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Human Rights and Law

Human Rights and Law

PLRI is committed to examining the strengths and weaknesses of international human rights and domestic legal frameworks as they apply to sex work. We aim to evaluate the impact of various international and domestic laws and policies on the human rights of female, male and transgender sex workers and their communities.

Sex workers universally claim that their human rights are abused. In some cases this means exposure to violence and barriers to accessing services, resources and justice. In other cases arbitrary detention, criminal law and lack of access to clean safe places to live and work are cited as human rights issues.

International human rights standards and norms have traditionally constructed sex work as an affront to human dignity and as a result have failed to endow sex workers with the range of rights normally accorded to others unimpeded by occupational or moral status. The conflation of adult female prostitution with trafficking and child abuse that has occurred this decade has lead to the revival of law enforcement in many countries which appears to have lead to human rights abuses.

Questions about what legal and policy approaches can best protect sex workers, clients and the broader society are of great importance to sex worker advocates. PLRI seeks to illuminate a range of issues around law and human rights in respect of sex work and aims to resource sex workers to engage in local, national and international debates about what mix of laws and policies can best protect and advance their human rights.

Resources

  • A Regressive Move Which Would Further Stigmatise and Endanger Sex Workers - 2012

    Last week Rhoda Grant MSP and Lord Morrow were invited to speak about their respective proposals to criminalise the purchase of sex in Scotland and Northern Ireland at an event in the House of Commons tellingly entitled 'Prostitution and Sexual Exploitation: Tackling Demand in the UK'.

    These proposals represent a radical change to the criminal law in this area and, if passed, would have severe consequences for sex workers. They are not supported by public opinion, academic evidence, sex workers themselves or by the majority of those delivering front-line support to sex workers.

  • Burden of HIV among female sex workers in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis - 2012

    This is an important study of the epidemiological literature on female sex workers. It shows us that for the first 30 years HIV affected and killed huge numbers of women who sell sex. Although the article does not make for happy reading we can take great comfort in knowing that the information here is  about things that happenned before there was widespread access to  ARV treatment.

  • Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885-1960 - 2012
  • Condom Use among Female Commercial Sex Workers in Nevada's Legal Brothels - 2012

    Nevada is the only US state in which commercial sex is legal. Since 1971, counties of fewer than 400000 people
    have been able to elect to legalize brothels. At present, there are 32 legal brothels employing about 300 licensed prostitutes. Licensed brothel sex workers undergo weekly state-mandated medical examinations for gonorrhea, herpes, and venereal warts and monthly blood tests for syphilis. In March 1986, the Nevada Board of Health began requiring a negative initial human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody test and negative monthly tests thereafter as a condition of employment. If a brothel worker or applicant is found to be seropositive, her employment is immediately terminated or denied.

  • Debating the right to sell sex in Switzerland - 2012

    Switzerland is one of the most liberal countries when it comes to prostitution. Yet those who offer sexual services for payment do not have ordinary workers’ rights and the profession is still considered immoral.

    To imagine a society without prostitution is utopian. Those who are willing to offer their own bodies in exchange for money must be allowed to do so without being stigmatised or punished. This is the view put forward by Terre des Femmes Switzerland, an organisation that campaigns for the rights of women.

  • Embodied cosmopolitanisms: the subjective mobility of migrants working in the global sex industry - 2012

    Anti-trafficking rhetoric and policies emphasise the extent of exploitation and coercion of female migrant sex workers and obfuscate the shared ambivalences and contradictions experienced by migrant female sex workers and their male agents and partners. By engaging in the global sex industry, both young men and women negotiate their aspiration to cosmopolitan late modern lifestyles against the prevalence of essentialist patriarchal gender values and sexual mores at home.

  • Mandatory Testing for South African Sex Workers - 2012

    This report for the South African Law Reform Commission suggests that laws around sex work be changed so that sex workers can be made to submit to medical examination in exchange for not being arrested as in Nevada and Australia.

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  • Prevalence of HIV and sexually transmitted infections among clients of female sex workers in Karnataka, India: a cross-sectional study - 2012

    Background:

  • Prosecution dropped against UK sex worker for lack of evidence - 2012

    Sheila Farmer, a sex worker who worked with other women from premises for safety had charges of brothel-keeping dismissed today in Croydon Crown Court. She worked with other women since being viciously raped and attacked whilst working alone.
     
    Ms Farmer left court with over 20 supporters delighted and relieved that she no longer faces a criminal conviction and possible prison sentence. Ms Farmer suffers from severe diabetes and a malignant brain tumour. Her doctor had provided evidence that an onerous and stressful trial would have exacerbated her condition.
     

  • Prostitutes + Condoms = AIDS?: Leadership Act, - 2012

    Scholars and field experts have argued extensively that the U.S. policy stating that fund recipients may not promote prostitution is unconstitutional because it compels speech.

    Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register to clarify what

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