WASHINGTON, DC – The International Centre on Sexual Exploitation (ICOSE), a division of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), calls on the United Nations Human Rights Commission to adopt the proposals on prostitution and violence against women and girls in its recent UN Report that will be formally presented on June 21, 2024.
“This very comprehensive UN Report not only correctly identifies the nature of the global sex trade and the reasons it exists, but also what states must do to eradicate it. Reem Alsalem has done significant work with this report, both in investigating the harms of the sex trade and even in going some way towards redeeming the reputation of some UN Agencies, which have been long-standing centers of problematic ideological bias on this issue for decades,” said Rachel Moran, Director of International Policy and Advocacy, International Centre on Sexual Exploitation.
The report identifies prostitution as violence against women and girls, stating, “Prostitution results in egregious violations of human rights and multiple forms of violence against women and girls,” who are “often dehumanized and perceived as persons without human rights. Prostitution violates the right of women and girls to dignity, and often constitutes torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. Physical forms of violence – mainly by sex act buyers – include sexual abuse, rape and gang rape, severe beatings, including for the victim’s refusal, lack of enthusiasm or dissociation.”
The report also highlights the connection between prostitution and pornography: “The perceived right of men to purchase a sex act normalizes the systematic violence inflicted on women through prostitution, including in pornography, as it erases the boundaries between what counts as sex and what counts as sexual violence. The violence enacted against women in pornography, such as strangulation and defecation, is often re-enacted against girls and women by those who consume pornography in the physical world, such as strangulation and defecation. The increase in rape, including gang rape, can be linked to the increased male consumption of pornography.”
Finally, the report calls for the UN to “end demand for buying sexual acts” by “increasing obstacles” and “normalizing the illegality” of doing so.
