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Sex work is the consensual exchange of sex between adults. This is an important step toward destigmatizing sex work.ĭoes decriminalizing sex work encourage other human rights violations such as human trafficking and sexual exploitation of children? Legal recognition of sex workers and their occupation maximizes their protection, dignity, and equality. How does decriminalizing sex work help protect sex workers?ĭecriminalizing sex work maximizes sex workers’ legal protection and their ability to exercise other key rights, including to justice and health care. In countries that ban sex work, sex workers are less likely to be able to organize as workers, advocate for their rights, or to work together to support and protect themselves. The practice left sex workers reluctant to carry condoms for fear of arrest, forcing them to engage in sex without protection and putting them at heightened risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.Ĭriminalization also has a negative effect on other human rights. In one example, Human Rights Watch found in a 2012 report, “Sex Workers at Risk: Condoms as Evidence of Prostitution in Four US Cities,” that police and prosecutors used a sex worker’s possession of condoms as evidence to support prostitution charges. UNAIDS, public health experts, sex worker organizations, and other human rights organizations have found that criminalization of sex work also has a negative effect on sex workers’ right to health. Even when they report crimes, sex workers may not be willing to testify in court against their assailants and rapists for fear of facing sanctions or further abuse because of their work and status. They said that they are afraid of being arrested because their work is illegal and that their experience with police is of being harassed or profiled and arrested, or laughed at or not taken seriously. Sex workers in South Africa, for example, said they did not report armed robbery or rape to the police. Criminalization may also force sex workers to work in unsafe locations to avoid the police.Ĭriminalization consistently undermines sex workers’ ability to seek justice for crimes against them. Human Rights Watch has consistently found in research across various countries that criminalization makes sex workers more vulnerable to violence, including rape, assault, and murder, by attackers who see sex workers as easy targets because they are stigmatized and unlikely to receive help from the police.
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Human Rights Watch has documented that, in criminalized environments, police officers harass sex workers, extort bribes, and physically and verbally abuse sex workers, or even rape or coerce sex from them. In short – a government should not be telling consenting adults who they can have sexual relations with and on what terms.Ĭriminalization exposes sex workers to abuse and exploitation by law enforcement officials, such as police officers. Why is criminalization of sex work a human rights issue?Ĭriminalizing adult, voluntary, and consensual sex – including the commercial exchange of sexual services – is incompatible with the human right to personal autonomy and privacy.
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The research, including extensive consultations with sex workers and organizations that work on the issue, has shaped the Human Rights Watch policy on sex work: Human Rights Watch supports the full decriminalization of consensual adult sex work. Human Rights Watch has conducted research on sex work around the world, including in Cambodia, China, Tanzania, the United States, and most recently, South Africa.