Decrim Now, alongside several sex worker led and human rights organisations, have written a response to the Home Affairs Select Committee report on trafficking in the UK.
Please email us if your organisation would like to add their signature.
Our statement:
We are organisations and individuals working in the fields of sex workers’ rights, anti-trafficking, human rights, migrants’ rights, labour rights, and health and wellbeing. We are making this statement in response to the Home Affairs Select Committee’s recently published report following its inquiry into trafficking in the UK.
The report makes a number of recommendations to the government to increase the criminalisation of sex work in the UK, including the extension of third party legislation to criminalise advertising websites, the criminalisation of the purchase of sex, and defining all exchange of sexual services for resources as exploitation.
We decry the fact that the Select Committee did not speak to any sex workers as part of this inquiry, while developing recommendations that will significantly negatively affect their human rights, safety, health and wellbeing. Excluding sex workers from decisions that affect their lives is not acceptable, nor will it deliver effective strategies to combat trafficking and exploitation.
The criminalisation of advertising websites would push sex workers directly into the hands of potentially exploitative managers. Advertising websites enable sex workers to work independently, rather than relying on managers or other third parties to help them to find and screen clients. Criminalising websites would force many sex workers to work in brothels or on the street in order to find clients. This increases the risk of sex workers experiencing violence and exploitation from clients, the police, or third parties; and increases the risk of sex workers facing arrest under solicitation and brothel-keeping legislation.
The criminalisation of the purchase of sex would negatively affect sex workers’ safety and human rights. Client criminalisation, also known as ‘the ‘Nordic Model’, has been shown through a wealth of international evidence to increase harm to sex workers1 2. Organisations such as UNAIDS3, the World Health Organisation4, the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls5, Amnesty International6 7, Médecins du Monde8 and the Lancet9 agree that criminalising clients forces street sex workers to work in more isolated areas in order to avoid the police, leaving them more at risk of violence from clients or the police. Client criminalisation means that sex workers avoid contact with outreach and support organisations for fear of being outed as a sex worker, which worsens their health and wellbeing. Migrant sex workers are particularly at risk, as they cannot work with others for safety or report experiences of violence or exploitation without risking detention and deportation. In every country which has implemented the so-called ‘Nordic Model’, sex workers are still criminalised through fines, arrest, eviction or deportation.
There is no reliable evidence that criminalising the purchase of sex or criminalising websites advertising sexual services reduces trafficking. After the United States passed legislation to crack down on websites advertising sexual services (FOSTA/SESTA laws) in April 2018, law enforcement officers reported that it became much more difficult to find victims of trafficking10. Criminalisation drives sex work underground, making it harder for trafficking to be uncovered. It also makes it more difficult for sex workers to help people they suspect have been trafficked or exploited, as sex workers risk fines, arrest, eviction or deportation if they report to the police. In countries that have already implemented client criminalisation, there has been no reduction in either the number of trafficking victims or in the number of sex workers.
The report recommends that the Home Office and law enforcement should refrain from using the term ‘sex work’. We oppose the conflation of trafficking for sexual exploitation and sex work, as it disregards the realities and diverse ways in which sex work can take place, and the point at which coercion and force enter the equation. A key consequence of this conflation is the immense adverse impact on the human rights of sex workers. Another is the scant attention paid to trafficking in other labour sectors, such as agriculture, construction, domestic work or fisheries, where abuses and rights violations are rampant.
The term sex work is used to recognise that sex workers are workers, and are therefore due the rights, safety and protection due to all workers under U.K. employment law. By organising as workers within the labour rights movement and as part of the trade union, the Sex Workers’ Union, sex workers utilise employment law and collective power to mitigate exploitative working conditions. Increased criminalisation means that fewer sex workers are able to access these basic rights, such as union representation, and are unable to collectively organise against exploitative third parties or poor working conditions.
Once again, we state our opposition to these recommended measures and urge policy and decision makers to genuinely engage with sex workers to develop anti-trafficking measures grounded in the respect of human rights.
Signed
Decrim Now
Amnesty International UK
English Collective of Prostitutes
Freedom United
Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
Liberty
National Ugly Mugs
Sex Workers’ Union
Spectra
SWARM (Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement)
- Northern Ireland Department of Justice, ‘Assessment of impact criminalisation of the purchase of sexual service in Northern Ireland’ (2019) ↩︎
- Centre for Women, Peace and Security (London School of Economics), ‘Criminalising of the sex buyers: Experiences from the Nordic Region’ (2022)
↩︎ - UNAIDS, ‘Global Update 2021: Confronting Inequalities’ (2021) ↩︎
- World Health Organisation, ‘Implementing comprehensive HIV/STI programmes with sex workers’ (2013) ↩︎
- UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, ‘Eliminating discrimination against sex workers and securing their human rights’ (2023) ↩︎
- Amnesty International, ‘The human cost of crushing the market: Criminalisation of sex work in Norway’ (2016) ↩︎
- Amnesty International, ‘“We live within a violent system”: Structural violence against sex workers in Ireland’ (2022) ↩︎
- Medicins du Monde, ‘What do sex workers think about the French Prostitution Act?: A Study on the Impact of the Law from 13 April 2016 Against the ‘Prostitution System’ in France’ (2019)
↩︎ - The Lancet, ‘HIV and sex workers’ series (2014) ↩︎
- United States Government Accountability Office, ‘Sex trafficking: Online platforms and federal prosecutions’ (2021) ↩︎