“Sex work is work. This simple yet powerful statement frames sex workers not as criminals, victims, vectors of disease, or sinners but as workers.”
NSWP

Eszter Hegedus

 

The images above were created by Molly Hankinson
Source NSWP

Sex work is one of the most ancient professions, with a long-standing history of social marginalization and stigma. Transactional sex has existed from the most primitive societies to ancient Greece to this very day, with attitudes towards the profession shifting throughout history. The subject has always been controversial, and few debates are more heated than those on this topic. The lack of reliable data combined with cultural ignorance about sex workers’ realities often leads to misguided policies frequently influenced by moral and religious perspectives and can lead to many unintended consequences.

‘Sex work‘ is the term preferred by most (although not all) sex workers to refer to the labour they perform, instead of the word ‘prostitution’ with the aim to emphasize that it is work in an attempt to avoid the demeaning stigmas associated with the latter. Carol Leigh coined the term in 1978, a landmark moment in the fight for sex workers’ rights. The goal of the movement is diverse, the general aim being to destigmatise and decriminalize sex work and ensure fair treatment for all persons in the sex industry before legal and cultural forces, both on a local and international level. The struggle for sex workers’ rights intersects with many other social movements. Although women make up a large majority of sex workers, contrary to popular misconceptions, it is a diverse community, including migrants and non-migrants on the whole gender spectrum. Supporting their rights means understanding the complexity of their lives and involving sex workers from diverse communities in policy-making.

The term ‘sex work’ can only refer to voluntary transactions between consenting adults of legal age and mental capacity and thus cannot refer to human trafficking or child prostitution. This is a crucial difference to be made. Treating sex work and human trafficking as one and the same can be counterproductive and is harmful. The consequences of the war on trafficking and often by connotation on sex work is devastating. Acknowledging sex work as work does not automatically mean it is good, empowering or inherently harmful; however, criminalisation and the stigma make it circumstantially harmful. Sex worker organizations oppose trafficking and exploitation and argue that the most effective way to address it is to strengthen sex workers’ rights as labour rights.

Despite optimistic rhetoric, regulations of prostitution have been mainly ineffective in eradicating prostitution from society or significantly reducing the number of sex workers.

“Sex work will disappear the day we abolish capitalism. Until then, let’s talk about labour rights.”
Trans-feminist activist Amaranta Heredia Jaén on the controversial results of anti-trafficking measures.

Although the average citizen might find it hard to believe it after being bombarded with anti-(sex)-trafficking propaganda, the majority of trafficked people are not enslaved in the sex industry. The ILO estimates that out of the 40.3 million people worldwide forced into labour in unacceptable conditions, about 90% are forced into occupations such as domestic work, construction, mining or agriculture. However, despite the high rates of abuse and exploitation in those industries, there are no groups working on the abolition of these sectors. Therefore, it can be argued that as state policies, anti-(sex-) trafficking measures are not so much about exploitation as about border and immigration control. While there is no doubt that human trafficking and sexual exploitation is a human rights abuse that we must take seriously and states must criminalize, at the same time, laws should be refocused in order to make sex workers’ lives safer.

The right to work, to choose one’s work, and to fair and safe working conditions are fundamental human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that “everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” Although these provisions were made legally binding and ratified by most countries around the globe in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), sex work remains criminalised in many of those countries. There is a growing body of evidence in support of decriminalisation. However, the movement is about more than that single legal reform, and it should be a part of a broader social push for greater economic and gender equality. This would require the wide and official acceptance of sex work as work.

The Consensus Statement details eight fundamental rights that sex worker-led groups from around the world identify as crucial targets for their activism and advocacy
Source NSWP

 

The International Labour Organisation has a norm-setting power that can significantly influence national policy-making.

The International Labour Organization (ILO), founded in 1919, is the UN agency tasked with promoting workers’ rights and setting international labour standards. For the past century, it has brought together delegates from governments, workers and employers and has defined what work is and who is a worker. Its findings have set the terms for national as well as international debates. However, with many different branches, the ILO has never been a unified entity; thus, NGOs and individual activists from various perspectives have been able to find support within it, revealing the disjuncture between member states, scientific experts and institutional interests.

For years, considering the question of sex work to be “of a criminal character”, the ILO has referred the responsibility to deal with the issue to other international agencies, insisting it belonged to the criminal side of global exchange rather than to labour relations. By doing so, the ILO has allowed nations to ignore or, in worst cases, punish those who earn their living in the sex sector. Yet it has not remained entirely neutral in its stance on the topic. In the late 1970s, it started to focus on the position of women in terms of larger socioeconomic conditions. For probably the first time ever, it described commercial sex as a form of work in research into the sex trade in Bangkok. In the decades that followed, the growing phenomenon of sex tourism and the spread of HIV infection strengthened the ILO’s interest in commercial sex. In a 1998 report that sparked controversy, the ILO called for the economic recognition of the sex industry, saying: “For those adult individuals who freely choose sex work, the policy concerns should focus on improving their working conditions and social protection, and on ensuring that they are entitled to the same labour rights and benefits as other workers” on the other hand it had also included: “Recognizing prostitution as an ’economic sector’ does not, at all, mean that the ILO is calling for the legalization of prostitution.”

The ILO should go a step further and send a clear message

A hundred years after its foundation, the ILO still seems to have difficulties taking a clear stance on the issue, releasing somewhat contradicting publications and opting for decentralization and the development of programs, separately tackling problems related to sex work and prostitution such as STIs and trafficking. Although national responsibility continues to be the ILO’s official position on sex work, the adaptation of Recommendation (No.200) in 2010, the first labour standards on HIV and AIDS at the world of work, has been considered a step in the right direction by many. While the Recommendation does not explicitly mention sex work, it applies to all workers, including “persons in any employment or occupation” in “all sectors of economic activity, including the private and public sectors, and the formal and informal economies.” Despite the limited progress, NGOs and sex workers argue the ILO should send a clear message to the international community and national governments by acknowledging sex work as work and promoting the realization of sex workers’ labour rights. The ILO’s refusal to do so is linked to the generalized condemnation of commercial sex, which has deep roots in our society.

Benefits of the labour approach would include:

• Legal protection: If sex work is acknowledged as work, then it is not a crime, and therefore any form of criminalisation would be an inappropriate legal model. This would mean that sex workers are protected by the same labour laws as any other laws protecting the rights of all citizens.
• Reduced stigma: Recognition of sex work as work would remove the criminal and victim labels from sex workers, reducing social exclusion. If sex work is accepted as a job, it should be judged by the same standards as any other jobs. The labour framework helps create space for sex worker participation in civil society.
• Standards for work and reduced exploitation: Within a labour framework, exploitation can be addressed more easily. Under current circumstances, due to the social stigma, fear and mistrust of the police, sex workers refrain from reporting abuse and exploitation they witness or experience.
• Freedom to organize and unionize: Sex workers would be able to receive and provide support to those exploited and have collective bargaining power.
• Improved occupational health and safety: It would create better working conditions and reducing vulnerability to STIs
• Reduced police harassment and violence: Statistics show that many sex workers experience high levels of violence perpetrated by state agents entrusted with enforcing laws, rather than from sex work itself. Without fear of arrest, sex workers would be able to report crimes against them.

Due to the COVID – 19 pandemic, sex workers face new vulnerabilities not by being exposed to disease and loss of income but also by having to migrate to highly unregulated virtual platforms for often reduced wages. Therefore, it is more crucial than ever for the ILO to stand up for sex workers’ rights. The growing global discourse around the topic makes me cautiously optimistic. I write this post with the intent to contribute to awareness-raising efforts and to provide a fuller understanding of intimate labour.

While writing this blog post, I found the mention of disjuncture between member states, scientific experts, and institutional interests particularly interesting. If I had the opportunity to visit the ILO among other International Organizations and talk to some of the experts, I would be curious to hear about how they navigate negotiations on such heated topics such as sex workers’ rights with many strong and differing opinions. While I have been interested in potentially working for an International Organization such as the ILO or the UN, I have doubts if maybe an NGO will be a better fit for me. My hope for the study trip is that by being able to witness the different environments and hear from some of the employees, I will better understand the difference or similarities between the organizations, which would help me narrow down the possible career paths I might consider taking. Since the city of Geneva is the home of many UN programs and international organizations where I would consider applying for positions in the future, I am also hoping to gain some insight into whether I could envision myself living and working in the city.