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THE BEST WAY to tackle the rate of HIV infection among female sex workers and their clients, would be to decriminalise prostitution across the world, according to a major new report published today.
The sweeping research, revealed this morning in The Lancet and at the International AIDS Conference in Australia, found that a global end to the criminalisation of sex work would avoid at least one third of such infections in the next decade.
A host of new research will be presented this week at the conference this week, which has been in the news in recent days for tragic reasons.
On Friday, it was revealed that up to 100 of the passengers killed on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 were AIDS researchers and activists making their way to the conference in Melbourne.
Among the major findings presented today are those included in “Global epidemiology of HIV among female sex workers: influence of structural determinants”, a study led by Dr Kate Shannon from the University of British Columbia in Canada.
They include the following:
Sex workers around the world are facing a pandemic of HIV infection, according to other research presented today.
Whereas 0.8% of the general global population are infected, the numbers are stark for sex workers, as this graphic shows:
[image alt="hiv-prevalence" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2014/07/hiv-prevalence-145x145.jpg" width="145" height="145" wp-size="size-thumbnail" credit-url="http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelancet.com%2Fseries%2FHIV-and-sex-workers%2Finfographic" credit-source="The%20Lancet" credit-via="" credit-via-url="" caption="" title="" wp-id="wp-image-1582053" class="alignnone" /end]
Criminalising prostitution, according to the research, increases rates of HIV infection, partly because many sex workers (one third) don’t carry condoms, which are often used as evidence of illegal sex work.
For details of all the research being presented at this year’s conference, check out Aids2014.
Scroll down to read “Global epidemiology of HIV among female sex workers: influence of structural determinants.”
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Oldest profession in the world, can’t understand why it can’t be legalized and regulated in all fairness. At the end of the day it would make the industry safer for all involved, both punters and sellers. No matter whether you agree with the sex industry or not the facts are it’s been here since Adam was a boy and will always be around, people both men and women will always sell themselves for sex, and people both men and women will always pay for it. Why not make it as safe as possible and make it legal ? If they don’t it will continue in it’s current form regardless. I believe it’s time the government bit the bullet and brought this industry (yes it is an industry) into the 21st century.
I agree with your sentiment but the real fear is human trafficking of sex workers and exploitation of women. Until that can be solved I think support for this will be minimal.
Trafficking is an issUe because the industry has zero regulation. Decriminalize it, regulate it. Case closed
The plausibility of accepting the logic that “prostitution is the world’s oldest profession” on one hand, does not seem to inhibit presenting the logic of “regulate it and make it safer on the other”. The first tells us that it defies control. If we believe that then it becomes almost inevitable. The second then concludes ‘well, okay, I accept it can’t be controlled, but let’s control it, and make it safer’.
There is too the issue if what you are controlling. “Prostitution!”, some will answer. In Holland about 60-80% of those in prostitution on the day before it was legalised were foreign nationals with no rights to work in the EU. An estimated 20% were kids. The insight is realising that in Holland ALL prostitution was illegal on the day before it was legalised, but on the day after legalisation MOST of it still was.
So who is policy being made to accommodate? The few or the majority, and at what expense?
“Until that can be solved I think support for this will be minimal.”
Yeah, that’s what the “regulation” part is for.
Incidentally, New Zealand typically also gets mentioned too, by advocates of decriminalisation who say that there is no trafficking there. Firstly NZ is not in a continental block so it doesn’t have porous borders. However trafficking isn’t an issue if movement. A person can be trafficked (traded) within their own country. In fact this is probably the most common form of slavery. Trafficking (or slavery) dies not require movement.
In NZ the law only recognises victims brought in from abroad, which would be difficult given the country’s remoteness. Domestic victims could never be recognised as victims of trafficking under the country’s law. The insight in NZ then, is not so much that decriminalisation works, but that the law doesn’t recognise victims.
While it is the “Oldest profession in the world” does not make it a good profession. Murder is the oldest crime in the world and still it happens despite it being a crime. Doesn’t mean we should give up fighting it.
Stupid analogy lonehurler
You should maybe document yourself on this issue before posting here.. Even in countries where prostitution is legalised, brothel are in the hand of mafia or organised crime and the women who are prostitutes are vulnerable young women from poor country.
Now go and explain *THAT* to a group of real sex workers Dave…but maybe wear running shoes.
Until real sex workers are the primary voices in this issue we will have legislation based upon fiction instead of fact, which will be useless, pointless and destructive legislation.
Decriminalising prostitution normalises prostitution. Many more will become involved in the vice. The rush of new healthy people into the business will lower the percentile figures overall of infected participants, for awhile. Eventually this new blood will itself become infected, and the numbers will again creep up.
Who paid for this research? If it was industry related, there could only be one outcome.
Legalising prostitution, will not remove the abusers who brutalise those the pay for sex, it will merely spread them out over more victims. It will also draw more people into the idea that sex is impersonal, inhuman, inconsequential, and is available for trading. Increasing prostitution increases our inhumanity to all mankind.
You don’t know who funded it so you can’t dismiss the work on that basis. The idea that the sex industry (which is illegal) funded it is highly unlikely. Funding sources will be noted in the paper. The papers scientific merit has been assessed by peer review and published in the Lancet, a leading medical journal. But you reckon you know more? Can I ask what are you credentials and what is your evidence?
Your argument is crap, you look at countries where it is legal, netherlands,germany,australia for example, each prostitute must carry their permit on it and pay taxes on their earnings just like anybody else working an office job etc. the more you can regulate it and make it available in safe secure locations,people no longer have to go and pick up women on the street who are riddled! to maintain their licence to continue as a prostitute you have to undergo regular testing for std’s and hiv to ensure you are practicing safe sex!! Legalising and regulating it makes safer for the customer and the girl involved!! Why are we as a nation being blind and ignorant to the facts that you can say its illegal, but it will still happen in an unsafe manner!?!? Lets start to grow up in this country and start adressing these issues in a mature manner that delivers the best out come instead of brushing everything under the carpet and ignoring them
If enda & his morons think there are some taxes to be collected then i am sure he’d have the legislation passed immediately.
Like a rat up a drainpipe
You are totally right Paddy….sheeply incorrectly link legality to morality, and making it legal would draw people into the game who wouldn’t consider it under normal circumstances. The rate of infection would naturally / logically increase overall but would be lower for the sex trade due to the numbers on newbies involved. Stick to your guns despite the red thumbs
@ Ronan Kenny
I believe there is big money available for manipulating the public view towards prostitution. During the latest discussion on prosecuting the client rather than the prostitute, the business was able to forward very professional marketing madams, to forward a view, lobbying, to protect the business.
I actually agree with the survey, decriminalisation will lower HIV percentiles. But it doesn’t say by what mechanism. It extrapolates, and suggest things will be safer; I believe it will just grow the industry and fresh blood is healthier.
When any one quotes the Netherlands I cringe. So they don’t believe prostitution dehumanises women; to be bought and sold for their bodily parts. When they are finished their trade, if they think less of themselves, the Netherlands has the ultimate solution.
Has the overall level of prostitution decreased in the Netherlands; no! There is a huge trafficking problem in the Netherlands, and also here in Ireland.
My view is prosecute, name and shame the clientele. Desperate financial situations should lead us to charity, not to exploitation.
Please Paddy, enough of the hysterical moralising.
Vices should not be crimes. They do not harm other people. If the people engaged in them harm themselves that’s their own business and no one else’s.
So you think prostitution is somehow immoral and degrading? Fine. Don’t engage in it.
Just don’t ask the state to coerce people and prevent them engaging in purely voluntary acts.
I personally find meat-eating, smoking, and gambling degrading and distasteful. But I don’t ask the big paternalistic nanny state to prevent people from doing things I personally don’t like because then other people would just as free to bring statism down on their side to prevent me engaging in voluntary acts which they don’t like.
Also, as per the usual anti-sex-work rhetoric, you claim that it “degrades women” and thereby imply that male sex workers (and female clients) somehow don’t exist.
@ Eoin O’Connor
I have avoided moralising very deliberately, as I understand many have a very low moral threshold today.
Estimates of the number of girls trafficked in the business in the Netherlands is as high as 80%. Keep your head in the sand if it helps you live with a clear conscience.
Girls are kidnapped, or sold by family members in desperate situations, into the clutches of pimps. Their passports are withheld, and they are encouraged to take drugs, to numb their revulsion, and further increase their dependence.
Yes I believe you are supporting the new slave industry, shame on you.
Treating humans as chattel, deserves opposition at every turn.
I assure you the male version is just as deplorable. If all of us only spoke against the crimes in which we partake, there would be no law. Are you a supporter of anarchy?
@paddy you have talked yourself into a bit of a hole there as the main thrust of the radfem argument for abolishing sex work is:
“Women and girls are trafficked because there just aren’t enough of them who enter the trade willingly ”
(http://feministcurrent.com/9365/actual-evidence-shows-the-nordic-model-works/)
Hardly compatible with your statement:
“Decriminalising prostitution normalises prostitution. Many more will become involved in the vice. The rush of new healthy people into the business” which rather suggests multitudes champing at the bit to voluntarily sell sex…
But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about:
“I believe there is big money available for manipulating the public view towards prostitution. During the latest discussion on prosecuting the client rather than the prostitute, the business was able to forward very professional marketing madams, to forward a view, lobbying, to protect the business.”
You wouldn’t happen to know where I should go to pick up *my* wages would you? Because, so far, my opposition to the Swedish Model has cost me a bl**dy fortune.
Not using prostitutes would eliminate HIV. Although if you do and don’t use a condom… Well, what do you expect?
Yes have to agree with Phyllis, the reason why HIV is 0.8% in the general population is that they are in monogamous relationships or have very few partners (over the lifetime). The more you sleep around the greater the chance of infection…..its not rocket science.
The point is that legal or not, nothing will prevent someone doing something if try they really want to.its illegal at the moment and prostitution is still a lucrative trade.
The real thing that tells it all is that sex workers want to be regulated and taxed.
If a man or woman wants to sell themselves although its not to everybody’s liking who are we to tell them they can’t, and if it helps the aids problem and boosts revenue from the black market win win
How about it a man or woman want to sell themselves into slavery…..do you still think they should be allowed….your argument is as shallow as a puddle on the path.
The issue there is that women, in the vast majority, dont want to be prostitute. Just go to Holland and have a look. Majority are from poor countries in Africa and East Europe. Some of them ar not even legal immigrants. Its not like working in Mcdonalds.
Legalise it and put a tax on it simple as…
Borgen last night dealt with this whole subject last night on tg4..very informative I found it so I did !
Don’t think my partner would appreciate me heading out to “work” :)
No but you prob would fancy them heading off for a five hour shift in a stripclub either? And that’s fully paye compliment
Oh, well if your girlfriend doesn’t want you doing it then it should definitely be illegal
Darren which way would you head left or right – when you go to work that is !
@paddy the 1930s is looking for u
give him a chance …he’s only still getting over black ’47 …1847 !
It’s the paedophile god botherers on their high moral ground that make me sick.
Being illegal really worked paddy. Have a look at your Catholic Church
If legalised here, can you imagine all the jobbridge and CE schemes?! There was though a case in Germany a few years ago when an unemployed 17 year old girl was told by her local benefits office that she would have to take a receptionist job in the brothel. In the end, I don’t think it was enforced, but here you’d probably get your dole cut if you didn’t take q job and your local brothel was hiring.
Not so sure on legalizing prostitution. Amsterdam is still a European hub of trafficking
Well that would be illegal because you would be forcing someone to have sex for profit without their consent and by putting them under duress.
Who cares about working as a receptionist though? It’s a job. I worked in an adult shop when I was in college. It’s no different really.
Very seriously, as far as I know, you cannot be forced to take a job in a mortuary or an abbattoir (and if you are, you certainly shouldn’t be!), I would imagine sex work as a similar case.
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