This year the thematic report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council at its 56th session in June. It proposes to examine the nexus between the global phenomenon of prostitution and violence against women and girls. Hence the UN Special Rapporteur had called for inputs to the report to better understand the relationship between prostitution and violence against women, to clarify terms, approaches and actions that states should take to maintain the spirit of the international human rights law, and to effectively protect women and girls from all forms of violence.
However, more than 3,600 persons affiliated with various women’s rights and sex workers organisations are up in arms over the problematic terminology used by the UN Special Rapporteur while calling for inputs for the report.
The Special Rapporteur seems to have rejected the term ‘sex worker’ in favour of denigrating and archaic terms such as “women who have been prostituted”, which embody the idea of women not in control of their own destiny and livelihood,” 3640 members of various organisations have said in their petition submitted to UN High Commissioner of Human Rights and UN special rapporteur among others.
Meena Seshu, a member of Sex Workers and Allies South Asia (SWASA) pointed out that It is important to avoid terminology that conflates human trafficking, sexual exploitation and sex work. Such a conflation is inaccurate, as trafficking of persons into forced or coerced labour (including sexual exploitation) cannot be equated with consensual sex work Such a conflation also contributes to human rights violations against sex workers, who end up further policed and abused despite being characterised as “victims” of trafficking.
The National Network of Sex Workers (NNSW) a pan-India network of over 1,50,000 female, trans and male sex workers have also, in writing, flagged concerns about the terminology used. “There must be a clear separation of women and girls, who should not be clubbed with the category of adult women. The terms prostitution and prostituted women are not used in the Indian context. The Supreme Court of India (SCI) has issued a Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes offers guidance on avoiding harmful gender stereotypes and suggests that the word prostitute be replaced with ‘sex worker’,” members of NNSW have said in their petition.
“Desist from using the terms ‘prostitute’ and ‘prostitute women’, avoid clubbing minors with the category of ‘sex workers’ which denotes adult individuals in sex work, and stop conflation of trafficking and voluntary entry into sex work,” they have demanded.
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