UN Women is currently working on a position regarding prostitution. A call for submissions was issued.
The following is the written submission by Abolition 2014, Kofra (Munich) and the Initiative Stop Sexkauf.
The UN Women "call for submissions" can be read here.
Kofra
– Kommunikationszentrum für Frauen is a women's advocacy centre.
Stop Sexkauf and Abolition 2014 are secular and feminist, advocating
for the
abolishment of prostitution via viable support for women in
prostitution and the penalization of the buyer, as he sustains this
industry.
Germany
has become a showcase of implementing the sex industry's demands –
while some municipalities reserved some regulations, cities like
Berlin embraced a full decriminalisation – and offers a grim view
of the future of an unfettered sex industry.
We
insist on the full decriminalisation of those in prostitution and a
zero tolerance approach to pimping and trafficking. We educate and
raise awareness of what prostitution does to the prostituted and of
the impact of a state-endorsed
sex trade on the equality of women and men.
We
are honoured to submit our position – informed by exited women and
by witnessing 15 years of a state policy of prostitution as a
business model – to UN Women.
Universality,
human rights and leaving nobody behind.
The
sex trade is extremely gendered and needs sexual discrimination and
stereotyping to exist. It assigns specific positions to men as buyers
and to women as those with the option of putting a price tag on the
use of their bodies. Thus men are given agency and women are to be
satisfied with possibly being permitted to negotiate conditions
within a field of power defined by these men. This abrogates
equality, which is a pre-condition to universality and the enjoyment
of human rights. The sex trade thrives on the sexualizing and
racializing of poverty, targeting all women and specifically women
from racialized and marginalized backgrounds. This is evidenced here
in the advertising of women from Asia or Africa, in the sexist and
racist views of women from Eastern Europe and in the contemptous
depiction of Roma women in the sex trade. Since the removal of the
last obstacles to prostitution as a major business in 2002, huge
billboards have dominated the landscape along motorways, and trucks,
trolleys and taxis featuring brothel ads signal buyers' privilege to
men. The new
law on prostitution
coming into effect in July 2017 fully legalises such advertising.
Easily accessible punters' fores abound in violent and racialized
descriptions. Mega-brothels for up to 1000 buyers, apartment
buildings, “sex boxes“ and “love mobile“ sites are part of a
state endorsed industry guaranteeing men monetarized sexual access to
women 24/7. The racism underpinning the trade is echoed by publicly
funded advocacy groups and vocal supporters of the sex trade stating
that a German brothel may be preferable to the human rights abuse of
racial persecution or that “we
should leave it to the less privileged to themselves define where the
boundaries of their human dignity lie.“
Human rights abuses serve as justification for other abuses, worse,
they become their resource. This
is incompatible with equality, universality, human rights and
leaving nobody behind.
Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) and sex trade policies.
Women's
reproductive
rights
are eroded by an exploitative business expanding into new markets,
easily accessible via punters' fores, for pregnant
women,
including the “gang bang“ prostitution of pregnant women,
although advertising these practices is to be banned. The buyers want
to feel the foetus move. Wolf
Heide,
a gynecologist speaking in a government hearing, showed how STDs and
other illnesses result in infertility for many women. This
effectively abrogates the women's reproductive rights.
Poverty
is both a resource for the sex trade and an exit barrier, as a survey
of prostituted women from Bulgaria in Stuttgart showed.
Legalising
the sex trade means tax revenue: A daily fee of € 25.00 per woman
collected from brothel keepers, or per m² of the prostitution
premises, or parking meters for tickets for women in street
prostitution. In Munich, tax collectors levy VAT on the “services“
via the brothels so that the rent is at € 185.00/ 24 hours per room
(Caesar's
World).
This is in addition to income tax, calculated by IR officials via
estimates based on independently engaged women's websites. Tax debt
operates as exit barrier.
The
sex trade seems
“sustainable“, as
most women in prostitution are from abroad and must leave the country
once they become sick, while German women drop into poverty, unable
to effectively organize therapy and entry into society. A
superficially “peaceful society“ is
achieved not
by inclusion but by the exclusion
of those exited. Consequences
are deported to other countries.
The
legalisation of the sex industry changed the definitions of “pimping“
or “trafficking“ and affects “consent“ in sexual
relationships. This affects our rape laws, laws on “domestic“
violence and on stalking, and thus women's legal status as regards
violence
against women.
The Istanbul
Convention,
which is binding for EU states, is clear in its article
36
definition of sexual violence and guarantees effective legal redress.
But its implementation could serve to question “consent“ in a
brothel, and our legislature delays its ratification and introduction
into national law, thus undermining
every woman's right to due legal course.
Protection
of women in the trade from harm, violence, stigma and discrimination.
The
informed approach is a decriminalisation of the women in
prostitution, police training, public education, support for women
wishing to exit, for migrant women and those trafficked or drafted
into the industry. It demands a policy that recognises violence as
such and that is willing to stop it, not one negotiating allegedly
acceptable degrees of violence in regulatory approaches or leaving
this negotiation to individuals, notably individuals with the least
standing in society.
A
fully accepted sex industry however equals calling the harm and
violence a business while turning stigma and discrimination into its
resources. It means defining the violence out of existence.
Prostitution
was decriminalised here in the early 20th
century, and prior to 2002 brothels were tolerated. The Prostitution
Act of 2002
mainly intended to make women pay into pension and health insurances
and to legalise the profits. Laws on procuring and trafficking were
“adjusted“ in the following years (view the changes made to §§
180 ff. and 232 German
penal code).
Now,
cases are closed before reaching the courts, while others lead to
minimal sentences. Police
are discouraged from putting resources into trafficking
cases
as these are costly and legally dropped. Law enforcement assumes vast
underreporting while statistics are sanitised: Convictions for
pimping decreased
by 99%
in 2011, and trafficking into sexual exploitation had 557
victims in 2014.
Serious human rights violations like sexual violence, trafficking
and kidnapping count as “work
accident“,
offering compensation for medical bills at the price of accepting the
violence as such. (Sozialgericht
Hamburg S 36 U 118/14)
The
interests of trafficked migrant women are ignored, and the
legalisation of the sex industry has done nothing to change that. The
only difference is an exploded market.
Although
a 2004
study on violence against women showed the same levels of violence in
prostitution as studies world wide, the 2007
evaluation of the ProstAct did not address violence. And although
only brothel keepers expressed satisfaction and the study concluded
that “there
are no viable indicators of the Prostitution Act having had any
crime-minimalizing effect”,
government responses centered around regulatory matters like building
laws or how to better tax the venues.
This
approach undermines the
rule of law
as demanded in point 8 and elsewhere in the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development
and is incompatible with the Leave
No One Behind Call to Action.
It
does not meet the needs of the most vulnerable
but ensures they will remain targeted. This is evidenced in a
western, rich country that has followed the rhetorics of the sex
trade according to which the legalisation of buying, brothels and
“operational aspects” like “management” and the “facilitation
of travelling” supposedly makes the industry safe and empowers
women.
The
sex industry may temporarily offer some marketing chances for
individual women within an unequal system that thrives on
stigmatisation and discrimination, but does not contribute to women's
equality which is a prerequisite to ending violence against women and
to building peaceful and inclusive societies. The decriminalisation
of the women (or others) in prostitution is a necessary step to
safety, but that step is rendered meaningless by creating a situation
that effectively decriminalises violence against them. Basing a
policy on men's sexual access to women as a supposedly male right
does nothing to prevent violence against women, be that sexual,
physical, emotional, economic or institutional. On the contrary: We
witness a rising acceptance of violations of women's human rights.
The entrapment of women within caste systems, their dispossession in
rural areas, their condemnation to poverty, their racial persecution,
the denial of rights to education or to recourses against HIV or to
reproductive health are cited in order to render crimes like
trafficking or the abuse of women in the global sex industry
acceptable or desirable. In view of any meaning of human rights as
inalienable and as indivisible this is utterly inacceptable.
Inge
Kleine
and
and
Manuela Schon
Solveig Senft
Yvonne Smidt (Terre des Femmes)
Karen Ehlers
Susanne Keil (Courage Essen)
Simone Watson, Director Nordic Model Australia Coalition
Initiative
Stop SexkaufSimone Watson, Director Nordic Model Australia Coalition
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