Guest Post by Dianne Post
Dianne Post has been an attorney for over 34 years. For 18, she practiced family law in the Phoenix area representing battered women and molested children in family and juvenile court. Since 1998, she has been doing international human rights work mainly in gender-based violence.
The International Secretariat of Amnesty International passed a draft policy at their meeting on August 7 on “sex work” that would decriminalize all aspects of prostitution including buying, pimping, and brothel keeping while still allowing a state the power to regulate selling. The policy now goes to the Board. That policy is a direct attack on women and would make a mockery of human rights. The Nordic Model of targeting demand, where selling is not a crime but buying is, has proven to be the only successful tool to protect women in prostitution.
The alleged reason for Amnesty’s action is to make prostitution safer; the result is to do the opposite. Every country that has legalized the purchase of women in prostitution has failed. Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen said, “Almost five years after the lifting of the brothel ban, we have to acknowledge that the aims of the law have not been reached.” According to the Amsterdam police, “We are in the midst of modern slavery.” In New Zealand, a city council member said, “It was widely expected that the outcome of legalizing prostitution would be that sex trade workers would generally operate from safe, regulated and legal brothels. In Manukau, that has not been the case.”
As Maricopa County Attorney, Bill Montgomery states, “Legalizing any activity tells the members of society that we approve of the activity in question. Accordingly, legalizing prostitution would necessarily result in a growing market for the selling and buying of women with the consequent degradation of their dignity and heightened objectification of daughters, sisters, and mothers.”
While Amnesty would maintain its opposition to trafficking, wherever prostitution is legalized, sex trafficking increases. In the Netherlands, the sex industry increased by 25%; in Victoria, Australia, the number of legal brothels doubled, and illegal brothels increased by 300%. A 200-400% increase in street prostitution was reported in Auckland, New Zealand and in Germany, the numbers of trafficked women increased dramatically.
“Sex work and sex trafficking cannot reasonably be separated. Sex work fuels the demand for commercial sex, which is the indisputable driving force behind the sex-trafficking industry.” (Cindy McCain, Chair of the Human Trafficking Advisory Council at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, August 13, 2015, The Washington Post.)
