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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

  • Elusive Empowerment: Compensating the Sex Trafficked Person Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act - 2011
  • Evaluation Of Nature And Impact Of Violence Exposure Among Registered Female Sex Workers - 2011

    An article in Turkiye Klinikleri J Med Sci 2011;31(5):1167-78.

    Objective: We conducted a descriptive study to determine various forms of violence and their impacts on registered female sex workers in Turkey.

  • Experience of violence and adverse reproductive health outcomes, HIV risks among mobile female sex workers in India - 2011

    Article in BMC Public Health 2011, 11:357.

    Female sex workers are a population sub-group most affected by the HIV epidemic in India and elsewhere. Despite research and programmatic attention to FSWs, little is known regarding sex workers' reproductive health and HIV risk in relation to their experiences of violence. This paper in BMC Public Health therefore aims to understand the linkages between violence and the reproductive health and HIV risks among a group of mobile FSWs in India.

    Methods

  • Feminism, power and sex work in the context of HIV/AIDS: Consequences for women's health - 2011

    Article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, Vol 34, p225 - 258.

  • Fiji Cracks Down on Sex work - 2011

    THE military regime in Fiji is taking on a new target: sex workers

    A report published today by the University of NSW says sex workers, especially in Lautoka, the centre of Fiji’s sugar industry, north of Nadi, have been rounded up by the military and subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation and forced physical labour.

    Karen McMillan, a researcher with the International HIV Research Group at UNSW, said the sex workers were held in outdoor pens at an army base, woken every three hours and made to do duck-walks and squat in the mud.

  • Fuelling traffic Abolitionist claims of a causal nexus between legalised prostitution and trafficking - 2011

    Over the last decade, researchers and legislators have struggled to get an accurate picture of the scale and nature of the problem of human trafficking. In the absence of reliable data, some anti-prostitution activists have asserted that a causal relationship exists between legalised prostitution and human trafficking. They claim that systems of legalised or decriminalised prostitution lead to increases in trafficking into the sex industry.

  • Gay community, sex workers, health care providers, the police and legal representatives join in to mark IDAHO - 2011

    Kenyans, drawn from the gay and lesbian community, male and female sex workers, representatives of the police force, health care providers and also legal professionals came together to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO)in Kisumu, Kenya.

  • HIV and Law in China - 2011

    The Chinese government uses the traditional strategy of implementing strict laws regarding sex work with the intention of preventing risk behaviours.

  • HIV and Sex Work in Cambodia - 2011

    Cambodia is internationally recognized for having successfully reduced its HIV prevalence among the general population from about 3% in 1997 to 0.7% in 2009. Sex work played a significant role in the spread of the HIV epidemic during the nineties. Since 1999, HIV prevalence has declined among direct and indirect sex workers, although levels remain high. The 100% condom use promotion strategy has been credited for having played a major role in the decline of HIV.

  • HIV and Sex Work in Myanmar - 2011

    Myanmar has one of the largest HIV epidemics in Asia. The first case of HIV was detected in 1988 while the first AIDS case was reported in 1991. HIV prevalence among the general population reached its peak at 0.94% in the year 2000 and was estimated to be 0.61% in 2009. The estimated number of adults and children living with HIV in 2009 was 238,000 (with a range of 160,000 to 320,000).

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