International Aids Conference Told Criminalisation of Sex Work Hampers Fight Against Aids

Friday 25 July 2014 @ 10.09 a.m. | Crime | Legal Research

It is reported that this weeks International AIDS Conference, held in Melbourne, has been told that: "there is an increasing focus on the role that the criminalisation of sex work is playing in the worldwide epidemic" with many experts agreeing that laws prohibiting prostitution are in fact hampering efforts to control the global HIV epidemic.

The executive director of the joint United Nations program on HIV/AIDS, Michel Sidibé is reported to have "chided governments for criminalizing sex work" during the opening session of the conference, saying:

"We cannot run away from the harm caused by criminalizing populations, . . . We must implement the recommendations of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law."

UN Convened Global Commission on HIV and the Law

A key finding of the Global Commission was that making any aspect of prostitution illegal, be it the buying or the selling of sex, made sex workers less able to protect themselves from infections and less able to seek treatment if they became infected.

It is these social, legal, and economic injustices that contribute to the high risk of acquiring HIV among sex workers. As a result, sex workers encounter or face the direct risk of violence and abuse daily and are often driven underground by fear.

Respected Medical Journal Lancet Publishes Supporting Research

The Global Commission's conclusion is said to be supported by a large body of research evidence, including a series of papers on HIV and sex workers published recently in the respected medical journal The Lancet which introduces its seven papers on the topic by saying:

"Sex workers remain under served by the global HIV response. This Series of seven papers aims to investigate the complex issues faced by sex workers worldwide, and calls for the decriminalisation of sex work, in the global effort to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic."

The papers cover are wide range of questions relating to the issue as is indicated by the titles:

  • Global epidemiology of HIV among female sex workers: influence of structural determinants
  • Combination HIV prevention for female sex workers: what is the evidence?
  • A community empowerment approach to the HIV response among sex workers: effectiveness, challenges, and considerations for implementation and scale-up
  • Human rights violations against sex workers: burden and effect on HIV
  • Male sex workers: practices, contexts, and vulnerabilities for HIV acquisition and transmission
  • HIV risk and preventive interventions in transgender women sex workers
  • An action agenda for HIV and sex workers

Among the articles is a study of HIV rates among sex workers, condom use and other data from the city of Vancouver, and from cities in India and Kenya. The studies' author Ms Steffanie Strathdee of the University of California, San Diego observes that, "it's clear sexual violence against female prostitutes and the criminalisation of their work make them less likely to use condoms".

Ms Strathdee believes an estimated 17 percent of infections in Kenya and 20 percent in Canada would be eliminated by the creation of safer working conditions where sex workers could demand that clients use condoms. Ms Strathdee also claimed that the decriminalisation of sex work would also have a far bigger impact on the reduction of HIV transmission, saying:

"We've shown that up to 46 percent of incident HIV infections could be averted in any of the three cities we examined by just fully decriminalising prostitution, . . ."

Harsh Laws Create Conditions Leading to Riskier Sex

The co-director for research and advocacy with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network in Toronto, Sandra Ka Hon Chu, has related the reasons for the Networks opposition to Canada's proposed new prostitution legislation. The legislation which is currently a Bill before the Canadian Parliament would make it illegal to buy sex, and is expected to receive third reading and become law in the Canadian autum. Ms Chu is among 220 legal specialists and advocates reported to have written to the Canadian Prime Minister to ask him to reconsider the Bill. Ms Chu is reported as saying the new law's effect will be to "create the conditions that lead to riskier sex and more HIV infections". In such situations of harsh criminal sanctions, sex workers are:

". . . driven to isolated areas because of policing, because [their] clients are being arrested, it's harder for [a sex worker] to negotiate condom use, harder for [a sex worker] to insist on safer sex or even discuss what you want to do in advance."

Countries Where Laws Are Releaxed Have Better Outcomes

Ms Chu and Ms Strathdee are reported to have singled out New Zealand and the state of New South Wales in Australia as being examples of jurisdictions that have repealed laws that made sex work illegal and indicated that both jurisdictions have experienced "dramatic" reductions in rates of infection.

"Where criminal laws have actually been removed, rates of HIV and sexually transmitted infection are very, very low, rates of condom use are very, very high, and sex workers as a whole feel very empowered to insist on safer sex with their clients."

Clearly, decriminalising sex work could slash the world’s HIV infections, some reports say, by a third or more.

As a related matter see also our previous post on "HIV Organisations Call for Reform of Victoria’s Criminal Laws" and recent reports in the SMH, that Victorian Health Minister has announced that the Victorian government will amend Section 19A of the state’s Crimes Act 1958 (Vic), which currently criminalises the transmission of HIV specifically, to ensure it is made non-discriminatory. At present the law is widely considered to stigmatise people living with HIV, and is the only HIV specific law in the country.

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