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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

  • Impoverished women without ID turn to prostitution in Sri Lanka - 2011

    An article by Anuradha Gunarathne on the Global Press Institute website.

    COLOMBO, SRI LANKA – Marry, a Sri Lankan woman who guesses she is in her 40s, is a prostitute in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital.

  • Indigenous Peoples In the Sex Trade - Speaking For Ourselves - 2011

    By the Native Youth Sexual Health Network on Thursday, June 9, 2011.

    We as Indigenous peoples who have current and/or former life experience in the sex trade and sex industries met on unceeded Coast Salish Territory in Vancouver on Monday April 11th 2011. In a talking circle organized by the Native Youth Sexual Health Network we wish to share the following points about our collective discussion so that we may speak FOR ourselves and life experiences:

  • Indonesia Jails Sex Workers for Month of Ramadan - 2011

    Sex workers and the police in Indonesia

    Sex workers being 'netted' by East Jakarta Satpol PP officers on Friday (5 August 2011). After a fight they were taken to a detention centre called Ceger Social Institution, Cipayung. “Based on the governor’s instruction, those who caught will not be freed until Eid ul Fitr.”

  • Is Child to Adult as Victim is to Criminal? Social Policy and Street-Based Sex Work in the United States - 2011

    A Working Paper from the Social Networks Research Group.

  • Majority of migrant sex workers ‘not forced or trafficked’. - 2011

    The International Union of Sex Workers warmly welcomes the publication of “Migrant Workers in the UK Sex Industry” by Dr Nick Mai.

    This is the largest ever qualitative research into the experience of migrants selling sexual services in London, and key findings are:
    • The large majority of interviewed migrant workers in the UK sex industry are not forced nor trafficked.

    • Immigration status is by far the single most important factor restricting their ability to exercise their rights in their professional and private lives.

  • Making sex work safer in Switzerland - 2011

    If sex work was treated like any other profession, many of the problems associated with it, including violence, could be easier to tackle according to Eva Büschi, a professor at the School of Social Work of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland. 

  • Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities - 2011

    'Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities'  includes a chapter entitled 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Constructions of Masculinity and Contemporary Understandings of Sex Work' that looks at men as buyers and sellers of sex and desconstructs the myth of the 'pimp'.

  • Myths About Human Trafficking - 2011

    In an article in the Huffington Post US academic Ronald Weitzer provides a clear explanation of why the claims being made about sex trafficking by celebrities, charities, UN and government agencies should not be taken at face value.

  • New Initiative on Sex Work in Botswana - 2011

    A new sex workers initiative in Botswana has included a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Questioning (LGBTIQ) component in their programme.

    Sisonke Botswana, a sex work group currently housed by Botswana Network on Ethics Law and HIV/AIDS (BONELA), joined the African Sex Workers Alliance and dedicated a week to the mapping of sex workers rights in Botswana with the aim to forming a coalition which will advance the human health rights of most key population (sex workers, transgender, MSM and drug users).

  • Nongovernmental organisations and sex work in Cambodia: Development perspectives and feminist agendas - 2011

    This project focuses on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Cambodia that deal, either directly or indirectly, with sex work and sex workers. The NGOs outlined in this study have goals ranging from preventing Cambodian women from entering the commercial sex industry to empowering Cambodian sex workers through the formation of sex worker unions.

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