Amnesty International calls on Governments to protect prostitutes

Amnesty International’s new policy to protect prostitutes and sex workers rights

Amnesty International has published its new Policy on protecting the Human Rights of Sex workers as well as four research reports on the issues and abuses sex workers face in Argentina, Norway, Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea.

Tawanda Mutasah, who is the Senior Director for Law and Policy at Amnesty International said: “Sex workers are at heightened risk of a whole host of human rights abuses including rape, violence, extortion and discrimination. Far too often they receive no, or very little, protection from the law or means for redress”.

He continued “Our policy outlines how governments must do more to protect people who do sex work from violations and abuse. Our research highlights their testimony and the daily issues they face.”

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Policy is a result of two years research into prostitutes experiences

This policy is the result of consultations that they have undertaken all over the world, reviewing evidence and first hand experiences for more than two years.

Amnesty is calling on governments to ensure that sex workers are protected from harm and are not exploited or coerced into working against their will. They also recommend that sex workers should be able to participate in the process of developing of laws that will affect their lives and safety.

They recommend the decriminalisation of sex work by consenting adults, including repealing laws that try to prohibit related activities, for instance those outlawing solicitation or organising sex work.

The policy is based on many examples of evidence that such laws very often only serve to actually make sex workers less safe because they are too afraid to report crimes to the Police for fear of being arrested and charged with offences themselves which means that abusive clients can act with impunity.

Amnesty believes that the laws surrounding sex work should not try to prohibit sex work or criminalise the workers, but be aimed at protecting the workers from exploitation and abuse. Sex workers should be able to trust the police to take their complaints seriously, rather than use them as an excuse to arrest the workers or commit other abuses against them.

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Governments should protect prostitutes and sex workers

We at Affordable Leather Products agree that sex workers should be protected by the authorities and that history has repeatedly shown that attempts to outlaw the “oldest profession” are doomed to fail as they only causing misery and suffering to women and men who choose, of their own free will, to enter this line of work.

For more about and reports from countries around the world, this see Amnesty International’s page here

What laws should we have for sex work? See Affordable Leather Products’ Blog post on the subject here.

Also Kat Banyard claims that “Rebranding prostitution as sex work is dangerous” Affordable Leather Products have comprehensively rebutted her claims in this blog post.

Are you a sex worker or have you used a sex worker’s services?

Do you agree with Amnesty International that the current laws around the world are outdated and repressive, making it easier for sex workers to be exploited and abused?

What are your experiences of sex work? Are people trafficked into it the rule or the exception?

How would you improve laws around sex work or would you just abolish them entirely and leave it as a matter between consenting adults?

Post your comments below…

Published by Graham

Founder and owner of Affordable Leather Products, making and selling leather bondage and BDSM gear since 1993!

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2 Comments

    1. @Lacey – Yes, it’s just a shame that there are those who think that the best way to “protect” women is to actually make things more dangerous for them, presumably so that they’ll be too scared to work as prostitutes 🙁

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