“We have the right not to be ‘rescued’...”*: When Anti-Trafficking Programmes Undermine the Health and Well-Being of Sex Workers

Abstract

This paper highlights the impact of raid, rescue, and rehabilitation schemes on HIV programmes. It uses a case study of Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), a sex workers collective in Sangli, India, to explore the impact of anti-trafficking efforts on HIV prevention programmes. The paper begins with an overview of the anti-trafficking movement emerging out of the United States. This U.S. based antitrafficking movement works in partnership with domestic Indian antitrafficking organisations to raid brothels to "rescue and rehabilitate" sex workers. Contrary to the purported goal of assisting women, the anti-trafficking projects that employ a raid, rescue, and rehabilitate model often undermine HIV projects at the local level, in turn causing harm to women and girls. We examine the experience of one peer educator in Sangli to demonstrate and highlight some of the negative consequences of these anti-trafficking efforts on HIV prevention programmes.

Exploring the relationship between super bowls and potential online sex trafficking

“…Ads identified by the indicators are only potential or suspected instances of trafficking. Further exacerbating the issue is a lack of standard indicators agreed upon by researchers and law enforcement experts, resulting in variation in the estimations of sex trafficking activities (Ahmed and Seshu 2012;Barnhart 2009;Cockbain et al 2022;Coxen et al 2021;L'Hoiry et al 2021). Yet it is one that must be reconciled in order to truly understand the scope of this global criminal enterprise and adequately serve and protect survivors of sex trafficking.…”

Ethnography at an Intersection: Law, Anti-Trafficking NGOs, and Prostitution in India

“…Dominated by an abolitionist agenda that claims all prostitution is inherently exploitative, the US-led anti-trafficking campaign fails to consider the possibility of consent or other nuances and complexities. Pro-sex work feminist scholars and activists in India have long called for the need to recognize the legitimacy of sex work for those who wish to work in the sex industry (Ghosh 2008;Kotiswaran 2011;Dasgupta 2014) and have drawn attention to the efforts of local sex workers' collectives to prevent trafficking in the sex industry, critiquing the indiscriminate, misguided interventions of foreign-funded NGOs that have been known to target voluntary sex workers in the name of curbing sex trafficking (Ahmed and Seshu 2012;Dasgupta 2014).…”

“…A strong sex worker rights movement in India calls for the need to decriminalize and recognize the legitimacy of consensual sex work, while opposing trafficking into prostitution. Sex worker rights activists and scholars in solidarity with them have critiqued forced and indiscriminate raid-and-rescue operations by anti-trafficking NGOs and police teams that target voluntary sex workers rather than trafficked women and that negatively impact HIV/AIDS intervention programs (Kapur 2007;Ghosh 2008;Kotiswaran 2011;Ahmed and Seshu 2012;Shah 2014;Walters 2018;Dasgupta 2019).…”

Racialization within Antitrafficking Interventions Targeting Migrant Sex Workers: Findings from the SEXHUM Research Project in France

“…Yet, notably it wasn’t exploitation within the sex industry making Rose anxious. Rather, she feared deportation following a police raid on the apartment where she worked, the fear that many migrant sex workers experience worldwide (Ahmed and Seshu, 2012). This prompted her to apply so she could avoid deportation.…”