Sex workers speak out against abolition
NEW DELHI: Sex workers in India have spoken out against a global conference on the abolition of prostitution, saying campaigners for the end of the sex trade failed to recognise some women were prostitutes out of choice and not due to coercion, trafficking or force.
The threeday World Congress on the Elimination of the Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls this week brought together 250 charities and activists, as well as academics, trade unions and lawyers from 30 countries. Participants at the Delhi conference — including former sex workers from South Africa, Canada, India and the United States — have been sharing stories of sexual slavery and calling for an end to prostitution by punishing clients, pimps and traffickers.
But sex workers’ groups in India said there was a difference between voluntary sex work and sexual exploitation, and that not all women in the trade were victims or trafficked sex slaves.
‘‘We are against anyone who does not recognise us as human beings who can take our own decisions,’’ said Kiran Deshmukh, a sex worker from Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad, a collective of sex workers from India’s western state of Maharashtra.
‘‘Making us victims with no agency is a violation of our human right to work in sex work. By ‘abolishing’ us they are not helping us — they are ignoring our need to work and earn a living with dignity.’’
Sex work is illegal in most countries across the world, yet it exists everywhere. There are an estimated 40 million sex workers globally, according to French charity Fondation Scelles.
Abolitionists say most have been lured, duped or forced into sexual slavery by pimps and traffickers, largely because of poverty, a lack of opportunities and having a traditionally marginalised status in society.
Once forced to work in brothels, on street corners, in massage parlours, strip clubs or private homes, it is difficult for sex workers to leave, activists say.
For many it is the threat of physical abuse from their pimp that keeps them in prostitution, but some stay of their own accord, ostracised by their families and with nowhere to go.
Groups from the National Network of Sex Workers in India said abolitionists were being moralistic and judgemental. They said legalising the trade would regulate the industry and ensure there was no exploitation of women and girls.
‘‘The violence of a judgemental attitude has contributed untold misery on sex workers, encouraging lumpen elements to justify the violence meted out to sex workers,’’ said a statement from the group, signed by over 2000 sex workers, sex workers’ children and 20 groups representing their rights.
However, several speakers at the conference said the vast majority of sex workers were exploited.
‘‘So what if there are women out there who are doing this out of their own free will?’’ said Rachel Moran, an Irish prostitution survivor and founder of the charity SPACE International.
‘‘There are 40 million women and girls on this earth that are prostituted and if you have a tiny sprinkling of those who say they have chosen it fully and voluntarily, that doesn’t negate the experience of the vast majority.’’
Hollywood actress Ashley Judd, attending the conference as an advocate for abolition, said women and girls were being bought and sold like commodities and action had to be taken to end the global sex trade.
‘‘We need to put on the onus and shame where it belongs — which is on the perpetrator, the aggressor and the person who thinks that women and girls’ bodies are purchasable,’’ Judd sa.id. — Reuters