Justice and Civil Liberties on Sex Work in Contemporary International Human Rights Law

Abstract

To fulfil obligations in international law State parties have to take the issue of human trafficking seriously. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) provides General Recommendations (GR) to member states on the interpretation of the Women’s Convention. In 2018 the CEDAW Committee started to develop a GR on trafficking in women and girls in a process planned to conclude in 2020. The first stage towards this was through the publication of a Concept Note to serve as a basis for dialogue during the two-year international consultation period. The Concept Note is a vital link in a textual chain because it frames the policy problem and actively constructs its own ‘documentary reality’. This article provides a critical analysis of the CEDAW Concept Note on the grounds that such analysis provides an understanding of its discursive construction of trafficking, migrant labour and sex work, by an institution responsible for international jurisprudence on human rights. Analysis of the Concept Note explores the documentary constructions including narratives that merge adult women with girls, the symbolism of exploitation, the silencing of scientific research, the elision of sex worker voices, and sex work as work. The analysis leads us to conclude that the General Recommendation should define what counts as ‘exploitation’, and ‘forced labour’, and address the growing international recognition of best evidence on the wider impact of sex work laws, in order that legal framing and constructions of sex trafficking are not erroneously used to curtail rights of sex workers.

Sex Worker Health Outcomes in High-Income Countries of Varied Regulatory Environments: A Systematic Review

“…Recent literature has demonstrated an association between legislation and sex worker health outcomes [ 21 ]. Public preference is increasingly growing in favour of decriminalization [ 6 , 8 , 14 , 22 , 23 ], and evidence continues to support the effectiveness of decriminalization as a regulatory model for improving sex worker health outcomes [ 4 , 5 , 18 , 22 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. Findings to date have demonstrated the benefits of decriminalization at a study level [ 18 , 29 ] and multiple jurisdictions, including in Australia, are considering reform to sex industry legislation [ 30 , 31 , 32 ].…”

Centering Sex Workers’ Voices in Law and Social Policy

“…Building on the evidence of harms caused by criminalization of consensual adult sex work, which has been documented in a number of studies from both Canada and abroad (Abel, 2014;Armstrong, 2020;Brooks-Gordon et al, 2020;Global Network of Sex Work Projects, 2013;Lutnick & Cohan, 2009), including our own publications on the topic (Benoit et al, 2019b;Benoit et al, 2017), this paper has sought to bring active sex workers' suggestions for other policy changes to the forefront. The views of sex workers are largely absent in sex work law reform (Aantjes et al, 2021;Armstrong & Abel, 2020a;Aroney & Crofts, 2019;O'Doherty, 2011;Levy-Oronovic et al, 2020;van der Meulen, 2011).…”

“…Sex worker-led organizations and a growing majority of academics studying the labor and social rights of sex workers argue that consensual adult sexual commerce should be decriminalized (Benoit et al, 2017;Brooks-Gordon et al, 2020;Global Network of Sex Work Projects, 2013). In a systematic review of the literature, Platt et al (2018) found that criminal laws affecting the sale, purchase, and organization of sex work cause far-reaching harms to sex workers that decrease safety, peer support, and services and increase police harassment.…”

Policing vulnerability in sex work: the harm reduction compass model

“…Whilst these two articles show how policy transfer has a detrimental effect on sex workers, it is possible that the Harm Reduction Compass will have traction in a wider European, and possibly United Nations' context, where human rights approaches to integrating law enforcement and public health occur (cf. Brooks-Gordon et al, 2020). In many European countries welfare provision is better supported than in the UK and this model could also be helpful where there is no appetite for specific law reform away from criminalisation as it offers a shift away from criminalisation in operational terms as the concepts of vulnerability, harm and autonomy become guiding law enforcement principles and empower officers to interpret the legal framework.…”