegal in Russia since the Russian Federation was formed in 1991, is punishable both under criminal law and Russian civil offences legislation.
• Organising, or forcing someone into, prostitution, is a criminal offence carrying a penalty of up to eight years in jail. But sex work itself is a civil offence punishable by fines of up to 30 Euros.

Sex workers are one of the most marginalised groups in Russia today.

This is down in part to the influence of the Orthodox Church, which has grown in popularity in the decades since the fall of communism, on society and government policy. As with many other minority groups, such as the LGBTI community, sex workers have been demonised by the clergy.

Politicians also often publicly speak of sex workers in derogative or sometimes violently hostile terms.

“A negative attitude towards sex workers has been formed in society through propaganda and the Church. Sex workers are not recognised as a ‘social group’ and when people call for them to be killed or raped, or spread hate against them, they are not punished.

“False myths are also spread in society that sex workers destroy families, that they infect people with various diseases, and that sex workers are associated with organised crime,” said Avramenko.

Criminalisation itself also fuels this marginalisation.

International rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have repeatedly highlighted the effects of criminalisation of sex work.

They point out it often leaves sex workers with no protection from police, unable to report crimes against them during their work for fear of getting a criminal record, or having their earnings confiscated or their work reported to others.

This means that the perpetrators of the crimes against them know they can act with impunity, while police can also abuse, extort or physically and sexually assault them with equal impunity.

Indeed, this is often the case in Russia. According to the Russian Forum of Sex Workers, informal surveys have shown that in about 80 percent of police raids on brothels or independent sex workers’ establishments, officers beat sex workers.

Some sex workers also recount horrific incidents they know of colleagues gang-raped by police, or held for days at police stations and beaten and starved.

“In general, police officers feel even more impunity than criminals and commit many crimes against sex workers,” said Avramenko.

Because of this, sex workers seldom report crimes to police. And, even if they do, these are rarely, or poorly investigated.

Evgenia Maron of the Russian Forum of Sex Workers’ Executive Committee, spoke to IPS about some of the cases which the group had been involved in, including that of sex worker from Gelendzhik who was raped. Investigators refused to initiate proceedings against her attacker on the grounds that “the applicant provides sexual services, which means that the perpetrator’s actions are not socially dangerous”.

He was eventually jailed for five years after Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights intervened.

In another case, a man filmed the robbery and rape of a sex worker in Ufa and forced his victim on camera to say that she was a prostitute as he was sure this would guarantee his impunity. He was eventually convicted but was sentenced to just over two years in jail and released immediately because he had already served that time in prison awaiting trial.

Sex workers also struggle to access lawyers. According to Maron, out of 250 cases where sex workers ended up in court under Administrative Code offences, only two were represented by lawyers in their hearings.

A church in Moscow. Russian sex workers say that Russia’s Orthodox Church has helped foster negative attitudes towards them in society. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

International rights and health organisations have also warned of the serious health threat posed by marginalisation of certain groups in society, including sex-workers.

Russia has one of the world’s worst HIV epidemics with more than a million people infected and infection rates running higher than in sub-Saharan Africa. The epidemic has been driven largely by injection drug use but HIV is increasingly transmitted sexually and sex workers have been identified as particularly vulnerable.

A study published in 2016 by the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN) in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, showed more than a quarter of sex workers had faced physical or sexual violence by police officers and that police persecution deprived them of the opportunity to work in safe conditions, choose clients, or use condoms with every client.  

But stigma and fear of their work being exposed mean sex workers struggle to access proper healthcare.

“Sex workers face obstacles in receiving medical care, primarily because there are very few special programs for them, and when they turn to state healthcare services, sex workers hide because of concerns about stigma that they are engaged in sex work,” said Maron.

Maron said that ensuring sex workers’ rights was essential, not just for the workers themselves, but for any country’s wider society, including public health.

“In the the event of violence, a sex worker cannot control the use of condoms, for example. Sex workers having greater guarantees of protection from violence, being able to file complaints with the police without obstacles, and rapists being punished to the fullest extent of the law will lead to positive health outcomes in the long run.

“It is violence that prevents necessary protection against STIs and other infections which have an important impact on public health,” she said.

In a few months a new version of Russia’s Administrative Code, which governs civil law offences, is due to be approved by lawmakers.

During its drafting phase Russian rights organisations and sex worker groups campaigned to have penalties for sex work stripped from the new version of the code.

The fines are officially recorded in an Interior Ministry database and employers running background checks on job applicants will often reject those they see have fines for sex work. There have also been reported incidents of the children of sex workers being refused access to higher education or employment in the public sector after these records have been found.

“[Having] prostitution as an offence destroys all opportunities for [these] women in their future lives,” Irina Maslova, director of the Silver Rose sex workers’ rights movement, was quoted as saying in the Kommersant newspaper in March.

The calls were ignored and relevant articles in the current code on sex work will remain in the new code.

Many rights groups say that the work undertaken by groups like the Russian Sex Workers Forum to try and guarantee sex workers’ rights is essential to ensuring wider gender equality.

In a 2017 report, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects argued that “ultimately, there can be no gender equality if sex workers’ human rights are not fully recognised and protected”.

The group said: “Sex workers’ rights activists, feminist allies and human rights advocates have long held that the agency of sex workers must be recognised and protected, that all aspects of sex work should be decriminalised, and that sex work should be recognised as work and regulated under existing labour frameworks.

“Given that the majority of sex workers are women and many come from LGBT communities, protecting sex workers’ rights is imperative to achieving gender equality as defined under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)”.

According to a policy brief on sexual health and rights by Women Deliver, an international organisation advocating around the world for gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women, “policies that address the often tenuous legal positions of sex workers should ensure that they are not further victimised by laws that could potentially lead to incarceration”.

“Sex workers are often forced to live and work on the margins of society due to the criminalisation and stigmatisation of their work; this provides them with little possibility for legal recourse if they experience any kind of gender-based violence. Strong legal and policy frameworks must include provisions that reflect the complete and diverse experiences and challenges women face in order to truly provide comprehensive protection of women’s sexual health and rights,” Women Deliver state.

Meanwhile, Russians sex workers continue to call for decriminalisation, although, Avramenko argues, it will only help to a certain extent.

“By itself, decriminalisation will not change much,” said Avramenko, citing the experience of sex workers in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan where sex work is decriminalised.

“There, sex work is not punishable, but the police and the state are constantly finding ways to violate sex workers’ rights,” she said.

She added decriminalisation needed to be accompanied by greater public awareness of sex work and its benefits for society as well as rooting out police corruption.

It appears unlikely this will happen any time soon with the church continuing to wield significant influence over political policy and public opinion, and the recent lack of change to civil law offences for sex work.

Maron said that for activists like her there was little they could do than carry on their work.

“We will continue to try to improve access to healthcare and justice for sex workers and open dialogue about what sex work is and what interaction with a sex worker means for wider society,” she said.

Their work does seem to be having some effect though, as the change in media reporting and surveys showing a more positive public attitude to sex work suggest.

“This is down to our work,” said Avramenko.

Excerpt:

Sex workers in India’s Chennai city demonstrate their skills in slipping condoms on a phallus. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
CHENNAI/LONDON, Jul 11 2017 (IPS)

In a semi-lit room of a southern Chennai neighborhood, a group of women sit in a circle around a table surrounded by large cardboard boxes of “Nirodh” – India’s most popular condom.

Clad in colorful saris, wearing toe rings and red dots on their foreheads, they look like ordinary housewives. Slowly, one of the women opens a box, takes out a handful of condoms and a wooden phallus. Sound of laughter fills the air as each woman takes her trurn to slip a condom over the phallus. It’s a rare, happy hour for these women who live a hard life as sex workers – a fact they carefully guard from their families.“In our community, over 90 percent of people survive by begging. How can they ever afford any of these treatments?" --Axom, a 26-year-old transsexual man

Baby, who only goes by the first name, is in her forties and the most experienced of all when it comes to demostrating condom skills. A peer educator, Baby has been teaching fellow sex workers all over the city of Chennai how to practice safe sex and protect themselves from both HIV and sexually transmitted diseases.

Thanks to constant training and a generation of awareness, condoms are now part and parcel of almost all of the city’s 6,300 sex workers’ lives, she says. But their sexual health and protection from diseases still completely depend on their clients’ willingness to use a condom.

“We try our best to help the client understand that it is very important to wear a condom because that will keep us both safe from HIV and other infections like gonorrhea. But it needs some convincing. Most of them wear it only grudgingly,“ says Baby.

Female condoms – a mirage

India is one of the largest manufacturers and exporters of condoms in the world. The government-owned Hindustan Latest Limited (HLL) produces over a billion condoms annually, including Nirodh. Of these, 650 million Nirodh condoms are given away annually free of cost for the safe sex campaign. But when it comes to female condoms, there is no free lunch and one must buy the condoms from a store.

AJ Hariharan is the founder and CEO of the Chennai-based Indian Community Welfare Organization (ICWO), one of the largest NGOs in the country working for the welfare of sex workers. Hariharan says that female condoms could be of immense help for the sex workers, but are extremely hard to access because of steep pricing.

A pack of male condom costs around 25 rupees, while a female condom is priced at 59 and above. This is far beyond the reach of most sex workers whose daily earnings are 200-500 rupees, which goes to support their families.

“At the current price, a female condom is an out of reach luxury for poor women. They will never be able to able to use this which is a shame because the average sex workers really need female condoms,” Hariharan adds..

The reason behind the “great need” is both self-empowerment and money, he explains: it takes some time to explain to a client why he must wear a condom and then help him put it on. But this requires time and often, the couple may have to wait before the man has an erection again. With a female condom, business can be done faster as she can save both her time and energy and serve him quick. For those women who rent a place for work, this can be very helpful as she can be with multiple clients in few hours and spend less on rent.

Organizations like ICWO have asked the government for a free supply of female condoms, says Hariharan, but have not received any so far. “This is one of the biggest unmet needs and it must be looked seriously into,” he says.

Despite their inability to afford female condoms, the sex worker community is luckier than other marginalized people of the city as they regularly access sexual and reproductive health services.

“There are eight hospitals in the city where we can go for a regular health check-up that includes having an HIV and STI test and take condoms,” says Vasanthi, a sex worker.

Healthcare for the Transgender

But for another sexual minority – the 450,000 strong transgender community – even a regular health check-up remains a struggle.

“One of the biggest challenges is finding a doctor who can and is willing to understand our problems,” reveals Axom, a 26-year-old transsexual man.

“The moment you walk into a hospital or a private clinic, the doctor will start judging your character and rebuke you for your sexual choice, instead of advising you what to do. It always starts with ‘why do you choose to be this way?’ After this, obviously you will never feel like opening up about your health issues,” Axom says.

Besides the moral policing, transgender community members also face uphill battles to afford healthcare including feminizing and masculinizing hormonal treatment.

Axom has been undergoing hormonal treatment. He hopes to have sex reassignment surgery – a multilayered medical treatment that will give him a prosthetic penis – and is spending over 10,000 dollars on the treatment. Thanks to his job in one of the world‘s biggest e-commerce firms, he can afford it, but for most others, such procedures remain a distant dream.

“In our community, over 90 percent of people survive by begging,” Axom says. “How can they ever afford any of these treatments?“

FP2020, Commitments and Gaps

In 2012, India became a part of the FP2020 – a global partnership to achieve Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 5 and ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and rights by 2030. India had committed among other things to invest two billion dollars over eight years to reduce the unmet need and address “equity so that the poorest and most vulnerable population have more access to quality services and supplies.“

On July 11, representatives from the FP2020 partner countries are participating in a summit in London again to inform and analyse the current status of delivering those commitments made four years ago.

For India, this is a good chance to tell the world what it has really done and recommit to achieve the goals that it had set, says Lester Coutinho, Deputy Director of Family Planning at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Governments, including India, are now responding to the gaps in the commitments that they made. Adolescents and youths are one area, supply chain is another, money for purchasing commodities is the third. Giving counseling and information to women and young people is another. There are tangible solutions in these areas that the government can adopt,” says Coutinho.

Meanwhile, in Chennai, transsexual men and woman like Axom hope that one day the government will subsidize the SRS and hormonal treatment for transgenders.

“The Supreme Court of India recognized the transpeople as a third gender in 2014, so we are now entitled to equal rights and facilities as other citizens do. If the government can offer free surgeries for life-threatening diseases, why can’t we expect it to offer us subsidies on treatments that can remove threats to our identities and the restoration of a normality in our life?” asks Axom.

María Elena Dávila, national coordinator of the Nicaraguan Sex Workers Network, participating in a workshop on the Regulation of Sex Work in this Central American nation. Credit: Courtesy of RedTraSex

By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, Jun 13 2015 (IPS)

After living in the shadows, thousands of Nicaraguan sex workers have broken their silence, won support from state institutions and gained new respect for their rights.

María Elena Dávila, national coordinator of the Nicaraguan Sex Workers Network (TraSex), explained to IPS that after 15 years of quietly organising, women who provide sexual services for money have managed to become “judicial facilitators” – a kind of conflict resolution mediator – in the Supreme Court and Health Ministry promoters of sexual and reproductive health.

They have also been incorporated into the Defensoría de Derechos Humanos or ombudsman’s office, and they now have a special prosecutor protecting their rights.

In addition, they were recently invited to receive training in political rights and to work as temporary employees for the Supreme Electoral Council in the 2016 general elections.

“This invitation to receive training on electoral matters empowers us to defend our rights vis-à-vis political parties and candidates,” Dávila told IPS.

TraSex represents Nicaragua in the Latin American and Caribbean Female Sex Workers Network, also made up of organisations from Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru.

The Nicaraguan branch of the network was founded in Managua in November 2007 with the support of local non-governmental organisations and social assistance funds from aid agencies.

The seed of the organisation was the Sunflowers Sex Workers Association, which initially brought together 125 women who starting in 1997 went to informal trainings and lectures on health and sex education.

In 2009 the government’s Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman (PDDH) signed an agreement for cooperation and assistance with the organisation, which began to gain visibility, influence and respect.

The organisation now has a registry of 14,486 sex workers between the ages of 18 and 60, 2,360 of whom have joined the network.

“The other women, the ones outside the network, are still wary of the organisation or are unfamiliar with our aim to provide support,” said Dávila. “But we’re working to train them in defence of their rights as women and sex workers.”

Pajarita from Nandaime (not her real name) is one of the sex workers who reject any kind of organisation among her colleagues.

“I take care of myself and I don’t trust groups or associations,” the 27-year-old told IPS. “Those women get involved in that for money, to get dollars, and then they forget about you. This life has taught me that among prostitutes there is no friendship, only competition.”

She arranges daytime appointments over the phone, working in Managua motels, and is studying tourism in the evenings. On the weekends she goes back to Nandaime, her hometown in the eastern department (province) of Granada, 67 km from the capital.

Sex workers in Nicaragua taking part in activities to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, like this health fair organised by the Nicaraguan AIDS Commission. Credit: Courtesy of RedTraSex

But the organisation is making headway in public institutions. The national legislature is now an ally, listening to their input when designing laws that relate to labour and social conditions of sex workers.

Carlos Emilio López, a national lawmaker who is vice president of the legislative Commission on Women, Children, Youth and Family Affairs, is one of the public officials who support the network.

“They are brave women putting up a struggle,” López told IPS. “They have historically been stigmatised and discriminated against, and now they are demanding the attention they have never been given. The state is in their debt, and it’s time they were given something back.”

In April, the vice president of the Supreme Court, magistrate Marvin Aguilar, presided over a ceremony where a pilot group, made up of 18 members of the network, received their credentials as judicial facilitators.

He explained at the time that the women were given technical and legal training to help manage conflicts through dialogue, as mediators.

“We’re the only country in the world that makes sex workers judicial facilitators,” said Aguilar. “The only country in the world that doesn’t try to arrest them and where their activity isn’t criminalised. We don’t throw them in prison for doing sex work.”

In May, the national police named a special chief to directly address the demands for safety voiced by the TraSex network and issued an institutional guideline for their complaints of domestic abuse and general violence to be addressed with the full force of the Integral Law Against Violence towards Women.

In the past, sex workers constantly complained about abuse of authority, harassment, discrimination and persecution by the police.

Their new relationship with the different branches of government enabled the TraSex network to have a say in the design of Nicaragua’s new Law Against Trafficking in Persons, which went into effect in April.

The original draft of the law linked prostitution and procuring with the crime of trafficking, while stressing that women, including prostitutes, were the main victims.

According to Dávila, associating sex workers with trafficking as both victims and victimisers did them harm. As a result, the network recommended modifying the text, the proposed change was accepted, and the connection between sex work and trafficking was removed from the law.

Reflecting their empowerment in Nicaraguan society, on Jun. 2 the network publicly celebrated for the first time International Sex Workers’ Day, annually acknowledged by sex worker networks and activists across the globe since 1976 in commemoration of a protest by prostitutes a year earlier in Lyon, France against the discrimination and police harassment they suffered.

In 2014, in a public ceremony covered by the media, the network presented the book “Ni putas ni prostitutas, somos trabajadoras sexuales” (Neither whores nor prostitutes, we are sex workers), containing first-hand accounts of four women talking about what it is like to be a sex worker and discussing their hopes for a better life.

In addition, since 2014 sex workers have held a voting seat on the Nicaraguan HIV/AIDS Commission, and have participated, also with both voice and vote, in the national HIV/AIDS coordinating committee, where official institutions, social organisations and international bodies design anti-HIV/AIDS actions.

Despite the progress they celebrate, Dávila acknowledged to IPS that social discrimination is still a problem and that there are “many battles to fight” in this impoverished Central American nation.

One of them is to establish lines of communication with the Education Ministry, to teach sex workers to read and write or help them finish school, and to protect their children from bullying by teachers and students, which is frequent when their mothers’ profession is discovered.

Another battle, said Dávila, is to engage in dialogue with the legal system authorities so the new Family Code, in force since April, is not used by judges to remove the children of sex workers from their mothers because of the work they do.

“Right now we have several cases of mothers who are sex workers, where the authorities want to take their daughters away because someone reported the work they do,” she said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Shefali Das, a commercial sex worker in India, hopes that legalization will also bring safer working conditions for women in the trade, including protections against harassment from clients and law enforcement officers. Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI, Jun 8 2015 (IPS)

Although forced prostitution and trafficking of women remains a huge challenge in India, health experts, policy-makers and legal advocates say that most of the country’s estimated four million commercial sex workers join the trade of their own free will.

While finding alternative employment and providing economic and social safety nets to poor women as a means of diverting them away from the sex trade, advocates say that a more important step is legalizing the industry as a first step to making it a safer, healthier occupation.

India’s Four Million Sex Workers Demand Equal Labour Rights from IPS News on Vimeo.

The view from a red-light district in India, where some three million sex workers are caught in the middle of a debate on legalisation. Credit: bengarrison/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Jan 16 2015 (IPS)

Thirty-six-year-old Chameli Devi, a sex worker operating out of New Delhi’s G.B. Road – Asia’s largest red-light district, housing an estimated 12,000 of India’s three million sex workers – is an unhappy woman these days.

A contentious debate over the sex trade in India, following a call for legalisation by the National Commission for Women (NCW) – a state-run body that advises the government on women-related policy matters – has Devi worried.

“In wealthier countries, many women genuinely choose this trade due to better income prospects and opportunities. But in India, every woman who enters this trade has invariably been coerced into it by a trafficker, her family or her husband." -- Sarita, a 43-year-old sex worker in New Delhi
She feels that merely issuing licences or permits to people of her ilk will not lead to the improvement of the unhealthy and, at times, dangerous conditions under which commercialised prostitution functions.

According to U.N. reports, about 70 percent of sex workers in India are abused by their clients and the police. Abuse, say activists, is often under-reported by sex workers due to a lack of knowledge of their basic rights.

“Most of us don’t take to the flesh trade out of choice but are sold by criminal mafias to brothels. The move to regulate our business will only end up giving immunity to the pimps and brothels to buy or sell poor women like us while increasing trafficking of young women and children,” Devi told IPS.

A recent study conducted by the Indian philanthropic non-profit Dasra found that roughly half of trafficking victims are adolescent girls, while the average age of sex workers has dropped from 14-16, to 10-14, “because young girls are believed to have a lower risk of carrying a sexually transmitted disease”.

“Most victims come from rural areas, over 70 percent are illiterate, and almost half reported that their families earned just about one dollar [per day],” the report stated.

Other studies have found that most sex workers in India are form the lower castes, communities that are routinely subjected to violence and exploitation in a highly stratified society.

It is unsurprising, then, that scores of women trapped in the trade remain highly opposed to legalization.

Sarita, 43, another sex worker, feels that while there may be a sound argument for legalisation in richer countries like the USA, or even China, such a system is ill-suited to India.

“In wealthier countries, many women genuinely choose this trade due to better income prospects and opportunities. But in India, every woman who enters this trade has invariably been coerced into it by a trafficker, her family or her husband,” she asserted. “So the dynamics of our society are very different.”

Curbing the flourishing sex trade

A 2014 study, ‘Economics Behind Forced Labour Trafficking’, spearheaded by Indian Nobel Peace Prize-winner Kailash Satyarthi, contains some of the most up-to-date data on the flourishing sex trade.

“The figures are shocking…In India alone, the money generated through [the] sex trade so far stands at a whopping 343 billion dollars. Research confirms that several agencies such as traffickers, brothel owners, money lenders, law enforcement officials, lawyers, judiciary and to a certain level even the victims of CSE (commercial sexual exploitation) eventually receive money for participation,” Satyarthi said in the study.

According to a 2009 United Nations report, sex trafficking is the commonest form of human trafficking in the world, making it the largest slave trade; about 79 percent of all human trafficking is for sex work and it is the fastest growing criminal industry globally.

Countries that have legalised prostitution are not much better off. The Netherlands, which legalised prostitution in 2000, continues to grapple with human traffickers smuggling women into the country’s brothels, point out non-profits working in the area.

With the legalisation debate gaining traction, public opinion in India is also splintered over the issue. Those who favour the move feel that it will whittle down harassment, legal intimidation, entrapment and exploitation of sex workers.

NCW Chairperson Lalitha Kumaramangalam, who set the ball rolling with her suggestion that the trade be brought under state control last month, feels that such a step will ensure better living conditions for women engaged in commercial sex work.

She contends it will reducing trafficking of both girls and women and improve the health conditions of sex workers who are presently forced to serve clients in unhygienic conditions and without condoms, which has caused HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases to spread.

In fact health care experts extend some of the strongest arguments in favour of legalising prostitution, or regulating it. They feel that the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, can be checked by bringing the business under the state umbrella as this will help health workers to better educate those in the trade about condom usage and basic hygiene.

Safer sex work or a massive bureaucracy?

Opponents of legalisation, however, are wary of the consequences of adding layers of regulation to India’s massive bureaucracy. They fear that government intervention could trigger harassment of the very people it seeks to protect.

“Legalising prostitution is legalising the profiteers of the sex-industry and their customers,” Ranjana Kumari, director for the New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Social Research, told IPS.

“It means rape of poor, lower-caste women with impunity. Not only that, it will make India a world magnet for sex trafficking and sex tourism.”

Donna M. Hughes, professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island, writes in her essay ‘Prostitution: Causes and Solutions’ that legalisation does not reduce prostitution or trafficking.

“In fact,” she writes, “both activities increase because men can legally buy sex acts, and pimps and brothel keepers can legally sell and profit from them … In the Netherlands, since legalisation, there has been an increase in the use of children in prostitution.”

Activists working with sex workers are also deeply divided over the issue. While Dr S. Jana, who launched the 65,000-strong sex workers’ forum — Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee — based out of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, has supported the legalisation call, others fear that it will further embolden traffickers and the prostitution mafia.

“Indian law and government policies have failed to protect sex workers due to the loopholes in law which makes them vulnerable to abuse. If the trade is legalised, the situation will worsen,” Meena Seshu, a feminist activist and founder of SANGRAM, a voluntary organisation working in the field of HIV control based in Sangli, a city in the western state of Maharashtra, told IPS.

Legalisation, adds the activist, could also scupper attempts by many women’s organisations and NGOs to rehabilitate women and children forced into prostitution.

“The state should formulate policies and schemes for the rehabilitation of sex workers who are coming out of this commercial sexual exploitation. This will offer a better solution to this complex problem,” Seshu contends.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

NGOs and government data suggests that a child goes missing every eight minutes in India. Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

By K. S. Harikrishnan
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India , Sep 4 2014 (IPS)

In a country where well over half the population lives on less than two dollars a day, it takes a lot to shock people. The sight of desperate families traveling in search of money and food, whole communities defecating in the open, old women performing back-breaking labour, all this is simply part of life in India, home to 1.2 billion people.

But amidst this rampant destitution, some things still raise red flags, or summon collective cries of fury. Child trafficking is one such issue, and it is earning front-page headlines in states where thousands of children are believed to be victims of the illicit trade.

The arrest on Jun. 5 of Shakeel Ahamed, a 40-year-old migrant labourer, by police in the southern state of Kerala, created a national outcry, and reawakened fears of a complex and deep-rooted child trafficking network around the country.

Ahamed’s operation alone was thought to involve over 580 children being illegally moved into Muslim orphanages throughout the state.

“Many families are unable to afford the basic necessities of life, which forces parents to sell their children. Some children are abandoned by families who can’t take care of them. Some run away to escape abuse or unhappy homes. Gangsters and middlemen approach these vulnerable children." -- Justice J B Koshy, chairperson of the Kerala Human Rights Commission
Experts tell IPS that children are also routinely trafficked to and from states like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), child trafficking is rampant in underdeveloped villages, where “victims are lured or abducted from their homes and subsequently forced to work against their wish through various means in various establishments, indulge in prostitution or subjected to various types of indignitiesand even killed or incapacitated for the purposes of begging, and trade in human organs.”

Available records show a total of 3,554 crimes related to human trafficking in 2012, compared to 3,517 the previous year. Some 2,848 and 3,400 cases were reported in 2009 and 2010 respectively, as well as 3,029 cases in 2008.

In 2012, former State Home Affairs Minister Jitendra Singh told the upper house of parliament that almost 60,000 children were reported as “missing” in 2011. “Of those,” he added, “more than 22,000 are yet to be located.”

It is not clear how many of these “missing” children are victims of traffickers; a dearth of national data means that experts and advocates are often left guessing at the root causes of the problem.

NGOs and government agencies often cite contradictory figures, but both are agreed that a child goes missing roughly every eight minutes in the country.

Human rights watchdogs say there are many contributing factors to child trafficking in India, including economic deprivation. Indeed, the 2013 Global Hunger Index ranked India 63^rd out of 78 countries, adding that 21.3 percent of the population went hungry in 2013. According to the World Bank, 68.3 percent of Indians live on less than two dollars a day.

“Socio-economic backwardness is a key factor in child trafficking,” Justice J B Koshy, former chief justice of the Patna High Court and chairperson of the Kerala Human Rights Commission, told IPS, adding that a political-mafia nexus also fueled the practice in remote parts of the country.

“Many families are unable to afford the basic necessities of life, which forces parents to sell their children,” Koshy stated. “Some children are abandoned by families who can’t take care of them. Some run away to escape abuse or unhappy homes. The gangsters and middlemen approach these vulnerable children. In some cases, good-looking girls are taken away by force.”

An action research study conducted in 2005 by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) found that a majority of trafficking victims belonged to socially deprived sections of society.

It is estimated that half of the children trafficked within India are between the ages of 11 and 14.

Some 32.3 percent of trafficked girls suffer from diseases such as HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and other gynaecological problems, according to a 2006 report by ECPAT International.

This is likely due to the fact that most girls are trafficked for purposes of sexual exploitation.

A government-commissioned study conducted in 2003, the last time comprehensive data was gathered, estimated that the number of sex workers increased from two million in 1997 to three million in 2003-04, representing a 50-percent rise.

Many of these sex workers are thought to be girls between the ages of 12 and 15.

Sreelekha Nair, a researcher who was worked with the New Delhi-based Centre for Women’s Studies, added that parents coming from poor socio-economic conditions in remote villages sometimes readily hand over their children to middlemen.

Some parents have been found to “sell their children for amounts that are shockingly worthless,” she told IPS, in some cases for as little as 2,000 rupees (about 33 dollars), adding, “law and order agencies cannot often intervene in the private matters of a family.”

Rajnath Singh, home minister of India, told a group of New Delhi-based activists headed by Annie Raja, general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, that a central agency would conduct a probe into the mass trafficking of children from villages in the Gumla district of the eastern state of Jharkhand over the past several years.

The group had brought it to the attention of the minister that thousands of girls were going missing from interior villages in the district every year, while their parents claimed ignorance as to their whereabouts.

Raja told reporters in New Delhi this past Julythat developmental schemes launched by individual states and the central government often fail to reach remote villages, leaving the countryside open to agents attempting to “sneak teenage girls out of villages.”

Experts point out that implementation of the 1986 Immoral Traffic Prevention Act remains weak. Many believe that since the act only refers to trafficking for the purpose of prostitution, it does not provide comprehensive protection for children, nor does it provide a clear definition of the term ‘trafficking’.

Dr. P M Nair, project coordinator of the anti-human trafficking unit of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in New Delhi and former director general of police, said that investigations should focus on recruiters, traffickers and all those who are part of organised crime.

The ‘scene of crime’ in a trafficking case, he said, should not be confined to the place of exploitationbut should also cover places of transit and recruitment.

“Victims of trafficking should never be prosecuted or stigmatised,” he told IPS. “They should be extended all care and attention from the human rights perspective. There is a need for the mandatory involvement of government agencies in the post-rescue process so that appropriate rehabilitation measures are ensured” as quickly as possible, he added.

NGOs like Child Line India Foundation help provide access to legal, medical and counseling services to all trafficked victims in order to restore confidence and self-esteem, but the country lacks a coordinated national policy to deal with the issue at the root level.

Experts have recommended that the state provide education, or gender-sensitive market-driven vocational training to rescued victims, to help them reintegrate into society, but such schemes are yet to become a reality.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

At a time when HIV rates have stabilised or declined elsewhere, the epidemic is still advancing in the Arab world, exacerbated by factors such as political unrest, conflict, poverty and lack of awareness due to social taboos.

According to UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS), an estimated 270,000 people were living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2012.

“It is true that the Arab region has a low prevalence of infection, however it has the fastest growing epidemic in the world,“ warns Dr Khadija Moalla, an independent consultant on human rights/gender/civil society/HIV-AIDS.With the exception of Somalia and Djibouti, the [HIV] epidemic is generally concentrated in vulnerable populations at higher risk, such as men-who-have-sex-with-men, female and male sex workers, and injecting drugs users

The United Nations estimates that there were 31,000 new cases and 16,500 new deaths in 2012 alone. “Infections grew by 74 percent between 2001 and 2012 while AIDS-related deaths almost tripled,” says Dr Matta Matta, an infection specialist based at the Bellevue Hospital in Lebanon.

However, both Moalla and Matta explain that figures can be often misleading in the region, due to under-reporting and the absence of consistent and accurate surveys.

With the exception of Somalia and Djibouti, the epidemic is generally concentrated in vulnerable populations at higher risk, such as men-who-have-sex-with-men, female and male sex workers, and injecting drugs users.

In Libya, for example, 90 percent of those in the latter category also live with HIV, notes Matta. Furthermore, adds Moalla, most Arab countries do not have programmes allowing for exchange of syringes.

The legal framework criminalising such activities in most Arab countries means that it is difficult to reach out to specific groups.  With the exception of Tunisia, which recognises legalised sex work, female sex workers who work clandestinely in other countries are not safeguarded by law and thus cannot force their clients to use protection, which allows for the spread of disease.

Lack of awareness, the absence of voluntary testing and of sexual education, social taboos, as well as poverty, are among the factors driving HIV in the region. “Arab governments and societies deny the epidemic and the absence of voluntary testing means that for every infected person we have ten others that we do not know about,” stresses Moalla.

People living with HIV or those at risk face discrimination and stigma.  “More than half of the people living with HIV in Egypt have been denied treatment in healthcare facilities,” explains Matta.

This bleak scenario is compounded by the security challenges prevailing in the region which not only make it difficult to deliver prevention and other programmes, but also restrict access to services by those on treatment and cause displacement and loss of follow-up according to the UNAIDS report.

The war in Iraq that began in 2003, for example, led to the destruction of most of the country’s programmes and facilities under the National AIDS Programme and, according to Moalla, the national aids centre in Libya was recently burnt down.

In addition, in some countries, conflict has significantly increased the vulnerability of women. By 2012, for example, only eight percent of the estimated number of pregnant women living with HIV in the MENA region received appropriate treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission according to the UNAIDS report.

Meanwhile, only a few governments have worked on effective programmes to fight the epidemic, although there are signs of the emergence of NGOs tackling the problem with people living with HIV and providing them with support.

“North African countries and Lebanon have generally done better than others, while Gulf countries are doing the least,” says Moalla, adding that less than one in five people living with HIV are receiving the medicines they need in the Arab region.

While some efforts have been made with the UNDP HIV Regional Programme pioneering legal reform in several countries, as well as drafting an Arab convention on protection of the rights of people living with HIV in partnership with the League of Arab States, these are not enough.

“The Arab world attitude taking the high moral ground on the issue of HIV is no barrier for the epidemic,” says Matta. “The region’s governments need to address a growing problem that is only worsened by the general upheaval.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Messages of sympathy adorn a street in Melbourne. Credit: Diana G Mendoza/IPS

By Diana Mendoza
MELBOURNE, Jul 25 2014 (IPS)

The 20^th International AIDS Conference concluded today as the first in its history that remembered not just the 39 million people worldwide who have died of AIDS but also those who lost their lives in the crashed MH17 flight carrying six of its delegates, one of whom was the past president of the International AIDS Society (IAS).

The double memorial, however, did not hamper 12,000 scientists, researchers, advocates, lobbyists, and activists from 200 countries, including 800 journalists, from scrutinising a few advances and disturbing setbacks in HIV and AIDS awareness and prevention, treatment to prolong and improve the quality of life of people living with HIV, and compassion and care to those infected and people close to them.

The IAS and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said that globally, there are about 35 million people living with HIV in 2013, but 19 million of them do not know that they have the virus. Also in 2013, around 2.1 million became newly infected, and 1.5 million died of an AIDS-related illness.

"We will not stand idly by when governments, in violation of all human rights principles, are enforcing monstrous laws that only marginalise populations that are already the most vulnerable in society.” -- Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, president of the International AIDS Society (IAS)
But the good news is that HIV transmission has slowed down worldwide, according to Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS, and that millions of lives are being saved by antiretroviral drugs that suppress and slow down the replication of the virus, but do not eradicate it.

An estimated 13 million people are taking antiretroviral therapy that has resulted in a 20 percent drop in HIV-related deaths between 2009 and 2012. In 2005, there were only 1.3 million who were accessing ART.

Sidibé said at least 28 million people are medically eligible for the drugs. Currently, according to UNAIDS, spending on HIV treatment and prevention is around 19 billion dollars annually, but this needs to be scaled up to at least 22 billion dollars next year.

“We have done more in the last three years than we have done in the previous 25,” said Sidibé, who warned that these advances are disturbed by a few setbacks that are difficult to battle, such as laws against gay people in Africa and the crackdown on intravenous drug users in Russia.

In other countries, new policies have also emerged, criminalising homosexual behaviour and the use of intravenous drugs, and penalising those who engage in sex work.

Activists and experts say these policies help HIV to thrive by driving homosexuals, injecting drug users and male and female sex workers underground, where they have no access to preventative services.

Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, IAS president and chair of the conference who co-won the Nobel Prize for helping discover the virus that causes AIDS, said, “We will not stand idly by when governments, in violation of all human rights principles, are enforcing monstrous laws that only marginalise populations that are already the most vulnerable in society.”

The upsurge of anger was also obvious in the Melbourne Declaration that delegates were urged to sign early on, which demanded tolerance and acceptance of populations under homophobic and prejudiced attack.

The Melbourne Declaration called on governments to repeal repressive laws and end policies that reinforce discriminatory and stigmatising practices that increase the vulnerability to HIV, while also passing laws that actively promote equality.

Organisers believe that over 80 countries enforce unacceptable laws that criminalise people on the basis of sexual orientation and HIV status and recognise that all people are equal members of the human family.

The conference also called on health providers to stop discriminating against people living with HIV or groups at risk of HIV infection or other health threats by violating their ethical obligations to care for and treat people impartially.

Bad news for Asia-Pacific

Another setback is that while HIV infections lessened in number globally, some countries are going the other way. Sharon Lewin, an Australian infectious disease and biomedical research expert who co-chaired the conference with Barre-Sinoussi, said Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines are experiencing epidemics in their vulnerable populations with “worryingly high” proportions in 2013.

“While new infections continue to decrease globally, we are unfortunately seeing a very different pattern in Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines with increasing numbers of new infections in 2013,” Lewin said during the conference opening.

She cited men who have sex with men (MSM), sex workers, people who inject drugs and transgender persons as the most at-risk populations in the three countries.

This brought the rate of daily new infections in the region to 6,000; 700 are children under 15 while 5,700 were adults. But 33 percent of them were young people aged 15-24.

Aside from Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines, she said Thailand and Cambodia are also causes for concern because of their concentrated epidemics in certain populations, while India remains a country with alarmingly high infections, accounting for 51 percent of all AIDS-related deaths in Asia. Indonesia’s new HIV infections, meanwhile, have risen 48 percent since 2005.

Meanwhile, the U.N. predicts that AIDS will no longer exist by 2030. UNAIDS’ Sidibé introduced the “90-90-90 initiative” that aims at reducing new infections by 90 percent, reducing stigma and discrimination by 90 percent, and reducing AIDS-related deaths by 90 percent.

“We aim to bring the epidemic under control so that it no longer poses a public health threat to any population or country. No one must be left behind,” Sidibé stressed.

The conference also saw a few hopeful solutions such as the portable HIV and viral load testing devices presented by pharmaceutical and laboratory companies that joined the exhibitors, and radical approaches to counselling and testing that involve better educated peer counsellors.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) issued consolidated guidelines on HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care designed to assist health providers and policymakers develop HIV programmes that will increase access to HIV testing, treatment and reduce HIV infection in five key populations vulnerable to infection – men who have sex with men (MSM), people who inject drugs, sex workers, transgender people and people in prison and other closed settings – who make up 50 percent of all new infections yearly.

Part of the guidelines recommend that MSM – one of the most at-risk groups for new infections – consider pre-exposure prophylaxis or taking anti-retroviral medication even if they are HIV negative to augment HIV prevention, but they are asked to still used the prescribed prevention measures like condoms and lubricants. The prophylaxis that prevents infection can reduce HIV among MSM by 20 to 25 percent.

(END)

Women in Cambodia’s garments sector work 10-12 hours a day. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, May 31 2014 (IPS)

The movement for reproductive justice sees women’s decision to have – or not have – children as a fundamental right. Should they choose to bear a child, women should have the right to care and provide for them; if they opt not to give birth, family planning services should be made available to enable women to space or prevent pregnancies.

In Cambodia, where women make up 60 percent of the population of 14 million people, this fundamental right is being trampled by insecure labour contracts, toxic working conditions and a near-total absence of maternity benefits for working mothers.

Take Cambodia’s garments industry, a massive sector that accounts for 80 percent of the country’s exports. A full 90 percent of the workforce is female, but labour rights have not accompanied employment opportunities.

"[The] lack of labour rights for women [is] a worrying trend that is completely changing the culture of Cambodia.” -- Tola Moeun, head of the labour programme at the Community Legal Education Centre
Ever since the country entered into a liberalising agreement with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2005, long-term contracts have been edged out in favour of short term or fixed duration contracts (FDCs), the latter being far more popular among East Asian factory owners and western clothing brands like Gap, Walmart and H&M.

These informal arrangements “abuse garment workers’ reproductive rights,” Sophea Chrek, a former garment worker and technical assistant to the Workers Information Center (WIC) – which recently staged a fashion show to highlight the issue – told IPS.

“Women employed under FDCs for three to six months, or sometimes even one month, will not risk their job by having a baby. Usually, they choose to have an abortion…before the contract ends to ensure that the line leaders or supervisors are not aware of their pregnancy,” Chrek added.

According to Cambodian labour law, factories are supposed to provide maternity leave, but most get around this requirement with short contracts, which leave the estimated 600,000 workers vulnerable to employers’ whims.

Melissa Cockroft, a technical advisor on sexual and reproductive health, tells IPS that women without access to family planning services resort to unsafe and unregulated measures, such as using over-the-counter Chinese products to induce abortions.

These methods can be fatal, but women seem hesitant to avail themselves of NGO-provided free or discounted service at on-site infirmaries, which are less confidential.

Sometimes their grueling schedules, which include 10 to 12-hour workdays with only a short lunch break in between, keep them from making appointments. Many of these women, Cockroft says, are just too busy to even think of starting families.

Garment workers’ reticence to use reproductive services can be cultural too, as talking about sexual health is considered ‘shameful’ in traditional Cambodian society.

Cambodian law also stipulates that factories provide working mothers with childcare, but Cockroft says she has only seen one operational childcare facility during all her years as an advocate in the field.

For some women, the decision to leave their children at home emerges from a desire to spare them the grueling commute – many factory workers travel shoulder-to-shoulder in trucks or on compact wagons pulled by tuk tuks, ubiquitous motorcycle taxis, down Cambodia’s notoriously unsafe roads.

Very often, babies remain at home with their grandmothers in the countryside while their mothers go off to work in the city, where they earn roughly 100 dollars per month. Union leaders are trying to raise this minimum wage to 160 dollars.

In general, though, both Cockroft and Chrek say garment workers consider themselves “too poor” to have children.

Entertainers and street workers

Meanwhile, in Cambodia’s popular entertainment sector, women face a unique set of challenges, their access to reproductive health services hindered by the informal and unpredictable nature of their work.

Independent researcher Dr. Ian Lubek tells IPS that entertainment workers are likely to experience a much higher risk of foetal alcoholic syndrome due to the number of beverages they are forced to consume every night in order to get tips from their customers. Research from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) suggests that a female beer seller or hostess consumes up to 11 drinks a night.

Years of advocacy efforts have at least enabled entertainers working for international beer companies to secure better wages, with women employed by the Cambrew brewery now drawing a salary of close to 160 dollars a month.

Higher wages, according to Phal Sophea, former beer seller and representative for the Siem Reap division of the Cambodia Food and Service Workers Federation (CFSWF), amounts to less economic pressure to have transactional sex.

“I think better pay will reduce sex work because the [women] generally go out with customers when the pay is too low,” she told IPS.

Of all the groups of working women struggling to raise children, street-based sex workers are among the most marginalised and are often subject to police violence, arrests and forced detention in anti-trafficking ‘reeducation centres’.

While unions for entertainment workers can negotiate contracts, sex workers are left completely vulnerable to the laws of the streets.

Labour research indicates that Cambodians living in urban areas require, at the very least, 150 dollars a month in order to survive; most salaries are set below 100 a month, making it very difficult for the average working Cambodian to make ends meet, and feed their families. As it is, 40 percent of Cambodian children are chronically malnourished.

WNU Board Member Socheata Sim explained that sex work might be the only option for the many women without a formal education; according to a report on education levels among women in Cambodia, only one-third of school-aged girls are enrolled at the lower secondary school level, and one in ten at the upper secondary school level.

Many sex workers want a better life for their children, but few can afford the high fees, bribes and related costs of formal schooling.

Furthermore, sex workers living in slum dwellings face a constant threat of eviction. Tola Moeun, head of the labour programme at the Community Legal Education Centre, told IPS that high rates of evictions are now forcing many women to migrate abroad in search of employment.

“Yet once abroad, if undocumented, migrant workers find they do not have the rights citizens have,” he lamented.

In Thailand, for instance, where tens of thousands of Cambodian women now live and work, undocumented workers are fired from their jobs if they become pregnant, are denied maternity leave and earn half the 300-baht (nine-dollar) daily minimum wage.

Tola sees the “lack of labour rights for women as a worrying trend that is completely changing the culture of Cambodia.”

(END)

Seventy percent of France’s 20,000 sex workers are migrant women. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2013 (IPS)

The age-old debate over how to regulate sex work has led to a rift between the United Nations and anti-trafficking organisations, which are pressuring the world body to rethink its position following two reports that advocate decriminalising all aspects of prostitution.

“When we saw the reports we became very concerned,” said Lauren Hersh, New York director of Equality Now, which is leading the public campaign that launched this week. “To have U.N. agencies call for brothel-keeping is egregious,” she told IPS.“People in prostitution need to be recognised as trafficking victims… We don’t believe anyone chooses.” -- Stella Marr of Sex Trafficking Survivors United

The coalition of 98 groups is asking the U.N. to update and reissue the reports, which were published last year, to reflect the experiences of survivors of prostitution, and include a wider range of views on the impact of legalising of the sex industry.

The two reports, Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific, backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Joint United Nations Programme of HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and HIV and the Law, published by UNDP’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law, are focused on reducing HIV/AIDS while simultaneously protecting the rights of those involved in prostitution.

Survivors say that addressing the demand that keeps the cycle of prostitution in motion is imperative and is not adequately addressed in the reports.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for UNDP said in a statement that the reports examined the issues of sex work through a specific lens of the HIV epidemic and strongly condemned sex trafficking.

“UNDP advocates and promotes the respect of human rights for all, especially the most excluded and marginalised. The report on Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific… clearly distinguishes between adult consensual sex work and human trafficking for sexual exploitation,” the spokesperson said.

Spokespersons from UNFPA and UNAIDS told IPS that the UNDP statement accurately reflects their agencies’ position.

The reports also see decriminalisation of the sex industry as a way to promote the ability of prostitutes to negotiate condom use, but Equality Now says that for many women in prostitution, there is an economic dependency, thus pressure, to have sex without a condom as clients will often offer more money for sex without one.

If women are trafficked or controlled by a pimp, they have less ability to insist on the use of condoms.

In a statement, UNDP said that the criminalisation of sex work increases vulnerability to HIV and limits access to condoms and sexual health services.

But Hersh says that, “Often it’s the pimps and buyers that dictate condom use as women can get more money from not using one.”

Hersh emphasises that the coalition is not trying to undermine the efforts of the campaign against HIV/AIDS. Equality Now has spent nearly a year reaching out to the U.N. through internal channels, including sending a letter co-signed with over 80 organisations, to Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS.

Prostitution is legal in many countries, including Switzerland, where “sex boxes” were recently introduced in Zurich to promote the safety of prostitutes in what the city considers a more pleasant environment. But the situation for men and women in countries where prostitution is legalised and decriminalised remains dire, according to Equality Now.

“One of the major issues is that the reports did not consult with our partners on the ground, particularly survivor-led organisations,” Hersh told IPS.

Stella Marr, executive director and one of the co-founders of Sex Trafficking Survivors United, an international organisation of over 100 survivors of prostitution, is herself a survivor, first trafficked at age 20 and involved in prostitution for 10 years.

“If we don’t address demand, there will always be trafficking,” Marr told IPS, adding that she is “saddened” at the reports.

Marr believes the best solution is the Nordic model, which criminalises the purchase of sex, but decriminalises being a prostitute.

Marr left prostitution after a buyer offered to help her, giving her a safe place to live for two years. She is the only person she knows who this has happened to.

“The fact that I got out doesn’t mean I was strong. I was lucky,” Marr said.

Survivors of the sex industry do not have their voices heard as loudly as those who are currently involved due to the amount of shame around it, said Rachel Moran, a founding member of Survivors of Prostitution-Abuse Calling for Enlightenment (SPACE) International, who was prostituted from age 15 until she was 22.

Another facet of the reports Equality Now wants to address is the definition of “trafficking” by the U.N. In 2000, in the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, commonly known as the U.N. Trafficking Protocol, members states agreed on a broad definition of trafficking that reflects a variety of experiences from sex trafficking survivors.

The 2012 U.N. reports recommend narrowing down and redefining the definition, which could mean many trafficked persons would no longer be considered victims and their traffickers would not be held accountable.

“I understand that it’s difficult… you have to have a way to help people out of that life,” Marr said. “People in prostitution need to be recognised as trafficking victims… We don’t believe anyone chooses.”

Equality Now is optimistic about future reports, including a recent study from Asia and the Pacific, launched by UNDP, UNFPA and U.N. Women, that reports the purchase of commercial sex in the region is strongly associated with widespread rape and sexual violence against women.

"I'm happy being a prostitute," says the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign poster that was subsequently withdrawn. Credit: Beijo da Rua

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 12 2013 (IPS)

Happiness, the subject of endless philosophical discussions, has now become the focus of controversy in an HIV/AIDS prevention campaign aimed at prostitutes in Brazil. The campaign chief has been booted out and a further question has been raised: What are the limits of popular participation in the definition of public policies?

Before the Health Ministry campaign was even broadcast, shocked conservative sectors complained that it condoned prostitution.

As part of a strategy against HIV/AIDS, the slogan “Sou feliz sendo prostituta” (I’m happy being a prostitute) arose from national debates and workshops involving the targeted participants.

“(The slogan) expresses the dignity of our profession. To remove that phrase is a violation of our rights, especially because of the social stigma we suffer,” said Leila Barreto, of the Group of Women Prostitutes in the northern state of Pará.

The campaign, run by the department of sexually transmitted diseases (STD), AIDS and hepatitis, resulted in the dismissal of the head of department, Dirceu Greco, and the resignation of two assistant directors.

“It was a great disappointment,” Barreto told IPS. “The stronger we are, the less vulnerable we will be to diseases, unless society says: these women do not exist. But they do exist, and their work contributes to society,” she said.

The anti-AIDS campaign, which had not been authorised by the ministry’s advisory office for communications, included other statements such as “O sonho maior é que a sociedade nos veja como cidadãs” (Our greatest dream is for society to see us as citizens). It had barely gone out over the internet on Jun. 2, International Sex Workers Day, before it was withdrawn.

The version that replaced it reverted to the old-fashioned style: advice to sex professionals about the importance of using condoms and encouraging them to seek preventive measures in public hospitals.

“Prostituta que se cuida usa sempre camisinha” (Prostitutes who take care of themselves always use condoms) says the new campaign, which seeks to “strengthen tolerance” and “eliminate prejudice”.

In Brazil, AIDS is concentrated in the big cities, where most of the at-risk groups are to be found. Prevalence is 5.9 percent among drug users, 10.5 percent among men who have sex with men and 4.9 percent among women professional sex workers.

Each year there are on average 37,000 new HIV/AIDS cases in this country of more than 198 million people, where an estimated 530,000 people are HIV-positive, 150,000 of whom do not know that they are infected.

“The preventive measures we advocate work for any person, whether they are ‘happy or sad.’ It is not the Health Ministry’s business to make assessments of the state of mind of individual persons,” a communiqué from the ministry said.

Some people complain of a “regression” in Brazil’s anti-HIV/AIDS strategy, which was considered one of the boldest and most effective in the world.

“Brazil taught the world, with the concept of AIDS prevention, that at-risk and historically excluded populations like homosexuals, prostitutes and drug addicts are citizens who have rights, and that this is the stance to take when speaking of prevention,” Agustín Rojo, an Argentine expert on communications and HIV, told IPS.

But in this country, where conservative evangelical churches have great political clout, “there is a risk of ‘killing the programme off’ by mixing religion with public health,” said George Gouveia, of the Grupo pela VIDDA, an HIV/AIDS patients self-help group.

That risk is already a reality in the view of Greco, who attributes his dismissal to disagreements “over a policy based on human rights and valuing the populations that are most at risk,” due to a conflict with “the conservative policy of the present government” of centre-left President Dilma Rousseff.

He mentioned other cases as examples, such as the banning of a carnival video that showed a relationship between two men, and a cartoon strip for schools on homophobia and sexuality.

“They can’t treat us as if we were in the closet. If they don’t grant us visibility, we will continue to feel that our rights are curtailed,” Julio Moreira, the president of the gay rights group Arco Iris, told IPS.

In Rojo’s view, the issue is that the state “should allow sectors that are discriminated against to have a voice and visibility, in order for society first to recognise their existence and then to listen to them – but it is not for the state to take on each and every one of their positions.

“When a woman who is paid for sex publicly says that she feels happy, she is expressing more than a personal feeling. To be perfectly clear, she is stating a political position,” said Rojo, a sociologist who has coordinated official policies in Argentina on AIDS and other STDs.

In this case, “being happy” with what one does, like being “proud” of one’s sexual orientation, is a legitimate vindication of a social group, he said.

But the expression “cannot be transferred automatically to a government-run mass media campaign, because it will not be easily understood by everyone. The state has no business telling prostitutes they cannot be happy, but it shouldn’t applaud, or not applaud, their choices,” Rojo said.

“On the other hand, if any citizen, whether a prostitute, transvestite or drug addict, does not have access to condoms to take care of his or her health, or does not know how to use them or where to go for help – this is a problem for the state to address, whether in the case of a sex worker or a homemaker, a homosexual or a heterosexual,” he said.

Brazilian Health Minister Alexandre Padilha made similar comments. “I respect the groups and movements who wish to send that message (about being happy), but that is their role,” he said.

Now discussions are centred on the scope of a call for social participation in real politics.

“Designing a campaign for gays, prostitutes or prisoners is in itself a recognition that grants dignity to these persons,” Rojo said.

“It puts them on a level with the rest of the citizenry…which is a powerful political decision. It confronts stigma from the heights of power, with the message that ‘we do not care only about rich heterosexuals, but also about poor gays, prostitutes, transsexuals and so on, because to us they are all equal’,” he said.

“By selecting only one particular message among those created by the workshops, the government is rejecting the concept of equality, because prostitutes are denied the right to express their dreams and ideals of citizenship, and the affirmation of their identity and social visibility,” said Gabriela Leite of Davida, a sex workers’ group.

She said it was “arrogant to believe that a prostitute can’t be happy.”

A profile of Brazilian prostitutes drawn up by the Health Ministry contributes to the quantification of this relative happiness.

The majority of female sex workers are between the ages of 20 and 29, have not completed primary school, and are proud of being able to support their children. They do not suffer discrimination in the public health service, they like the freedom of their work, and they consider that it pays better than other jobs.

However, they feel humiliated and discriminated against, they avoid telling others what they do, especially their children, and they are forced to put up with unpleasant clients and those who refuse to wear condoms.

The underground sex trade is closer to our everyday world than we may think.

Photo courtesy of Hsiao-Hung Pai

A brothel may be hidden inside that shabby building a few blocks away from home; the kitchen maid of our favourite Chinese restaurant may have gone into sex work to earn the money she desperately needs; a foreign student at the university we attend may do part-time sex work to support his or her studies.

These and other realities are investigated by journalist and writer Hsiao-Hung Pai in her new book “Invisible: Britain’s Migrant Sex Workers”, to be published in the United States this November.

Working undercover on exhausting shifts as a housekeeper in several brothels all over the U.K., Pai came in contact with the whole range of human stories that compose the sex trade: prostitutes, pimps, housekeepers and clients.

She collected their stories and created a book that highlights the complexity of this phenomenon, with all its political, social and human factors that sex workers themselves are not always aware of.

“They are not necessarily aware of all the factors, but … they are aware of the choices they have made in difficult circumstances and the … exploitation they are confronted with as a result of institutional failures,” Hsiao-Hung Pai told IPS, “They are also aware of their collective powerlessness.”

Entrapped in circumstance

Backing people’s stories with data and research, the book shows the multiple paths that can bring migrant women to the “choiseless choice” of sex work.

In a foreign country, with no money, little understanding of English and often no legal status, migrant women find themselves vulnerable and completely isolated.

They become an easy prey for pimps who trick them with a fake promise of help, or sometimes they decide themselves to try sex work in order “to earn as much as possible as fast as possible”, instead of keeping on with a low paid job that will never enable them to survive abroad, send money home and sometimes also pay off huge debts to those who smuggled them into the country."[Being] a neutral observer...removes the possibility of ever obtaining an entirely unfiltered account of the issues you want to write about." -- Hsiao-Hung Pai

However, as the author explains in the introduction, she didn’t want to portray migrant women as merely victims of oppression, but also to document their resistance against the circumstances of their lives.

“Only you yourself can know if it is all worth the effort. No one else can judge or evaluate it for you,” says one girl in the book.

Sending money home, doing the job as a sacrifice for a better life for themselves and their families are topics that keep coming back in the words of sex workers throughout the pages. “If you don’t bring cash back home you are nothing,” a pimp tells Pai, in a bid to convince her to take up sex work.

“Life becomes a little purposeless when you don’t have someone to look after and to earn for,” says another sex worker.

Once in the sex trade, women often end up trapped in it for years, either because of a pimp controlling them or out of a desperate need for money and the lack of any other income alternative. Locked in their work in the brothel, they become more and more isolated from society.

“Some of them like the idea that they can talk with someone empathetic outside about their lives and continue to share their stories with me [after I left the undercover job],” Pai told IPS.

“It won’t be long before I can go back, to my daughter and my parents,” says a Chinese sex worker in Bedford, in the southeast of England, in a rare pause of reflection while she works herself to the bone to make that moment come faster.

This kind of slavery is complex and cannot be read solely through the lens of sex trafficking. Policy responses that blur the difference between illegal immigration and trafficking are questioned in the book.

“With this discourse, solutions to the ills of trafficking have concentrated exclusively on immigration controls,” it says, “‘Combating trafficking’ has become entwined with cracking down on ‘illegal immigration’.”

Such an approach leads to targeting trafficking networks while avoiding looking at more systemic factors that stem from the lack of institutional protection for migrants and the police turning a blind eye to prostitution.

A frequent state response to sex trade is its criminalisation, which leads to the closing of brothels and pushes sex workers into the streets and further underground, where they become much more vulnerable.

An insider’s perspective

This is not the first time that Pai worked undercover. Before ‘Invisible’, she had already pretended to be an undocumented Chinese migrant worker in the U.K. during her research for the book “Chinese Whispers: The true story behind Britain’s hidden army of labour” (2008).

“The paradox is that sometimes we need to put on a different identity in order to understand how different social relations and identities really work. We need to deceive in order to expose deception,” she writes in the introduction of ‘Invisible’.

The idea of going undercover first came to her when a Chinese catering worker questioned her about the authenticity of reporting via conventional methods, she explained to IPS.

“Although it is a standard journalistic practice to adopt an objective stance as a neutral observer, doing so removes the possibility of ever obtaining an entirely unfiltered account of the issues you want to write about. … You lose the opportunity to build the closeness and intimacy which precondition truthfulness.

“I’d like to think that my work has done something in giving voice to the most marginalised groups of people in our society,” she said, “and hope that it will enable some change.”

Despite the enormous distance between the two countries, Argentina has become an increasingly frequent destination for migrants from the Dominican Republic, especially women, who are vulnerable to falling prey to sexual exploitation networks.

The immigration flow to Argentina from the Caribbean island nation is much smaller than the influx of Paraguayans, Bolivians, Peruvians and Uruguayans, who make up 80 percent of the foreign nationals who have come to this South American country since 2004.

But Dominicans stand out because of specific problems when it comes to insertion in the labour market.

Clarisa Rondó of the Association of Dominicans Living in Argentina tells IPS that the women come in search of better employment opportunities, but often fall into prostitution networks due to the difficulty in finding other work.

“Argentina is a country that takes us in, it makes us feel we are taking a step ahead,” she says. “It’s a big, generous country that offers possibilities.”

Rondó was 21 when she came here on her own in 1994. She has since married, had children, got divorced, and earned a teaching certificate in the arts.

“More women than men have always come, because men find it harder to break into the labour market,” she says. She clarifies that it is also difficult for women, but “they get involved in prostitution. Many of them are illiterate, they don’t find any other work, and they don’t have any alternative.”

The presence of Dominican women in Argentina becomes visible when the police raid places where prostitution is practiced, in Buenos Aires or in provinces like Córdoba, Misiones, La Pampa, Tierra del Fuego, Rio Negro or San Luis.

Although there are no official statistics, Rondó estimates that there are some 40,000 Dominicans living in this South American country of 40 million people. Most of them – some 15,000 – live in the capital.

Sociologist Lucía Nuñez Lodwick at the National University of San Martín explains to IPS that Dominicans, who traditionally migrated to the United States or Spain, began to come to Argentina in the mid-1990s.

Argentina’s rigid peg of the peso to the dollar in the 1990s drove the influx of immigrants from the rest of the region, who earned here in pesos and exchanged them for the same amount in dollars, to send back home as remittances, she points out.

That was one of the main reasons that Dominicans began to arrive, along with the common language – Spanish – and the demand in Argentina for people willing to do low-paid, low-skilled work – as domestics, nannies, caregivers for the elderly, hairdressers or restaurant workers, she explains.

According to a study carried out by the Ecumenical Services for the Support and Orientation of Migrants and Refugees (CAREF) and commissioned by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), thousands of Dominicans came to Argentina in the 1990s.

The study, “Migración, Prostitución y Trata de Mujeres Dominicanas en Argentina” (Migration, Prostitution and Trafficking of Dominican Women in Argentina) states that 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants from the Dominican Republic reached Argentina between 1995 and 2002.

In recent years, although the exchange rate is no longer a lure, Dominicans have continued to come. “We have been arriving for years, and some have managed to gain a good position in society,” Rondó says.

The activist explains that in some cases, the women take out a mortgage on their homes to travel, in the hope of finding a job in domestic service. But when they arrive, they find it hard to get a job, start racking up a debt with those who financed part of their journey, and end up falling into the hands of trafficking or prostitution rings, she says.

Nuñez concurs: “They come to Argentina with promises of jobs that don’t turn out to be what they had expected – work that would give them a better standard of living than they had in their country.”

Once here, they find it difficult to get any other kind of work, says the sociologist, who wrote the paper “Construyendo mapas: Cuerpos femeninos, espacio y jerarquización racial en la práctica de la prostitución en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires” on prostitution and racism in Buenos Aires.

Nuñez says that when they leave their countries in search of work abroad, women are aware that prostitution is one of the possibilities, from things they have heard about, but “many think it won’t happen to them.”

The sociologist studied the link between street prostitution and female migration in the Argentine capital, focusing on women from the Dominican Republic, who are highly visible as they are black in a country where there are so few people of African descent they only began to be counted in the 2010 census.

In her study, Nuñez says black women in Argentina are often seen as highly sexual, much more so than white or indigenous women, and this makes them more vulnerable.

One Dominican woman working as a sex worker in Buenos Aires, who was interviewed by Nuñez for her study, said “maybe they like (Dominican women) because we have big breasts.”

Another Dominican immigrant working as a street prostitute told the sociologist that “My mom didn’t want me to come here. She told me what women did when they came here, and I didn’t believe her.”

To combat this phenomenon, the Argentine authorities announced in August 2012 that people from the Dominican Republic would need visas to enter the country. And for those who already live here, the authorities simplified the legalisation process and streamlined the paperwork for gaining temporary residency for three years.

But Rondó believes that requiring visas is not a solution. The same view is shared in CAREF, where IPS spoke with Gabriela Liguori, and in the Dominican Republic Embassy in Buenos Aires. They all agree that the new visa requirement won’t solve the problem.

“This just makes things worse,” says the activist. “Because it will be difficult, but they’ll find other ways to get here on land, illegally, and then the women will be less protected and more exposed to trafficking.”

But the sources who spoke to IPS do believe it is a good idea to cut the red tape needed to regularise the situation of those who came in as tourists and are now living here without the proper documents, because temporary residency status would make it easier for them to find a job.

The programme has assistance from the Dominican consulate, Argentina’s foreign ministry, and the justice ministry’s office to rescue and support victims of trafficking.

Undocumented immigrants from the Dominican Republic were given from January to July to apply for temporary residency permits. By March, 631 permits had been granted, according to the web site of the national migrations office.

“My idea is that people who come should be able to regularise their situation, study or work, because even if some do come for prostitution, they could at least have other alternatives. But without documents, they’re forced to become sex workers,” Rondó says.

A sign advertising "Khmer Massage" conceals a story of exploitation of thousands of massage workers across Cambodia. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Feb 22 2013 (IPS)

Times are tough in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, where over 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of a dollar a day. Formal employment is hard to come by and many workers find themselves drifting in the murky waters of the “informal” market, where wages are unregulated and labour laws are seldom honoured.

A recent labour dispute involving massage workers employed by a luxury spa shed some light on the “entertainment” industry, arguably one of the most vulnerable sectors to labour violations.

When King Norodom Sihanouk died this past October and five massage workers from the Aziadee Spa were refused time off to pay their final respects, a sector that had hitherto been shrouded in secrecy found itself thrust into the spotlight.

When news of the king’s death reached the public on Oct. 15, 2012, the workers requested permission to break their 12-hour-long workday “to mourn for a few hours”, explained Mora Sar, president of the Cambodian Food and Service Worker Federation (CFSWF), a union that represents entertainment workers, adding that the women work from ten in the morning until ten at night, six days a week.

They returned the following day to learn they had been fired and were denied their final month’s pay.

Although the national Arbitration Council, the government body tasked with settling labour disputes, ruled that the employers had violated Cambodia’s labour laws, the spa did not comply.

During the official three-and-a-half-month mourning period that followed Sihanouk’s death, which lasted until Feb. 5, the workers’ plight fuelled a wave of protests.

From Jan. 11 until Jan. 18, fired workers, CFSWF and other entertainment workers staged a protest in front of the popular spa catering to foreigners, using loud speakers, signs and fliers in English and Khmer, drawing local media attention to the incident.

Finally, the five women were awarded their last month’s salary, damages, annual leave and severance pay, which ranged from 300 to 1,000 dollars based on seniority.

Though this is a landmark ruling for massage workers, it represents just the beginning, according to Mora.  In addition to this latest case, the union now represents 15 massage workers in the northwestern Siem Reap province who work at Alaska Massage, a large Korean-owned establishment employing some 200 workers who earn as little as 50 dollars a month with no per customer, amounting to daily wage of about two dollars.

Fine line between sex work and ‘entertainment’

Little is known about the working conditions for massage workers across Cambodia. Though the media has long reported on the country’s entertainment industry — which includes beer sellers, hostesses, karaoke singers and dancers—this coverage has largely focused on women working in local clubs and beer gardens rather than massage parlours.

In fact, the practice has a long history in this country, and those involved in the trade – mostly women without a formal education – bear the scars of a culture that simultaneously promotes male virility and female chastity.

Researcher Ian Lubek from the Canada-based University of Guelph found that young Cambodian men turned to the sex industry in part as a result of losing their parents – who would typically set up arranged marriages — during the Khmer Rouge years of 1975 to 1979.

However, married men also frequent brothels, according to Lubek, who cited government statistics showing that 25 percent of single and married men participate in the sex industry.

When Cambodia’s brothels closed in 2008 after the passage of the controversial Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking, brothel workers migrated to entertainment venues.

This sparked massive growth in the shadowy entertainment sector; a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) showed that in 2008, there were an estimated 494 massage workers who sold sex in Phnom Penh but a year later, at the end of 2009, the number had grown to 2,424, representing a 390 percent increase.  Beer gardens and beer promoters showed parallel increases, according to the report.

This study clarifies that, although entertainment work is distinct from sex work, there is some crossover.  This is attributed to a combination of low salaries, and customer and management expectations that pressure workers to sell sex to fill the gaps in their salaries.

Women interviewed by IPS admitted to supporting extended families in the countryside, making their wages utterly insufficient to meet basic needs.

Lubek told IPS, “After interviewing over 1,800 beer-sellers, hostesses, massage and karaoke entertainment workers, we found a pernicious and constant underpayment of women by about half, whether (from) managers of entertainment venues, global brewers, or local distributors.”

Sharing his most recent data covering the period 2002 to 2012, Lubek explained that entertainment workers earned only about half of their basic needs from their salary, showing a shortfall of 40 to 60 percent expected to be made up in tips.  His research shows that the pressure to engage in sex work precedes the closure of brothels.

Pisey Ly, a representative of the sex-worker-led collective Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), told IPS, “A massage session at a local, lower-level parlour costs 7,000 to 10,000 riel (1.75 to 2.50 dollars). When a worker decides to have sex, they charge an (extra) five dollars per service outside the massage place with local men.”

Sex workers use entertainment establishments as a front because their work is now illegal, according to Ly.  This particular market involves mostly local men, since “foreigners buy sex from freelance sex workers at bars and clubs”, rather than massage parlours.

Upscale spas tend to cater to foreigners and offer only therapeutic massage.  Here, masseuses experience a comparatively fortunate work environment.

According to Mora, places like Aziadee Spa charge customers between eight and eighteen dollars per massage, and workers can earn an additional dollar per customer, plus tips.  A monthly salary of 70 dollars represents the high end of the wage scale.

(END)

Anti-trafficking, anti-prostitution activists demand an amendment to India’s existing laws regulating the sex trade. Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

By Sujoy Dhar
KOLKATA, Dec 21 2012 (IPS)

In a small dingy room on the edge of a brothel in west Kolkata, capital of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, a 42-year-old former sex worker is trying to eke out a living selling cooked food in her neighbourhood, while tending to her sick husband and a paralysed son.

Despite the hardships of everyday life, Rubiya Bibi (not her real name), who was trafficked to India from neighbouring Bangladesh when she was a teenager, knows one thing for sure – she does not want to go back to prostitution.

Recalling the days when pimps and madams would force her to sleep with men even when she was sick, Rubiya Bibi says: “Poverty forced me to prostitution. But once in the trade’s vicious cycle, I faced even more atrocities.

“I was never allowed to say ‘no’ to those who ran the brothels. I was only 18 when I (tried) to escape but was caught and tortured,” she told IPS.

“I am now trying to live a life by other means though it is very difficult since my son is both physically and mentally challenged and my husband is also ill.”

In India, girls form the majority of the country’s 1.2 million child prostitutes, according to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s leading federal investigation agency.

Though no exact data is available, government officials and NGOs have tentatively placed the number of sex workers in India at about three million.

In addition, the U.S. State Department says India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking.

‘Cool men don’t buy sex’

In an effort to raise awareness about prostitution, Rubiya Bibi is now working with an ongoing anti-prostitution and anti-trafficking campaign, called ‘Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex’.

Spearheaded by the anti-trafficking NGO Apne Aap (meaning ‘on our own’), sex workers, trafficked women and students of Indian colleges and universities, the campaign brought under one umbrella women like Rubiya, sex workers’ children and young people from prominent educational institutions, in an effort to reach as broad of a spectrum of the public as possible.

Celebrities have also shown their support by endorsing the campaign.

The idea for ‘Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex’ first came from students of Symbiosis College in Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, earlier this year, but the campaign really started to gain momentum this December with the collection of thousands of signatures on a petition calling for a change in laws regulating the sex trade.

The students who started the project wanted to take a stand against the idea that women can be bought and sold, while simultaneously putting pressure on the Indian government to punish pimps and johns instead of stigmatising the victims and survivors of the sex trade.

The campaign has spread to various campuses across the country. Anuja Bhojnagarwala, a third-year student in the human development department at the J D Birla Institute in Kolkata, feels strongly about the issue and invited Apne Aap members on to campus to educate her fellow students.

“I wanted people to learn about the reality of sex trafficking and prostitution,” she told IPS.

“I know that it will not be easy to abolish prostitution, and it cannot happen until women can be offered (an alternative) livelihood,” she added.

According to Apne Aap Founder Ruchira Gupta, the Indian Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA), an anti-prostitution law, has consistently failed to protect girls and women from sex trafficking.

“It criminalises and stigmatises trafficking victims and allows the true perpetrators of crime – traffickers, pimps, johns – to exploit women and children with impunity,” Gupta said.

Earlier this month, Apne Aap presented President Pranab Mukherjee with more than 10,000 signatures on a petition calling for amendment of the existing anti-trafficking law that would deter the purchase of sex by increasing punishments for buyers and traffickers, and protect the women and girls that fall victim to the industry.

According to Apne Aap, the Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex Campaign shifts the focus away from victims and highlights the force that fuels the trade itself – the male demand for sex – without which traffickers, pimps, and brothel owners will be driven out of business, activists say.

“We (also) recently got a letter from the ministry of women and child development to say that the our suggestions would be taken on board,” Gupta told IPS, adding that this brings the movement closer to its goal of securing both societal and legislative change.

“Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex enlists both men and women to put pressure on the Indian government for the amendment of the proposed Section 5C of the ITPA (that seeks to punish clients found in brothels). This amendment will shift the burden of criminalisation from women and girls in prostitution to the men who buy sex and the pimps who profit from violent exploitation,” she added.

However, India’s largest sex workers’ body, which is also opposed to certain aspects of the ITPA that have failed to prevent harassment of sex workers, does not see eye to eye with the demands of organisations like Apne Aap.

“Those who are spearheading this campaign do not (seem to understand) that criminalising the buyers of sex will be an attack on the livelihood of sex workers,” according to Bharati Dey, secretary of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) – a collective comprised of 65,000 female, male and transgender sex workers based in West Bengal.

“We are against trafficking of minor girls too. Since 2000 we have rescued 941 girls who were being forced into the profession. We did this through our self-regulatory board,” Dey told IPS. “But if you get rid of brothels, you cannot fight HIV/AIDS like we did by spreading awareness in the brothels of Kolkata.”

Indeed, DMSC’s method of HIV/AIDS prevention has served as a model for other major global health organisations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Back in the 1990s, the sex worker collective taught its members how to resist attempts to force unprotected sex on them. By 1998, after a long battle, condom use reached 90 percent, an unprecedented increase from just three percent in 1992.

Dey stressed that if brothels are banned, underground sex work will thrive, with more people affected by sexually transmitted diseases.

Seventy percent of France’s 20,000 sex workers are migrant women. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Oct 24 2012 (IPS)

When French police broke up a Nigerian human trafficking ring that allegedly forced young migrant women into prostitution, the arrests cast a sharp light on the plight of what the authorities called “modern-day slaves”, here and throughout Europe.

Following the operation last month, police said that the criminal ring had trafficked young Nigerian women into France via Italy, and that the women were forced into prostitution to pay off thousands of euros in so-called debts to those who had arranged their smuggling.

These young women form part of the estimated 1.5 million victims of human trafficking in the European Union and other developed regions, according to the International Labour Organisation, which puts the global number of victims at close to 21 million.

In Europe, groups say the numbers are rising with the global economic crisis and conflicts in various regions, and they are pushing government officials to take action against trafficking and prostitution.

The Brussels-based European Women’s Lobby (EWL), which works for gender equality, launched a high-profile campaign ahead of the recent Summer Olympic Games that asked members of the European Parliament to come out against prostitution.

The group said that “thousands of young girls and women were at risk of trafficking and sexual exploitation to satisfy the demand for prostitution on the sidelines” of major sporting events such as the Olympic Games and the UEFA Euro 2012 football tournament in Poland and Ukraine.

Migrant women in precarious economic situations increasingly face the danger of being forced into prostitution, non-governmental organisations say.

“Amongst the many forms of violence against women, prostitution remains a key area where women’s rights are pervasively violated,” Pierrette Pape, the EWL’s policy officer and project coordinator, told IPS.

The EWL first began the ‘Together for a Europe free from prostitution’ campaign in 2010. As the largest umbrella organisation of women’s associations in the EU, it receives input and support from other groups, many of who will participate in EWL’s European conference on prostitution on Dec. 4 in Brussels.

“Prostitution constitutes a fundamental violation of women’s human rights, and is a form of male violence against women,” said Anna Hedh, a Swedish MEP who supports the campaign.

“Furthermore, prostitution is also the major pull factor in Europe’s modern slave trade – human trafficking. If we achieve a society free from prostitution and sexual exploitation of women and girls, we will also get rid of a large share of human trafficking in the EU,” she said.

Nusha Yonkova, anti-trafficking coordinator at the Immigrant Council of Ireland, an EWL associate, told IPS that migrant women who get involved in the commercial sex trade face multiple challenges.

These include “insecurity in relation to the immigration status (such as) the potential breach of immigration law on top of prostitution-related law; criminalisation by the state; isolation and lack of friends; disorientation from the constant movements around brothels in different towns; vulnerability to extortion and blackmail; control by pimps and advertisers and lack of medical care (apart from certain clinics for sexually transmitted diseases).”

The EWL added that migrant women also face hurdles to their “effective integration” into the labour market.

“This goes beyond simply finding employment but includes obtaining work that utilises and values their qualifications and skills,” the group told IPS.

Migrant women “tend to find work in traditional women’s roles…where they often work long hours for low pay and may be at risk of being severely exploited, especially if (they are) working in households.”

Throughout the EU, many migrant women and men are also denied the right to work in the formal labour market because of their legal status as asylum-seekers, joining spouses or undocumented migrants, EWL says.

“Long periods of denial of the right to work, as is the case for asylum-seekers, have proven to be a huge obstacle to their future integration into the labour market,” the group says.

In Ireland, a country that produced huge migrant populations of its own over several generations, migrant women are in a “very precarious” situation, according to Yonkova of the Immigrant Council.

“The work permit is expensive and almost impossible to get because almost all categories of work are ineligible for non-EU nationals at present,” she told IPS.

“Most women in prostitution are trying to maintain a student status in Ireland but this is also difficult because the courses are expensive and the renewal requires attendance, which these women usually cannot demonstrate. They are becoming additional prey to ‘immigration consultants’ who are trying to arrange for them fake college credentials and statements.”

The Immigrant Council says, “There are on average 1,000 women in the Irish sex industry on any given day.”

However, the group adds that it “cannot estimate how many of them turn to prostitution or how many are compelled by other people or blackmailed or threatened, and how many are minors (which we see all the time)”.

Even in cases where women do obtain some money from prostitution, this hardly amounts to a livelihood, advocates say.

“We want to note that the Irish migrant organisations that advocate for rights of migrants do not accept prostitution as ‘livelihood’. We deplore voices that advocate for the rights of poorer migrants to sell themselves in order to earn a living, (without offering) them any real occupational possibilities. This is (…) inherently racist,” Yonkova said.

Migrant women involved in the sex trade in Europe originate from diverse regions. In Ireland, they come mainly from Latin America, the “poorest Eastern countries (including the ghettos of EU member states)”, with others travelling from Brazil, Romania and Nigeria as well, the Immigrant Council says.

In Belgium, where the EWL is based, women in prostitution mainly come from Bulgaria, Albania and Romania. “We now see women from Hungary, Italy and Greece, which really shows that the system of prostitution exploits the most vulnerable,” the group told IPS.

Italy and Greece, for instance, have both seen their economies decline and have had to introduce unprecedented austerity measures.

In France, where prostitution itself is not illegal – but pimping and brothel ownership are – some 70 percent of the country’s estimated 20,000 prostitutes are foreigners. They come mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as from sub-Saharan Africa.

A number of French lawmakers are attempting to outlaw prostitution, a move that many sex workers themselves have opposed.

In July, sex workers and rights activists took to the streets in Paris and other cities to demonstrate against a proposal by France’s new Women’s Rights Minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, to penalise those caught soliciting prostitutes on the street.

The workers said that criminalising prostitution would ostracise them further from society and take away their meagre livelihood.

(END)

How many condoms is it legal to carry around in your pocket? That’s the question sex workers in the United States are asking after being routinely targeted by police for having prophylactics – not in itself a crime.

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch launched “Sex workers at risk: Condoms as evidence of prostitution” at a press conference in Washington. The report includes more than 300 interviews, with 200 current and former sex workers as well as outreach workers, advocates, prosecutors, public defenders, police, and health department officials.

The “criminalising” of condoms has left sex workers in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington DC and San Francisco wary of carrying condoms, and exposed them and their customers to the threat of HIV.

Tanya B, a Latina transgender sex worker from NYC, recounts her harrowing experience with the police.

“I was stopped and threatened. The cops said ‘empty your purse.’ I cleared out everything but left the condoms at the bottom – I got caught. They said ‘how come you didn’t pull out the condoms? I can arrest you because of this.’ I said ‘it’s not a problem, I have no weapons, no drugs’ and the police officer said ‘next time, I will arrest you because this is evidence you are a prostitute’.”

Andrea Ritchie, coordinator of AT Streetwise and Safe (SAS), and a lawyer specialising in police misconduct, gave insight into this unofficial but prevalent practice. The most common victims in New York are women of colour and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, she said.

Between 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT, and many turn to “survival sex” to earn enough money to eat and get a place to sleep.

“The police believe it is doing their job. The order to confiscate condoms, though unofficial, comes from district attorneys,” Richie told IPS. “NYC is the epicentre for AIDS, and these practices put countless women, LGBTs and men at risk.”

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) launched a safe sex campaign in 2007, ultimately distributing more than 40 million free condoms across the city.

The actions of the police directly counteract the city’s initiative to protect people from disease, and can be seen as a huge waste of resources, rights advocates say.

In Washington DC, the AIDS epidemic is one of the most widespread in the United States. Of the 17,000 people with HIV, 75 percent were African American males. African American women in DC are 14 times more likely to be infected than their white counterparts.

Groups such as Rubber Revolution in DC and Get Some! in NYC are taking the fight for condom use to the media, using popular social media platforms. They worry that the “condom as evidence” practice is seriously undermining these efforts.

If bills such as one pending in the New York State Assembly are passed, condoms will not be allowed to be used as evidence of prostitution. The bill specifically states, “Provides that possession of a condom may not be received in evidence in any trial, hearing or proceeding as evidence of prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, promoting prostitution, permitting prostitution, maintaining a premises for prostitution, lewdness or assignation, or maintaining a bawdy house.”

For Megan McLemore, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, the issue at hand is clear. If someone has to be arrested for prostitution, it should be because law enforcement officials saw them agreeing to a sexual act for money. Condoms should not figure into the debate.

At the launch of the report, all the speakers stressed that criminalising condoms is a public health issue. It endangers the general public, and exposes them to diseases which can be easily prevented.

The report provides insight into the ordeals faced by sex workers, which include police harassment of transgender people such as vulgar insults, mockery, and disrespect. In one case, a police officer grabbed a woman’s wig, threw it to the ground and stepped on it. Such behaviour points to a pattern of discrimination that goes beyond simple stop and search tactics.

“We have a saying in NYC. If on one side of the West Village a frat boy is standing with 10 condoms in his pocket, he is hopeful and practicing safe public health. If on the other side stands a gay man with condoms in his pocket, he is obviously engaging in prostitution,” says Ritchie.