Prostitution and the law Europe’s quandary Getting rid of land-mines without getting hurt	Should prostitution be legal? Amy Otchet
In the Netherlands, prostitution is legal for European Union residents. ‘Why do men choose to buy the bodies of millions of women and children, call it sex, and seemingly get tremendous pleasure literally over their bought bodies?’ Manila prostitutes sail out to ships moored offshore. Prostitution and the law According to the 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, which has been ratified by 72 states: “prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons . . . are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person. . . .” Parties agree to punish anyone who: • “procures, entices or leads away, for purposes of prostitution, another person, even with the consent of that person”; • “exploits the prostitution of another person, even with the consent of that person”; • “keeps or manages, or knowingly finances or takes part in the financing of a brothel”; • “knowingly lets or rents a building . . . for the purposes of prostitution”. In practice, governments have developed three basic legal fameworks concerning prostitution: • Prohibition. The act of accepting payment for sex and sometimes paying for sex is illegal and punished. This is the situation, for example, in the Gulf States and in most of the United States. • Criminalization. The law forbids certain activities related to payment for sex rather than paid sex itself. These activities include soliciting for clients, advertising, living off the earnings of prostitutes, recruiting prostitutes or helping them to circulate from one country to another. This is the most common legal framework for commercial sex throughout Western Europe, India, Southeast Asia, Canada, Australia and the Pacific and most of Latin America. • Regulation refers to exceptions to criminal law made for those parts of the sex industry which comply with certain conditions. In the case of female sex workers, such systems are often linked to mandatory health checks. Some examples: In Brazil, prostitution is not illegal but it is illegal to operate a brothel, to rent premises to prostitutes, exploit children or live off the earnings of a prostitute. In Canada, the law does not prohibit the act of prostitution but criminalizes a wide range of related activities like soliciting, living off the earnings of prostitution, operating premises, etc. In Denmark, it is not illegal to provide sexual services so long as prostitution is not the main source of income (in which case the charge is vagrancy). Recruiting is illegal. Greece and Turkey have both legalized prostitution. Women must register and attend clinics for regular examinations, in some cases as frequently as twice weekly. In India, despite the many laws against the sex industry and traditional caste-bound prostitution, prostitution and trafficking is still common. Conditions are very bad for those involved. In Senegal, it is illegal to aid, abet, procure or live off prostitution earnings or run a brothel. Female prostitutes must register, carry cards and have regular medical exams. Most women take part in the informal sector. Enforcement is weak. In Thailand, it is illegal to be a prostitute or to live off a prostitute’s earnings. However, the laws are not consistently enforced. Source: Prostitution Education Network Europe’s quandary In Western European countries such as Germany, prostitution is legal—but only for European Union residents. The restrictions are intended to combat trafficking in women—whereby criminal networks smuggle women and girls from one country or region to the next, exploiting them as prostitutes or domestic labourers. Eastern and Central Europe have reportedly surpassed Asia as the prime source of this trafficking. In Germany, 80 per cent of the estimated 10,000 trafficked women are from this European region, according to the International Organization for Migration. While these women may have chosen to migrate as prostitutes for economic reasons, few are prepared for the abuse frequently encountered. Not only are they driven further into debt, but some are deprived of their passports, raped, sold to clubs and pimps, while others face threats to their families at home if they don’t comply. The laws barring these women from legally working as prostitutes were supposed to combat trafficking. Yet according to women’s groups on both sides of the legalization debate, they have done more harm than good. They drive the women further underground as illegal aliens. In 1997, for example, German authorities reported finding 1,500 trafficked women—95 per cent of whom were deported.	Some women’s groups consider prostitutes as victims; others regard them as ‘sex workers’ with rights “Ever since the Chinese declared ‘To get rich is to be glorious,’ women without connections, brain power or money have been using the only asset available to them for quick money. Equipped with a room, a bed, a supply of condoms, a red light—and voila—instant brothel. . . . These girls can make much more money at $30 a customer, than $4 per day in the factories. As is (the case) in almost every underdeveloped country!” according to the International Sex and Red-Light Guide. Sold for $30, the guide “instructs” men on where to find cheap sex around the world. This is a business venture, according to the authors, where the only principle is getting the most for your money. “If one so chooses to use her body in this manner, in lieu of social slavery at the hands of poverty employers, and men are willing to pay them more than slave labour wages, so be it. If it is not your body and not your life, it is also not your business. Until [someone] can correct the whole world’s economic condition, as well as the overpopulation problem, someone has to pay the bills.” But who? The poorest, the most vulnerable? There is no denying that the sex industry has taken on international dimensions, recognized as an economic motor for many countries, particularly in Asia. The irony is that prostitution is not entirely legal. Would legalization reduce some of the inequalities and abuse suffered by the women involved? Or by legitimizing prostitution, would we reverse decades of work to promote human rights and improve the status of women? An acrimonious debate On the surface this looks like a rehashing of a timeless debate. But it isn’t. The question is no longer about morality—is prostitution a vice and are those involved evil or somehow lacking in judgment? We now ask: is prostitution a form of exploitation to be abolished or an occupation to be regulated? This has proven to be one of the most divisive issues among women’s groups around the world. There are basically two camps—those seeking to eradicate prostitution, like the non-governmental Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and prostitutes’ rights groups, primarily based in the Netherlands, the United States and England, who view the women involved as “sex workers”. There is considerable acrimony between the two. For example, the Coalition maintains that these groups generally represent the interests of the “pimps and procurers”. In rebuttal, the rights’ groups maintain that the abolitionists are locked away in the ivory towers of academic feminism, cut off from the day-to-day realities facing prostitutes. The dividing line between the two camps lies in distinctions between so-called “free” and “forced” prostitution. Abolitionists generally maintain that the vast majority of women are forced into prostitution, while the sex workers insist that this is not necessarily the case. But as both point out, for different reasons, these distinctions oversimplify the issues. The 12-year-old Nepalese girl sold to an Aids-infested brothel in India clearly never consented to this form of slavery. The drug-addict in New York who must fulfil a quota of clients to get a fix from her pimp is not free to make decisions concerning her body. But what of the Ukrainian woman who looses her job and decides to go to Germany to work as a maid but ends up in a brothel? For the Coalition, “the distinctions between free and forced prostitution obscure the powerful structural socio-economic conditions—like poverty, marginalization, lack of opportunities and prior sexual abuse—that often drive women and children straight into prostitution situations,” says Aurora Javate de Dios of the Coalition’s Asia-Pacific branch. “Economic crisis, natural disasters, political unrest and conflict situations make women and children more vulnerable and easy prey to sex traffickers and recruiters. We see this everywhere, especially in developing countries of the South.” For Javate de Dios, laws aimed at distinguishing between free and forced prostitution will never recognize the complex dynamics involved. The most they can possibly do is to identify the most extreme forms of coercion, while ignoring the impact of poverty and implicitly legitimizing patriarchal relationships. The line between free and forced prostitution also wears thin on the opposite side of the spectrum, according to Lin Chew, a former spokesperson for the Foundation Against Trafficking in Women, a non-governmental organization based in the Netherlands. “When does anyone make free decisions, especially in the labour market? A man who works in a chemical factory, whose wages will never get him over the poverty line—did he choose this way of life? And what about the woman whose background never afforded her the chance to develop any skills? Why should this question of free choice only apply to prostitution?” There is, however, one point on which the two camps agree: decriminalization. It’s time to repeal laws used to punish prostitutes in seeking to protect public decency and order. Beyond this, the two camps diverge. For abolitionist groups like the Coalition, women are victims, but anyone who profits from their exploitation deserves punishment. For the prostitutes’ rights groups, however, you cannot help sex workers by forcing their employers underground. But you can try to level the playing field—that is ensure that these workers are protected from occupational hazards and receive fair treatment. This is probably the latest chapter in the debate: the role of the state. Here we find two camps within the prostitutes’ rights groups. One branch pushes for complete decriminalization, that is no regulation of the industry, while another supports legalization. “Legalized” prostitution refers to a wide range of situations. It can simply mean that prostitution is not against the law. More often the case, though, legalization is synonymous for regulation, with laws enforced by police. Licenses can be issued, for example, with mandatory health-checks. Zoning laws may set up “eros centres” removed from residential areas. If brothels are illegal, it might be an offence for two prostitutes to work out of the same house. Anti-pimping laws may oblige a prostitute’s lover to prove that he or she is financially independent. Standards can also be set for the working space, assuring for example, sufficient lighting, quality mattresses, fire precautions and air supply. Laws can assure that a woman is not obligated to drink alcohol with a client. While appropriate tax brackets can be set up for earnings and rights to health insurance and retirement ensured. In theory, these regulations are intended to protect prostitutes. But some do just the opposite, according to sex worker groups like the US-based COYOTE, which calls for complete decriminalization of prostitution. Government-run brothels “would be the prostitute’s worst nightmare,” according to a COYOTE position paper. “I can think of nothing worse than having to work for a bureaucrat—especially in the sex industry—where there is already a long and well documented history of abuse by the police. . . . Perhaps brothels are an ideal situation for the male clients—a man gets to go to a place where all the women are lined up waiting to be chosen—but it is an extremely uncomfortable, degrading situation for women. . . .” As for licenses, they “do nothing to ensure the safety of either the customer or the prostitute. That is not to say that women shouldn’t have frequent medical checks—they should,” according to COYOTE, in reference to complaints that women are treated like cattle by health inspectors in poorly equipped facilities. “Just as a restaurant will lose its reputation if the food isn’t fresh and its customers become ill, so will the free market regulate the health standards of working women.” For the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, the debate over the role of the state is simply a way of stonewalling the real issues. The term “sex worker” doesn’t dignify the woman involved, it dignifies the pimps, procurers and traffickers. “What prostituted women must endure in their ‘employment’ is what in other contexts would be the accepted definition of sexual harassment and sexual abuse in the workplace,” according to Janice Raymond, of the Coalition. “Does the fact that a fee is paid transform this abuse into a ‘job’ known as ‘commercial sex work’?” Courses in sex work Raymond points to courses, available for a fee in the Netherlands, on how to do sex work, covering everything from role-playing sessions in bars to and information on tax breaks. “What young girl would you encourage to become ‘skilled’ in this trade? Why is so much attention paid to promoting the ‘trade’ and nothing done to help women get out of it? Because its easier to believe that prostitution is a choice for these women. . . . If the issue of choice must be raised, let it be raised in the context of the men who buy the sex of prostitution. Why do men choose to buy the bodies of millions of women and children, call it sex, and seemingly get tremendous pleasure literally over their bought bodies?” Getting rid of land-mines without getting hurt Anti-personnel mines have killed or maimed more than 26,000 people around the world. In Cambodia, one out of every 200 people is an amputee because of them. A treaty banning the use, stockpiling, production and trade in anti-personnel mines signed by 130 countries (40 of which have ratified it so far)1 will become binding international law on 1 March 1999. The agreement also calls on the signatories to destroy the 100 million or so landmines scattered all over the world. The problem is how to do it at the lowest risk to human lives. A Spanish firm, GTD, is currently leading a consortium of European enterprises and institutes involved in a $25 million project to develop an Advanced Global System to Eliminate Anti-personnel Landmines (ANGEL), partly funded by the European Eureka programme to promote collaboration in research and development. “We’re not offering a magic solution,” says the GTD project manager. “There aren’t any in this field. But the point about our system is that it brings together several different technologies,” including robotics, satellite observation and the latest electro-magnetic detection systems. The method GTD is developing relies on geographic data provided by satellites and an unmanned vertical take-off and landing aerial vehicle equipped with special sensors to identify mine-free fields and areas where there may be landmines. The next step is carried out on the ground by a light, manoeuvrable unmanned all-terrain vehicle which can enter minefields in order to locate and identify each single explosive device. Another vehicle, in this case driven by a mine disposal specialist, is then sent to deneutralize the mine from the safety of the vehicle some 50 or 100 metres away. Previous methods involved a high degree of risk for mine disposal officers, who had to work very close to the mines they were neutralizing. The ANGEL system will not be completely operational until the year 2004. The first testing of it has been done in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at Tuzla, whose university is among the 15 institutions associated with the project, along with leading European aerospace firms including Matra (France) and Germany (Dornier), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States. 1 See the UNESCO Courier, October 1998, page 35.
The UNESCO Courier