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The case against human rights

I n July 2013, Amarildo de Souza, a bricklayer living in a Rio de Janeiro favela, was arrested by police in an operation to round up drug traffickers. He was never seen again. De Souza’s disappearance was taken up by protesters in street demonstrations, which were met with a ruthless police response. Normally, de Souza’s story would have ended there, but public pressure led to a police investigation, and eventually to the arrest of 10 police officers, who were charged with torturing and murdering him.

Brazil, one of the largest democracies in the world, is rarely considered to be among the major human rights-violating countries. But every year more than a thousand killings by police – very likely summary executions, according to Human Rights Watch – take place in Rio de Janeiro alone. The prohibition of extrajudicial killings is central to human rights law, and it is a rule that Brazil flagrantly violates – not as a matter of official policy, but as a matter of practice. Brazil is hardly the only country where this takes place; others include India, the world’s largest democracy, South Africa, the Dominican Republic and Iran. These countries all have judicial systems, and most suspected criminals are formally charged and appear in court. But the courts are slow and underfunded, so police, under pressure to combat crime, employ extrajudicial methods, such as torture, to extract confessions.

We live in an age in which most of the major human rights treaties – there are nine “core” treaties – have been ratified by the vast majority of countries. Yet it seems that the human rights agenda has fallen on hard times. In much of the Islamic world, women lack equality, religious dissenters are persecuted and political freedoms are curtailed. The Chinese model of development, which combines political repression and economic liberalism, has attracted numerous admirers in the developing world. Political authoritarianism has gained ground in Russia, Turkey, Hungary and Venezuela. Backlashes against LGBT rights have taken place in countries as diverse as Russia and Nigeria. The traditional champions of human rights – Europe and the United States – have floundered. Europe has turned inward as it has struggled with a sovereign debt crisis, xenophobia towards its Muslim communities and disillusionment with Brussels. The United States, which used torture in the years after 9/11 and continues to kill civilians with drone strikes, has lost much of its moral authority. Even age-old scourges such as slavery continue to exist. A recent report estimates that nearly 30 million people are forced against their will to work. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

At a time when human rights violations remain widespread, the discourse of human rights continues to flourish. The use of “human rights” in English-language books has increased 200-fold since 1940, and is used today 100 times more often than terms such as “constitutional rights” and “natural rights”. Although people have always criticised governments, it is only in recent decades that they have begun to do so in the distinctive idiom of human rights. The United States and Europe have recently condemned human rights violations in Syria, Russia, China and Iran. Western countries often make foreign aid conditional on human rights and have even launched military interventions based on human rights violations. Many people argue that the incorporation of the idea of human rights into international law is one of the great moral achievements of human history. Because human rights law gives rights to all people regardless of nationality, it deprives governments of their traditional riposte when foreigners criticise them for abusing their citizens – namely “sovereignty” (which is law-speak for “none of your business”). Thus, international human rights law provides people with invaluable protections against the power of the state.

And yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that governments continue to violate human rights with impunity. Why, for example, do more than 150 countries (out of 193 countries that belong to the UN) engage in torture? Why has the number of authoritarian countries increased in the last several years? Why do women remain a subordinate class in nearly all countries of the world? Why do children continue to work in mines and factories in so many countries?

The truth is that human rights law has failed to accomplish its objectives. There is little evidence that human rights treaties, on the whole, have improved the wellbeing of people. The reason is that human rights were never as universal as people hoped, and the belief that they could be forced upon countries as a matter of international law was shot through with misguided assumptions from the very beginning. The human rights movement shares something in common with the hubris of development economics, which in previous decades tried (and failed) to alleviate poverty by imposing top-down solutions on developing countries. But where development economists have reformed their approach, the human rights movement has yet to acknowledge its failures. It is time for a reckoning.

Barb wire

Although the modern notion of human rights emerged during the 18th century, it was on December 10, 1948, that the story began in earnest, with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN general assembly. The declaration arose from the ashes of the second world war and aimed to launch a new, brighter era of international relations. It provided a long list of rights, most of which are the familiar “political” rights that are set down in the US constitution, or that have been constructed by American courts over the years. The declaration was not dictated by the United States, however, and showed the influence of other traditions of legal thought in its inclusion of “social” rights, such as the right to work.

The weaknesses that would go on to undermine human rights law were there from the start. The universal declaration was not a treaty in the formal sense: no one at the time believed that it created legally binding obligations. It was not ratified by nations but approved by the general assembly, and the UN charter did not give the general assembly the power to make international law. Moreover, the rights were described in vague, aspirational terms, which could be interpreted in multiple ways, and national governments – even the liberal democracies – were wary of binding legal obligations. The US did not commit itself to eliminating racial segregation, and Britain and France did not commit themselves to liberating the subject populations in their colonies. Several authoritarian states – including the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Saudi Arabia – refused to vote in favour of the universal declaration and instead abstained. The words in the universal declaration may have been stirring, but no one believed at the time that they portended a major change in the way international relations would be conducted; nor did they capture the imagination of voters, politicians, intellectuals or anyone else who might have exerted political pressure on governments.

Part of the problem was that a disagreement opened up early on between the US and the Soviet Union. The Americans argued that human rights consisted of political rights – the rights to vote, to speak freely, not to be arbitrarily detained, to practise a religion of one’s choice, and so on. These rights were, not coincidentally, the rights set out in the US constitution. The Soviets argued that human rights consisted of social or economic rights – the rights to work, to healthcare, and to education. As was so often the case during the cold war, the conflict was zero-sum. Either you supported political rights (that is, liberal democracy) or you supported economic rights (that is, socialism). The result was that negotiations to convert the universal declaration into a binding treaty were split into two tracks. It would take another 18 years for the United Nations to adopt a political rights treaty and an economic rights treaty. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights finally took effect in 1976.

As the historian Samuel Moyn has argued in his book The Last Utopia, it was not until the late 1970s that human rights became a major force in international relations. President Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on human rights seems to have been a reaction to Vietnam and the gruesome realpolitik of the Nixon era, but Carter himself was unable to maintain a consistent line. Allies such as Iran and Saudi Arabia were just too important for American security, and seen as a crucial counterweight to Soviet influence. Still, something changed with Carter. His five successors – Republicans and Democrats alike – have invoked the term “human rights” far more frequently than any president before him. It is not that presidents have become more idealistic. Rather, it is that they have increasingly used the language of rights to express their idealistic goals (or to conceal their strategic goals).

Despite the horrifying genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and the civil war in Yugoslavia, the 1990s were the high-water mark for the idea of human rights. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, economic and social rights lost their stigmatising association with communism and entered the constitutional law of many western countries, with the result that all major issues of public policy came to be seen as shaped by human rights. Human rights played an increasingly important role in the European Union and members insisted that countries hoping to join the EU to obtain economic benefits should be required to respect human rights as well. NGOs devoted to advancing human rights also grew during this period, and many countries that emerged from under the Soviet yoke adopted western constitutional systems. Even Russia itself made halting movements in that direction.

Then came September 11, 2001 and the “war on terror”. America’s recourse to torture was a significant challenge to the international human rights regime. The United States was a traditional leader in human rights and one of the few countries that has used its power to advance human rights in other nations. Moreover, the prohibition on torture is at the core of the human rights regime; if that right is less than absolute, then surely the other rights are as well.

The rise of China has also undermined the power of human rights. In recent years, China has worked assiduously behind the scenes to weaken international human rights institutions and publicly rejected international criticism of the political repression of its citizens. It has offered diplomatic and economic support to human rights violators, such as Sudan, that western countries have tried to isolate. Along with Russia, it has used its veto in the UN security council to limit western efforts to advance human rights through economic pressure and military intervention. And it has joined with numerous other countries – major emerging powers such as Vietnam, and Islamic countries that fear western secularisation – to deny many of the core values that human rights are supposed to protect.

Each of the six major human rights treaties has been ratified by more than 150 countries, yet many of them remain hostile to human rights. This raises the nagging question of how much human rights law has actually influenced the behaviour of governments. There are undoubtedly examples where countries enter into human rights treaties and change their behaviour. The political scientist Beth Simmons , for instance, has described the observable impact in Japan and Colombia of the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The puzzle is how to reconcile this with the many examples of blatant human rights violations. Saudi Arabia ratified the treaty banning discrimination against women in 2007, and yet by law subordinates women to men in all areas of life. Child labour exists in countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Uzbekistan, Tanzania and India, for example. Powerful western countries, including the US, do business with grave human rights abusers.

In a very rough sense, the world is a freer place than it was 50 years ago, but is it freer because of the human rights treaties or because of other events, such as economic growth or the collapse of communism?

Barbed wire

The central problem with human rights law is that it is hopelessly ambiguous. The ambiguity, which allows governments to rationalise almost anything they do, is not a result of sloppy draftsmanship but of the deliberate choice to overload the treaties with hundreds of poorly defined obligations. In most countries people formally have as many as 400 international human rights – rights to work and leisure, to freedom of expression and religious worship, to nondiscrimination, to privacy, to pretty much anything you might think is worth protecting. The sheer quantity and variety of rights, which protect virtually all human interests, can provide no guidance to governments. Given that all governments have limited budgets, protecting one human right might prevent a government from protecting another.

Take the right not to be tortured, for example. In most countries torture is not a matter of official policy. As in Brazil, local police often use torture because they believe that it is an effective way to maintain order or to solve crimes. If the national government decided to wipe out torture, it would need to create honest, well-paid investigatory units to monitor the police. The government would also need to fire its police forces and increase the salaries of the replacements. It would probably need to overhaul the judiciary as well, possibly the entire political system. Such a government might reasonably argue that it should use its limited resources in a way more likely to help people – building schools and medical clinics, for example. If this argument is reasonable, then it is a problem for human rights law, which does not recognise any such excuse for failing to prevent torture.

Or consider, as another example, the right to freedom of expression. From a global perspective, the right to freedom of expression is hotly contested. The US takes this right particularly seriously, though it makes numerous exceptions for fraud, defamation, and obscenity. In Europe, most governments believe that the right to freedom of expression does not extend to hate speech. In many Islamic countries, any kind of defamation of Islam is not protected by freedom of speech. Human rights law blandly acknowledges that the right to freedom of expression may be limited by considerations of public order and morals. But a government trying to comply with the international human right to freedom of expression is given no specific guidance whatsoever.

Thus, the existence of a huge number of vaguely defined rights ends up giving governments enormous discretion. If a government advances one group of rights, while neglecting others, how does one tell whether it complies with the treaties the best it can or cynically evades them?

The reason these kinds of problems arise on the international but not on the national level is that within countries, the task of interpreting and defining vaguely worded rights, and making trade-offs between different rights, is delegated to trusted institutions. It was the US supreme court, for example, that decided that freedom of speech did not encompass fraudulent, defamatory, and obscene statements. The American public accepted these judgments because they coincided with their moral views and because the court enjoys a high degree of trust. In principle, international institutions could perform this same function. But the international institutions that have been established for this purpose are very weak.

In truly international human rights institutions, such as the UN human rights council, there is a drastic lack of consensus between nations. To avoid being compelled by international institutions to recognise rights that they reject, countries give them little power. The multiple institutions lack a common hierarchical superior – unlike national courts – and thus provide conflicting interpretations of human rights, and cannot compel nations to pay attention to them. That is why, for instance, western countries have been able to disregard the human rights council’s endorsement of “defamation of religion”, the idea that criticism of Islam and other religions violates the human rights of those who practice those religions.

The failure of the international human rights legal regime is, then, rooted in the difficulty of reducing the ideal of “good governance” to a set of clearly defined rules that can be interpreted and applied by trusted institutions. People throughout the world have different moral convictions, but the problem is not entirely one of moral pluralism. The real problem is the sheer difficulty of governance, particularly in societies in the throes of religious and ethnic strife that outsiders often fail to understand. There are many legitimate ways for governments to advance people’s wellbeing and it is extremely hard for outsiders to evaluate the quality of governance in a particular country.

Many human rights advocates respond that even if human rights law does not function as a normal legal system, it does provide important moral support for oppressed people. When the Soviet Union signed the Helsinki Accords in 1975, which required it to respect human rights, various Helsinki committees sprouted in the eastern bloc, which became important focal points for agitation from dissidents. Women’s rights groups in patriarchal countries have drawn inspiration from the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Advocates for children can point to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International can pressure governments to improve the human rights they care about, even if they can’t get countries to comply with all their treaty obligations. The human rights legal regime, taken as a whole, has made human rights the common moral language of international relations, which has forced governments to take human rights seriously.

But while governments all use the idiom of human rights, they use it to make radically different arguments about how countries should behave. China cites “the right to development” to explain why the Chinese government gives priority to economic growth over political liberalisation. Many countries cite the “right to security,” a catch-all idea that protection from crime justifies harsh enforcement methods. Vladimir Putin cited the rights of ethnic minorities in Ukraine in order to justify his military intervention there, just as the United States cited Saddam Hussein’s suppression of human rights in order to build support for the Iraq war. Certain Islamic countries cite the right to religious freedom in order to explain why women must be subordinated, arguing that women must play the role set out for them in Islamic law. The right of “self‑determination” can be invoked to convert foreign pressure against a human-rights violating country into a violation of that country’s right to determine its destiny. The language of rights, untethered to specific legal interpretations, is too spongy to prevent governments from committing abuses and can easily be used to clothe illiberal agendas in words soothing to the western ear.

And while NGOs do press countries to improve their behaviour, they cite the human rights they care about and do not try to take an impartial approach to enforcing human rights in general. Sophisticated organisations such as Human Rights Watch understand that poor countries cannot comply with all the human rights listed in the treaties, so they pick and choose, in effect telling governments around the world that they should reorder their priorities so as to coincide with what Human Rights Watch thinks is important, often fixing on practices that outrage uninformed westerners who donate the money that NGOs need to survive. But is there any reason to believe that Human Rights Watch, or its donors, knows better than the people living in Suriname, Laos or Madagascar how their governments should set priorities and implement policy?

Barbed wire

Westerners bear a moral responsibility to help poorer people living in foreign countries. The best that can be said about the human rights movement is that it reflects a genuine desire to do so. But if the ends are admirable, the means are faulty. Westerners should abandon their utopian aspirations and learn the lessons of development economics. Animated by the same mix of altruism and concern for geopolitical stability as the human rights movement, development economists have also largely failed to achieve their mission, which is to promote economic growth. Yet their failures have led not to denial, but to incremental improvements and (increasingly) humility.

In his influential book The White Man’s Burden , William Easterly argues that much of the foreign-aid establishment is in the grip of an ideology that is a softer-edge version of the civilising mission of 19th-century imperialists. Westerners no longer believe that white people are superior to other people on racial grounds, but they do believe that regulated markets, the rule of law and liberal democracy are superior to the systems that prevail in non-western countries, and they have tried to implement those systems in the developing world. Easterly himself does not oppose regulated markets and liberal democracy, nor does he oppose foreign aid. He instead attacks the ideology of the “planners” – people who believe that the west can impose a political and economic blueprint that will advance wellbeing in other countries.

Since the second world war, western countries contributed trillions of dollars of aid to developing countries. The aid has taken many different forms: unrestricted cash, loans at below-market interest rates, cash that must be used to buy western products, in-kind projects such as dams and plants, technical assistance, education and “rule-of-law” projects designed to improve the quality of legal institutions. For a while, the “Washington consensus” imposed cookie-cutter market-based prescriptions on countries that needed to borrow money. The consensus among economists is that these efforts have failed.

The reasons are varied. Giving cash and loans to a government to build projects such as power plants will not help the country if government officials skim off a large share and give contracts to cronies incapable of implementing those projects. Providing experts to improve the legal infrastructure of the country will not help if local judges refuse to enforce the new laws because of corruption or tradition or incompetence. Pressuring governments to combat corruption will not help if payoffs to mob bosses, clan chiefs, or warlords are needed to maintain social order. Demanding that aid recipients use money in ways that they believe unnecessary can encourage governments to evade the conditions of the donations. The Washington consensus failed because economic reform requires the consent of the public, and populations resented the imposition by foreigners of harsh policies that were not always wise on their own terms.

International human rights law reflects the same top-down mode of implementation, pursued in the same crude manner. But human rights law has its distinctive features as well. Because it is law, it requires the consent of states, creating an illusion of symmetry and even-handedness that is missing from foreign aid. Hence the insistence, wholly absent from discussions about foreign aid, that western countries are subject to international human rights law as other countries are. However, in practice, international human rights law does not require western countries to change their behaviour, while (in principle) it requires massive changes in the behaviour of most non-western countries. Both foreign aid and human rights enforcement can be corrupted or undermined because western countries have strategic interests that are not always aligned with the missions of those institutions. But the major problem, in both cases, is that the systems reflect a vision of good governance rooted in the common historical experiences of western countries and that prevails (albeit only approximately) in countries that enjoy wealth, security and order. There is no reason that this vision – the vision of institutionally enforced human rights – is appropriate for poor countries, with different traditions, and facing a range of challenges that belong, in the view of western countries, to the distant past.

Development economics has gone some distance to curing itself of this error. The best development scholars today, such as Esther Duflo , have been experimenting furiously with different ways of improving lives of people living in foreign countries. Rigorous statistical methods are increasingly used, and in recent years economists have implemented a range of randomised controlled trials. Much greater attention is paid to the minutiae of social context, as it has become clear that a vaccination programme that works well in one location may fail in another, for reasons relating to social order that outsiders do not understand. Expectations have been lowered; the goal is no longer to convert poor societies into rich societies, or even to create market institutions and eliminate corruption; it is to help a school encourage children to read in one village, or to simplify lending markets in another.

It is time to start over with an approach to promoting wellbeing in foreign countries that is empirical rather than ideological. Human rights advocates can learn a lot from the experiences of development economists – not only about the flaws of top-down, coercive styles of forcing people living in other countries to be free, but about how one can actually help those people if one really wants to. Wealthy countries can and should provide foreign aid to developing countries, but with the understanding that helping other countries is not the same as forcing them to adopt western institutions, modes of governance, dispute-resolution systems and rights. Helping other countries means giving them cash, technical assistance and credit where there is reason to believe that these forms of aid will raise the living standards of the poorest people. Resources currently used in fruitless efforts to compel foreign countries to comply with the byzantine, amorphous treaty regime would be better used in this way.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the human rights treaties were not so much an act of idealism as an act of hubris, with more than a passing resemblance to the civilising efforts undertaken by western governments and missionary groups in the 19th century, which did little good for native populations while entangling European powers in the affairs of countries they did not understand. A humbler approach is long overdue.

Eric Posner is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. His latest book is The Twilight of International Human Rights Law. Follow him on Twitter: @EricAPosner

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Goldenberg SM, Morgan Thomas R, Forbes A, et al., editors. Sex Work, Health, and Human Rights: Global Inequities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Action [Internet]. Cham (CH): Springer; 2021. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-64171-9_3

Cover of Sex Work, Health, and Human Rights

Sex Work, Health, and Human Rights: Global Inequities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Action [Internet].

Chapter 3 global burden of violence and other human rights violations against sex workers.

Elena Argento , Kay Thi Win , Bronwyn McBride , and Kate Shannon .

Affiliations

Published online: April 29, 2021.

Globally, sex workers experience a disproportionate burden of violence and human rights violations linked to criminalisation, punitive law enforcement, and lack of labour protections. Social injustices including poor working conditions, violence and victimisation, police harassment, and discrimination constitute severe violations of sex workers’ health, labour and human rights, and abuses of their freedom and dignity. Policymakers, researchers, and international bodies increasingly recognise violence as a critical public health and human rights concern among the general population; however, human rights violations against sex workers remain largely overlooked within international agendas on violence prevention and in human rights conventions. This chapter provides an overview of the global literature on violence against sex workers, other human rights violations, and drivers of elevated violence and rights inequities across settings. In addition to synthesising global research findings, this chapter features contributions and case studies from community partners in Asia Pacific. Guided by a structural determinants framework, and in recognising the right to live and work free from violence as a human right, this chapter provides an evidence base pertaining to violence against sex workers towards that informs the development of policy and public health interventions to uphold human rights among sex workers worldwide.

  • Introduction

Every person possesses the right to freedom from torture, inhumane treatment, and the right to recognition before the law. These rights are not invalidated if a person sells sex or is suspected of a crime. However, globally, sex workers continue to experience disproportionate rates of violence and other human rights violations. A systematic review in 2014 identified a staggeringly high lifetime prevalence of physical, sexual, or combined workplace violence against women sex workers—from 45% to 75% [ 1 ]. Although these violations of sex workers’ rights remain largely overlooked within international agendas on violence prevention, over the last decade, sex workers and advocates have upheld the human rights framework to document them [ 2 – 4 ]. As a result, increasingly, the unacceptable violence faced by sex workers is being addressed in international guidelines [ 5 – 7 ].

The intersection of macro-structural factors (e.g. laws/policies, stigma, poverty, racism, transphobia/homophobia, cultural norms) and community-level factors (e.g. policing, working conditions, access to health, and peer-led services) influences the risks of experiencing violence among sex workers and their access to recourse on a global level [ 8 – 11 ]. A recent systematic review identified major structural factors—the criminalisation of sex work and resulting punitive policing, work environments, and gender and economic inequities—as shaping the vulnerability of sex workers [ 1 ]. Criminalisation is a key determinant of sex workers’ access to safer indoor work environments, supportive third parties, and labour and police protections [ 1 ]. Criminalisation also contributes to the devaluing of sex workers’ social status, which increases their vulnerability to violent perpetrators. Sex workers often hesitate to report incidents to police, due to deep-rooted mistrust and fear of criminal charges, stigma, or further abuse [ 12 – 16 ]. This inability to access justice enables perpetrators to abuse sex workers with impunity, perpetuating high levels of violence [ 16 – 20 ].

Guided by a structural determinants framework [ 8 ], this chapter provides an overview of the socio-structural factors shaping violence against sex workers. We summarise findings from academic research, and feature examples of sex workers’ lived experiences as well as case studies from Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW), a sex worker initiated and led organisation representing sex worker organisations in Asia and the Pacific. In recognising the right to live and work free from violence as a human right, we aim to provide an evidence base to inform the development of policy and public health interventions to promote safety for sex workers worldwide.

  • Interpersonal Violence from Clients and Intimate/Non-paying Partners

Globally, sex workers of all genders experience elevated rates of violence. Among women sex workers working mostly in street-based settings, an estimated 32–55% experienced workplace violence by any perpetrator in the last year [ 9 ].

Violence experienced by sex workers varies substantially in nature and degree, depending on their working environment (e.g. managerial and policy features of venues) and community-level factors (e.g. empowerment) [ 9 ]. In many settings, sex workers experience physical and sexual violence perpetrated by clients and by predators posing as clients, often during negotiation around the use of condoms. This is a violation of sex workers’ labour rights and increases their risk of exposure to HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) [ 21 – 28 ]. Sex workers also suffer violence from intimate partners, including threats of exposure to police as a form of domination and control [ 29 , 30 ]. Global estimates of combined physical and sexual violence by intimate partners over lifetime range from 4% to 73% [ 9 ], and the homicide rate among sex workers in the USA is approximately 17 times the rate of the general population [ 29 ]. In Canada’s worst serial murder case, 67 women—most of whom were sex workers, and many of whom were Indigenous—were murdered or went missing from Vancouver between 1997 and 2002. This case received widespread scrutiny regarding inaction on the part of police and the judicial system, reflecting pervasive stigma and the devaluing of marginalised women involved in sex work [ 12 ].

The following community case study conducted by APNSW describes how violence from various perpetrators has become normalised a sex workers. This is how one sex worker described an experience of severe physical/sexual client violence in Bangladesh:

I am 30 years old. I am a sex worker over the last 8 years in Dhaka. Violence is part of our daily lives. We face violence from police, clients, boyfriends, family and the public. There is not a single day we don’t face violence. However, two months ago I faced serious violence from some clients. A group of 4 people took me in a night in an under-construction building. They all were on drugs and also took sex drugs. The first person did sex with me a minimum of one hour and I was feeling pain and after the second person, I told them I cannot do sex anymore. They were very angry and they forced me to do sex. After the third client I had severe pain. I was crying and told them to allow me to go. They become very angry and bit me seriously. At one point they pushed a beer bottle in my vagina. I felt serious pain. After that I was crying, and then security people came and sent me to home. I was feeling pain for two days in my abdomen. I could not tell anyone that inside my body was a bottle. Then I called my sex worker friend. She took me to a clinic. The doctor said situation is so serious and I needed an operation. It was expensive but my friend helped me to do the operation. I am so grateful to my friend.

Qualitative research among street-based sex workers has documented pervasive gender inequality and their experiences of psychological dominance by males within intimate partnerships. This work underscores the impact of gendered power imbalances directly influencing women’s agency and their ability to safeguard themselves against risky sexual behaviours. Such behaviour also normalises violence within the context of multiple forms of oppression such as poverty, racism, and economic dependence on partners [ 31 – 35 ]. Qualitative research from India among men, trans, and women sex workers has described the ways in which collectivisation and community empowerment can reduce violence from clients and police, but also indicates an increase in violence from sex workers’ male intimate partners, attributed to those partners feeling threatened by shifts in the balance of power in their relationships [ 36 ].

  • The Impacts of Criminalisation

Punitive, enforcement-based approaches continue to undermine the health of sex workers [ 5 , 8 , 37 ]. A Lancet review determined that rights violations against sex workers are most profound where aspects of sex work are criminalised [ 29 ]. Under criminalisation, violence occurring in the context of sex work (i.e. as a workplace hazard/harm) is not monitored by any formal bodies; due to this omission, few to no legal protections are afforded to sex workers [ 38 ]. Violence against sex workers often goes unreported and is seldom registered as an offence. In some cases, it is perpetrated by police, exacerbating trauma and further restricting sex workers from accessing justice, health, or social services [ 9 , 26 , 39 ].

Violence against sex workers is largely shaped by criminalisation and contemporaneous stigma, discrimination, and social marginalisation [ 8 , 29 , 40 ]. These structural factors impact health access and outcomes, leading to heightened physical risks (e.g. violence, injury, death, HIV/STIs) [ 9 , 38 , 41 ] and mental health harms (e.g. addiction, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder) [ 42 – 44 ]. Criminalisation also hinders collectivisation among sex workers, a factor critical to building capacity among sex workers and which enables them to negotiate safety in the workplace, advocate for labour protections and demand equal access to health and social services [ 36 , 37 , 45 – 47 ].

International bodies including the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and Amnesty International have endorsed the full decriminalisation of sex work as necessary to promoting sex workers’ human rights [ 5 , 7 , 48 ]. Despite this, the dominant socio-legal response to sex work remains criminalisation through punitive law. Criminalisation models can prohibit all aspects of sex work, or certain aspects, such as soliciting, advertising, collective working, or third party involvement [ 49 ]. Legalisation models —implemented in parts of Australia, Switzerland, Turkey, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, Nevada (USA), and Mexico—typically feature regulatory conditions (e.g. mandatory licencing or registration, mandatory HIV/STI testing) that are often discriminatory and enforced through criminal law [ 29 , 49 ]. In 1999, Sweden criminalised the purchasing of sexual services (but not the selling of sex). This approach focuses on targeting clients and third parties and has generated a global wave of such “end-demand” legislation. Initial evidence on the impacts of end-demand laws suggest that even policies purportedly designed to criminalise only clients and third parties continue to indirectly criminalise sex workers and undermine sex workers’ labour conditions, health, and human rights.

Research evaluating the impact of Canada’s new end-demand laws (Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act; PCEPA) in Vancouver found that sex workers had significantly reduced access to health and community-led services as a result of the implementation of end-demand criminalisation [ 50 ]. Qualitative findings from Sweden and Canada underscore that criminalising clients reproduces the harms of full criminalisation models [ 51 , 52 ]. Similarly, research from France found that end-demand laws undermined sex workers’ safety and overall living conditions—exacerbating, rather than reducing, the harms associated with the previous laws against soliciting [ 53 ]. Conversely, evidence from New Zealand, which decriminalised sex work in 2003 (but only for New Zealand citizens), and New South Wales, Australia, has highlighted improved workplace safety, working conditions, and access to police protections for sex workers under full decriminalisation [ 54 – 56 ].

In Bangladesh, where sex work is legalised and regulated, sex workers face a lack of recourse after experiencing violence. The following APNSW case study illustrates how a sex worker and “ghorwali” (third party who provides space to sex workers and takes commissions) did not feel she could report violence and extortion to police.

It was a Friday evening at 8:00 pm; 4 young people entered my house. They said that I’m a bad woman and I take clients. At that time, in my house were two girls (sex workers) and 3 clients. They asked me who are those girls and boys…and started to be slapping the boys. The clients were scared and started to cry. The girls were scared too. They took money by force from clients… They were shouting and slapping me…telling me if I give them 20,000 BDT [Bangladeshi taka] and allow them to have sex with the girls then they will leave my house. All 4 young boys did sex with girls by force and we were scared so we could not protect them. However, after sex they again asked for 20,000 BDT. In this point, I started to cry and…the house owner heard. At this point, they left without money from me. One night a week later, my client came to my house. All 4 bad boys again entered my house. The boys start to slap [my client] and asked 10,000 BDT. They threatened to take naked pictures and post on Facebook. The client was scared and gave them 5000 BDT. After that, they saw my 15-year-old daughter… they demanded to have sex with my daughter. My daughter was scared and started to cry. I called Morzina (HARC [HIV/AIDS Research and Welfare Centre] paralegal) and told her to come with police. At this point the bad boys…said we will go if I gave them 5000 BDT . As they were asking for my daughter, I was scared. I gave them 5000 and they left. After that, I went to HARC office for next steps. They gave me two suggestions, one to do a general diary to the police station mentioning their names, or to change house as now everybody knew that I was involved in sex work. I took the second option and moved to a new house. I am continuing work but not sure what will happen next. I told the house owner that I work at HARC office…but I’m not sure how long I can stay in this house.
  • Police Repression, Extortion, and Abuse

Criminalisation enables police abuses against sex workers, for example, harassment and threats; fines, bribes, or other financial extortion; confiscation of condoms; assault; extorting sex under threat of arrest, all of which have been documented in diverse contexts [ 14 , 16 , 57 – 63 ]. Such punitive policing practices have been reported by sex workers globally as proxies for enforcement of sex work laws, dynamically influencing experiences of violence and the ability of sex workers to negotiate safer sexual transactions with clients [ 22 , 24 , 64 – 71 ]. Trans sex workers are especially vulnerable to being targeted by police and are subjected to discrimination and greater levels of violence [ 25 , 72 , 73 ].

Among sex workers in Canada, violence by police and enforced displacement to isolated outdoor locations are independently associated with their experiences of violence from clients [ 65 ]. Studies evaluating policing guidelines that prioritised targeting clients and third parties over arrest of sex workers in Vancouver, Canada, found increased likelihood of rushed negotiations with clients due to police presence [ 74 ], and no reductions in violence [ 70 , 74 ].

Globally, police are primary perpetrators of violence against sex workers, further undermining their access to criminal justice systems. Gang rape and forced unprotected sex by police officers while being arrested and detained have been documented among sex workers of all genders [ 21 , 28 , 30 , 39 , 75 – 78 ]. Estimates of police-perpetrated sexual violence vary widely from 7% to 89% [ 9 , 21 , 29 , 67 , 75 , 78 ]. Police further violate sex workers’ rights by extorting money or sex, frequently under threat of arrest [ 39 , 75 , 79 ]. Police harassment has also been independently associated with increased odds of workplace violence among sex workers in Canada, Ivory Coast, and India [ 65 , 67 , 80 ], and a meta-analysis demonstrated that sex workers who have been exposed to repressive policing were significantly more likely to experience violence from clients and others [ 49 ].

The following APNSW case study excerpts describe sex workers’ lived experiences with extortion, severe violence, and detainment by police across diverse countries. These narratives underscore the urgency of addressing punitive policing practices to improve the safety of sex workers.

Over the last 7 years, I faced many different types of violence, but the terrible experiences were with police. I was arrested 2 times. The first time was 5 years ago. Police asked me to give money but I had no money. After that I was in police station for a night and then transferred to court. I had no one to help me, I couldn’t even understand what type of allegation was against me but had to go to jail for 15 days. I had a 1-year-old daughter and she faced serious problems. One of my relative took care of her, but she was poor too, so, my daughter could not get proper food for many days. After 15 days when I came back from jail, I was afraid to work too, so I spent many days without food. Second time I was arrested 2 years ago, with a client. Police only arrested me and did not say anything to the client. However, when police put me in the car going to the police station, I jumped from the moving car and ran away. We have many experiences but there is no one to listen to our issues. We are also human, we have also rights to live like other women, but we cannot because we are sex workers.—sex worker, India
In my sex worker life, I’ve experienced many different types of violence. Now, the biggest problem is police violence . Police usually arrest us on Friday night, then keep us in the police station where there is no food, no water, no toilet, no shower facilities. We often need to do sex with police there too. They keep us for two days just to get money and sex. Finally, police transfer to court on Sunday. I was arrested on Friday and was in the station for two nights. I did sex with two policemen. However, just before transfer to court on Sunday morning, my pimp released me from the police station. He told me he spent 10,000 (125 USD) and I have to pay 15,000 (200 USD) in a year. I could not pay because my income was not that high. Finally, I gave back 22,000 (300 USD) in two years. I had to do so much work just to give back money, and often I could not eat properly.—sex worker, Bangladesh
I was arrested by police 3 times. First time when I was only 20 years old and just 6 months after starting sex work. Police arrested me and kept me in the station for 3 days. I had sex with 6/7 police in those 3 days and was in jail for one year. I had to do sex in jail with jail police too. After coming back, I started sex work and within a year I got arrested again by police, same situation, 3 days in the police station and sex with many police. That time I was in jail for 3 months. After coming back, I stopped sex work. I thought, I cannot go to jail again as it’s painful. So I got married and thought to continue housewife life. After 2 years I got divorced, I had a son, so again I was in a bad situation. I started sex work again. Finally, I got arrested in February 2018. After arrest, I called my relatives to loan money to get out. One gave money to police so I got released. Now I feel to stop sex work, but on the other hand, I need food, and there is no alternative work for me because I am not educated.—sex worker, Myanmar
  • Impact of Violence on HIV/STIs

The failure of the state to protect sex workers from violence and other human rights abuses has shaped epidemic rates of violence and HIV/STIs against sex workers globally [ 9 , 49 ]. Violence by any offender reduces the ability of sex workers to safely negotiate transactions (e.g. types of sex acts, condom use), constrains their choices and heightens vulnerability [ 38 ]. Violence—physical and sexual—is the most influential determinant of HIV/STI risk among sex workers, associated with inconsistent condom use and refusal by clients to use condoms [ 45 , 81 – 83 ].

Violence from the state, clients, individuals posing as clients, or intimate partners—together with unlawful arrest, detention, and discrimination—have severe effects on the HIV/STI-related inequities faced by sex workers. Punitive approaches to sex work hinder HIV prevention [ 84 , 85 ], criminalisation, incarceration, and legal restrictions on sex work constrain sex workers’ agency and access to safe working conditions. They also elevate HIV/STI exposure through increased violence [ 29 , 76 , 83 ]. In Argentina, India, and China, arrest, extortion, condom confiscation, and physical/sexual violence by police have been shown to significantly reduce condom use with clients and intimate partners [ 64 , 66 , 68 , 86 ]. A global meta-analysis demonstrated that sex workers who experienced police violence faced a significantly higher HIV and STI burden [ 49 ]. In contrast, modelling estimates indicate that decriminalisation of sex work (i.e. removal of all laws targeting the sex industry) could avert up to 46% of new HIV infections among sex workers and their clients over a period of 10 years [ 8 ].

In criminalised contexts , the structural violence of stigma and discrimination (e.g. from police and healthcare providers) prevent sex workers from carrying condoms and hinder efforts to increase sex workers’ access to health services [ 21 , 77 , 87 , 88 ]. Police surveillance limits sex workers’ ability to negotiate client condom use by forcing sex workers to rush transactions and client screening and displaces sex workers to isolated locations, increasing their vulnerability [ 34 , 52 , 89 ].

Alarmingly, across global contexts, police use possession of condoms as evidence of sex work to justify arrest, making it difficult for sex workers to safely access needed HIV/STI prevention supplies [ 38 , 56 , 76 ]. Condoms have also been used as evidence to target third parties and sex work businesses, which can undermine sex workers’ access to condoms in the workplace [ 90 ].

Community perspectives from ANSWP echo these concerns. For example, the following case study describes a sex worker’s experience of police using possession of condoms to justify arrest and abuse in Papua New Guinea:

A female sex worker was thoroughly checked by police [...] when she was dressed to go to a nightclub to do her sex work. A police car drove by and all of a sudden, stopped and reversed to where she was. Two policemen came out with a gun and pointed it at her and asked where she was going. One got hold of her small ladies’ bag and opened it up, and saw condoms and her makeup. They asked her to get into the car and drove her to the police station, locked her up and raped her, and one took photos and videos. She was also asked to use her condoms to blow and make balloons and play with them. We finally found out the next day after one sex worker called me, the vocal person. When we tried to file the matter and take the police to court, the lawyer who was engaged to hear the case never showed up. We are still trying to carry out the case , but the sex worker told me she’s scared of the policemen in case they will murder her if she’s found alone. My advice to her is that; if we take them to court, they will not do that to us and if we ignore, we will face this for the rest of our lives.
  • Forced Rehabilitation and Mandatory Testing

Forced or mandatory ‘rehabilitation’ and detention of sex workers often occur under the guise of anti-trafficking efforts which conflate sex work (consensual exchange of sexual services) with forced sexual labour. Sex workers have faced rape and other physical violence during forced rehabilitation (i.e. programmes designed to force sex workers to exit/leave sex work) [ 91 ], and police have been documented as using forced HIV testing as a means of exploitation and harassment, including during detention and following police raids [ 75 , 92 ]. In China, Cambodia, and India, sex workers have faced forced confinement, forced labour, forced HIV/STI testing, and poor treatment, including unhygienic conditions and denial of medical services [ 91 , 93 , 94 ]. In China, sex workers and clients have been detained for up to 2 years without trial in the so-called education and rescue centres and subjected to forced labour [ 93 ], sharply highlighting the hypocrisy of attempts to “rescue” sex workers from what the state deems to be exploitative labour. Mandatory HIV testing of sex workers is considered a rights violation by the UN Refugee Agency and UNAIDS, as it creates barriers to accessing services by facilitating discrimination against sex workers living with HIV [ 49 ]. In Nevada, USA, sex workers who test positive for HIV can face up to 10 years in prison [ 95 ].

  • Strategies for Change: A Human Rights Framework and Community-Led Interventions

To achieve human rights objectives and address violations such as unacceptable levels of violence against sex workers, a human rights framework and an approach using structural determinants are required [ 29 , 83 ]. This means targeting punitive laws, policies, and resulting repressive policing. It also requires the promotion of enabling environments fostering community empowerment and partnerships, whereby sex workers can take collective ownership of programmes to address social and structural barriers to health, safety, and human rights [ 47 ].

Robust evidence has demonstrated that sex work criminalisation forces sex workers into adversarial relationships with police, increasing their vulnerability and restricting their access to legal protections [ 8 , 37 , 64 , 96 ]. As such, the full decriminalisation of sex work, reform of policing practices, and facilitation of access to safer work environments are urgently needed. In South India, successful community-led approaches to reducing violence and HIV, improving access to justice, and challenging institutional stigma offer examples of what can be achieved with sustained funding and support [ 36 , 46 , 77 , 78 , 97 ].

Building on evaluations of community-led HIV prevention interventions conducted in lower-middle income countries (namely India, Dominican Republic, and Brazil [ 47 ]), community-based and biomedical HIV interventions should be integrated to ensure human rights outcomes and consider rights-related barriers to success. Sex workers of all genders should have meaningful roles in these efforts.

  • Case Study: Response to Violence in Asia Pacific

The End Violence against Sex Workers (EVASW) project in Myanmar is a sex worker-led, community-based initiative which has proven successful and cost-effective in addressing factors that contribute to sex workers’ vulnerability to abuse (see Box 3.1 ). However, broader structural changes, such as legal reform, are necessary to facilitate the work of community-led organisations.

Box 3.1 Ending Violence Against Sex Workers in Myanmar

Violence against female and trans sex workers is pervasive in Myanmar, and police are both primary perpetrators of violence and key gatekeepers to sex workers’ rights. This project aims to improve the safety of and promote access to justice for sex workers in four cities across Myanmar, and also aims to reduce discrimination and stigma against them, by February 2020. It aims to increase sex workers’ knowledge of their rights, empower collective action to prevent and respond to violence, and advocate for structural change to reduce sex workers’ vulnerability. Key factors to successful reduction of violence include greater collective agency among sex workers, enhanced self-efficacy contributing to greater use of crisis response mechanisms, and relationship-building with stakeholders. In a South-South partnership between APNSW members Ashodaya and Aye Myanmar Association (AMA), this approach has been adapted to Myanmar’s context and implemented with support from APNSW. Because sex work is criminalised in Myanmar, special measures for ethics and safety have been taken.

Sex workers have learned about human rights through legal literacy and court process workshops hosted by AMA . A violence response team, made up of a core cadre of sex worker leaders, has been created. AMA encourages sex workers to report violence through the response team and by using technology called iMonitor+: a mobile app that sex workers can use to document violence with photos and videos. When sex workers report information using iMonitor+, the violence response team responds with action. AMA also continues to work to establish institutional partnerships between the community and police to address stigma and discrimination. Through sensitisation workshops and advocacy meetings, law enforcement officers gain an enhanced appreciation of violence against sex workers, and of their own roles and capacity in response. These strategies are in the process of being systematically implemented within interventions to reduce violence against sex workers in Myanmar. Successes include meetings with police and the uptake of reporting and documenting violence against sex workers. AMA has received reports of some officers assisting sex workers after learning more about sex workers’ lives.

APNSW and its members have developed a rapid-response programme which was pioneered in Myanmar and is now being adapted and implemented in four countries in Asia (see Box 3.2 ). The following excerpts describe how the programme in Myanmar (AMA) has provided legal assistance and protection for sex workers who have been incarcerated.

I learned about the AMA program 4 months ago when I met with outreach workers downtown. I learned that AMA helps sex workers from violence and if police arrest them, they help them to get released without any money. After this I was thinking about my past. When I was 30 years old, police arrested me. I was in jail for one year. I had a 3-year-old boy when I went to jail. After release, I could not find my son. Until today, I don’t know where my son is! At that time, there was no program, no communication system with anyone from jail. Now, the situation is totally changed. I was arrested again in February, and I called my outreach workers. The police sent me to court; the AMA legal officer was there and she talked for me in court. I got released but my case is still active. I need to go to court twice a month but I am free and can work like any other sex worker. Now I think, if this project was here 20 years ago, I would not have lost my son. This project is a great help for sex workers.—sex worker, Myanmar
I’ve done sex work for the last 8 years. In the past, I was arrested by police and got released by spending over 500,000 MMK (500 USD). However, I was arrested in 2017 and the court sent me to jail. My case was not finished so I had to come to court twice a month from jail. I got an AMA hotline card in jail from another sex worker. I sent the hotline number to my daughter, who called and requested help. In January when I came to court, the AMA legal officer talked in court about my case. I got released. Now I am free and living with my family. My case is still active, but I have no problem because I can work like others. I am so happy with AMA; if AMA didn’t help me, I could be in jail for a long time. AMA is saving the lives of sex workers in Myanmar.—sex worker, Myanmar

Box 3.2 Ending Violence Against Sex Workers in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Nepal

Safety First is a programme to reduce violence against sex workers, comprised of human rights documentation, legal rights training, legal services, and a crisis hotline. APNSW implements the Safety First project with four established partner organisations: HIV AIDS Research and Welfare Centre (HARC, Bangladesh), Organisasi Perubahan Sosial Indonesia (OPSI, Indonesia), Aye Myanmar Association (AMA, Myanmar), and Jagriti Mahila Mahasang Sanghta (JMMS, Nepal). Over the last 2 years, APNSW has provided intensive technical support to all four organisations.

Safety First uses rights-based interventions designed by female sex workers, based on their recommendations for the most effective local interventions. It involves four peer-led service components, including a safe space, outreach, a hotline, and legal services.

Safety First starts with know-your-rights trainings and legal education held in the safe space. Sex workers trained to be paralegals offer legal counselling in the safe space every working day. Legal counsellors also document human rights violations and proceed with representation in court or pursuing legal action on behalf of sex workers. The sex worker community experts developed a violence reporting form during the regional training. Each quarter, a lawyer will come to the partner organisation’s office to meet sex workers and explain court procedures, the rights of a person who has been arrested, and how sex workers should respond to police harassment/arrest. A lawyer is always standing by in court to assist sex workers with pro-bono representation and legal advice.

Outreach is conducted in sex work venues by peer educators to promote Safety First’s services. Each partner organisation has recruited three peer outreach workers for a Rapid Action Team (RAT), who all carry mobile phones. Sex workers call the hotline or outreach workers when they experience or witness violence. The RAT responds to hotline calls, goes to police stations and court when sex workers are arrested, and documents violence using the form developed during the regional meeting.

The RAT also conducts advocacy and sensitisation meetings with police, building on earlier police advocacy work. These sessions aim to reduce the number of sex workers being arrested, by sensitising police to the marginalisation, stigmatisation, and harassment facing sex workers. Additional advocacy meetings take place with high-level commanding officers to create opportunity for meaningful exchanges between law enforcement and sex workers.

Safety First team members accompany sex workers who have experienced violence when they seek health care, and OPSI, the Indonesian Safety First partner, has successfully advocated in medical settings for confidentiality around being a sex worker and HIV status.

Safety First has demonstrated success in reducing violence against sex workers. In Myanmar, the RAT receives an average of 20 calls each month, in addition to calls to the hotline. Sex workers who received legal advice and representation from Safety First experienced better outcomes in court. The success of Safety First programming demonstrates that community-based programmes can effectively reduce violence and its impacts on HIV transmission within an enabling environment. This programme also demonstrates the need to involve higher level stakeholders including governments, NGOs, and law enforcement to increase safety for sex workers.

Box 3.3 Lessons Learned from APNSW

APNSW works to end violence by empowering sex workers and encouraging collective action, and this approach has demonstrated to generate positive results. For example, sex workers now inform one another about police movements by mobile phone, and when police arrest any sex worker, others call the hotline to inform paralegals to take necessary action. When police arrest sex workers, other sex workers go to the police and try to help them to get released. In the past, sex workers would never dare question or confront the police.

As violence is a multi-dimensional issue, multiple partnerships are critical. In all four countries, APNSW built meaningful partnerships with government, police, and the National AIDS Programme (NAP) under the Ministry of Health. NAP clinics in project areas agreed to provide health services to sex workers after they have experienced assault. Within the Government sector, during township-level inter-governmental meetings, NAP staff strongly highlighted the issue of violence against sex workers. These statements also helped when it came to advocacy work with police. Global experience shows that partnership with Ministries of Health and other stakeholders are essential to bring about sustainable institutional change to address violence against sex workers.

Access to legal services have direct impacts on community empowerment, confidence-building, and overall reduction of violence. Outreach workers of APNSW partners found that sex workers at the community level are now aware of legal aid services. In Myanmar, community members follow the progress of legal cases in the courts through informal sex worker networks. These cases build confidence among sex workers, who realise that they are not alone—there are people to help them—and this realisation itself is empowering. Now, after being arrested, 65% sex workers are released, either before being taken to the police station or from the station.

There has been excellent uptake of our hotline and direct calls to outreach workers, where sex workers report experiences of violence. APNSW is also working with media to promote positive, non-stigmatising reporting about sex workers, and is documenting rights violations against sex workers. Over 745 cases in each country have been documented, and we qualitatively analysed each case for use in advocacy with journalists and in Government meetings. This process of documenting human rights violations helps to amplify community voices.

Recommendations for Programming and Policies [ 98 ]:

Reform punitive laws and law enforcement practices to uphold sex workers’ right to be free of violence

End impunity for those who commit violence against sex workers by holding perpetrators accountable for crimes

Strengthen sex workers’ access to justice and support sex worker-led legal advocacy

Recognise sex work as legitimate work and ensure that sex workers have legally enforceable rights to occupational health and safety protections

Improve sex workers’ access to sexual and reproductive health, HIV and gender-based violence services

Full decriminalisation of sex work to ensure labour rights for sex workers

Uphold anti-discrimination and other rights-respecting laws

Ensure available, accessible, and acceptable health services for sex workers

Address violence against sex workers in all health and HIV programmes

Support community empowerment and sex worker-led programming and remove laws restricting sex workers’ ability to formally organise

  • Conclusions and Future Directions

Academic literature and lived experiences of sex workers and sex worker-led organisations overwhelmingly indicate that there remains an urgent need to improve the safety and human rights of sex workers worldwide. Criminalisation, stigma, and discrimination interact to reproduce sex workers’ exposure to violence, and hinder efforts to enact change. Community empowerment approaches that facilitate sex worker organising are effective strategies to promote sex workers’ rights. Interdisciplinary, mixed-method and participatory research is needed to further document the impacts of criminalisation and violence on sex workers’ health and their access to health and legal services, as well as to inform context-specific interventions. Legislative reforms to decriminalise all aspects of sex work; political commitment to reduce structural inequalities, stigma, and exclusion; and funding to scale up sex worker-led services are evidence-based, rights-based strategies proven to mitigate risk of violence, to ensure safer work environments, and to uphold human rights among sex workers globally.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

  • Cite this Page Argento E, Win KT, McBride B, et al. Global Burden of Violence and Other Human Rights Violations Against Sex Workers. 2021 Apr 29. In: Goldenberg SM, Morgan Thomas R, Forbes A, et al., editors. Sex Work, Health, and Human Rights: Global Inequities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Action [Internet]. Cham (CH): Springer; 2021. Chapter 3. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-64171-9_3
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The case studies on this page include conciliated outcomes of human rights complaints and piggy-back complaints.

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Freedom, Dignity and Asia

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case analysis human rights violation

Recent Cases of Human Rights Violations in the Philippines

Philippines President Duterte’s murderous tyranny continues.

On March 7, another nine human rights activists were murdered by the Philippines military and police in the Calabazon area. Most of them were killed in their homes, but Philippines authorities say they were communist terrorists and died in combat. Philippines civil society is immediately condemning and demanding for release of the truth of the killings on “Bloody Sunday” (March 7) and appealing to the international community to prevent such innocent deaths from repeating.

This issue is a card news story regarding human rights abuses in the Philippines over the past year. If you would like to join with the Filipino people, please email our website at [email protected] or [email protected].

We ask for your continued solidarity in the fierce struggle for democracy and dignity among our Asian neighbors, including the Philippines and Myanmar.

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THE PHILIPPINE HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION

What’s the ICJ case against Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine?

The ICJ will hear 52 countries on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A handicapped Palestinian attempts to pray at the street while Israeli forces take security measures as restriction on Palestinian worshipers' access to Al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers continues

The International Court of Justice will begin hearings on Monday in a case against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, barely a month after it issued a series of directions to Tel Aviv in a separate case where it is accused of genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip.

In a first-of-its-kind case, at least 52 countries will present arguments on controversial Israeli policies in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and occupied East Jerusalem. It’s the largest number of parties to participate in any single ICJ case since the court was established in 1945.

INTERACTIVE - ICJ hearing on Israel occupation of Palestine-1708328081

Israeli authorities, since 1967, have illegally occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – part of Palestine under the United Nations-determined division of historic Palestine in 1948 –  running a system that restricts the citizenship rights of Palestinians, hampers their free movement and strips them of ancestral lands. Between 1967 and 2005, Israel also directly occupied Gaza, and since 2007, has imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the coastal enclave. It decides what food, water, medicines, fuel, construction material and other commodities can go into Gaza, and stops their flow when it wants.

Even as the war on Gaza is now in its fifth month, Palestinians in the West Bank have come under increased attacks from Israeli forces, with hundreds of people killed.

Keep reading

Israel’s military is targeting palestinian police delivering aid to gaza, watching the watchdogs: biden, us media and arab-american political power, palestinian woman buried under rubble calls for help after israeli attack, what happens when gaza’s health system collapses.

In a statement last week, the ICJ said oral arguments in the case would last for about a week, during which all countries, as well as three international organisations, are expected to state why they support or oppose Israel’s measures. Tel Aviv has declined to present, choosing to submit a written argument instead. A court ruling is likely in several months.

Israeli forces take security measures as Muslims perform Friday prayers on street in Old City

Here’s all you need to know about the case:

Who brought the case against Israel?

The case was triggered by a request from the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on December 30, 2022, when a majority of members voted to seek the court’s opinion on the legal consequences of the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestine. Arab countries, Russia and China voted in favour of the move, while Israel, the US, Germany and 24 others voted against it.

During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which were formerly under Jordanian control, and with an Arab-majority population. Most countries and the UN still view occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, and regard Israel’s occupation as illegal under international law.

In a long missive to the ICJ, signed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the UNGA asked judges to answer questions about how the rights of Palestinans are being affected by the occupation and continuing attempts to displace them, as well as what the responsibilities of the UN and its member states were in the face of those violations.

“What are the legal consequences … from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation … aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures?” the UNGA missive asked.

The UNGA asked the court to answer those questions using a combination of international humanitarian laws, as well as the Charter of the United Nations and various UN resolutions. According to Human Rights Watch, Israel’s policies in the occupied territories amount to apartheid and persecution, both crimes against humanity.

The Hague-based court hears and adjudicates on matters between states, and it’s the second time it will weigh in on Israel’s illegal occupation. In 2004, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s ‘barrier wall’ in the West Bank that separates many Palestinian families, is illegal and should be dismantled. However, Israel rejected the ruling, and has since extended the wall .

 Israeli forces take measures against Palestinians gathering at Lions' Gate

What countries will participate?

The oral hearings will last from Monday, February 19, until Monday, February 26.

A total of 52 countries – about 10 a day – will present their arguments to ICJ judges through the week. A majority of them originally voted in favour of the UN decision to approach the ICJ. A few, like Canada, voted against, while Switzerland abstained from the vote.

Legal teams representing the State of Palestine will kickstart the hearings on Monday. On Tuesday, South African and Canadian teams will be among the speakers. The US, China and Russia will take the floor between Wednesday and Thursday, while the Maldives will wrap up the final presentation.

Three multilateral organisations will also make their cases in the proceedings: the League of Arab States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the African Union.

So this is different from South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel?

It is. This case is separate from another ICJ case by South Africa on December 29 that alleges that Israel is committing the crime of genocide in Gaza in its continuing war on the Strip.

In a preliminary ruling in that case, the court ordered Israel to prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and to provide needed humanitarian aid by February 26.

The case whose hearings start on Monday, is not linked directly to the current war that Israel is waging on Gaza, though it pertains to many of the concerns of international law violation that bind Tel Aviv’s approach to all Palestinian territories.

What might the court’s ruling be?

The ICJ is composed of 15 judges from different parts of the world, elected by the UNGA for nine-year terms. Justice Nawaf Salam of Lebanon currently leads as president.

Judges will listen to the extensive presentations and publish a written opinion afterwards. It is unclear when the opinion will be released, but the ICJ’s processes are painstaking and usually take time. Some law experts say the opinion might surface before the end of the year.

It’s hard to predict what the court might opine exactly in this case, or even how the opinion would be worded. The ICJ has ruled against Israel in the past, such as over the West Bank wall in 2004, and the recent provisional measures ruling in January that many experts say Israel can only adhere to by effectively ending its war on Gaza.

When it does surface though, the court opinion will not be binding on the Security Council or Israel, meaning they don’t have to be enforced. However, experts say an opinion from the ICJ carries heavy weight and could add more pressure on Israel and its staunchest ally, the United States, to conform to international law.

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Closing the backdoor —

Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, eu court says, cops have alternative means to access encrypted messages, court says..

Ashley Belanger - Feb 14, 2024 7:49 pm UTC

Building of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (France).

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. The international court's decision could potentially disrupt the European Commission's proposed plans to require email and messaging service providers to create backdoors that would allow law enforcement to easily decrypt users' messages.

This ruling came after Russia's intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSS), began requiring Telegram to share users' encrypted messages to deter "terrorism-related activities" in 2017, ECHR's ruling said. A Russian Telegram user alleged that FSS's requirement violated his rights to a private life and private communications, as well as all Telegram users' rights.

The Telegram user was apparently disturbed, moving to block required disclosures after Telegram refused to comply with an FSS order to decrypt messages on six users suspected of terrorism. According to Telegram, "it was technically impossible to provide the authorities with encryption keys associated with specific users," and therefore, "any disclosure of encryption keys" would affect the "privacy of the correspondence of all Telegram users," the ECHR's ruling said.

For refusing to comply, Telegram was fined, and one court even ordered the app to be blocked in Russia, while dozens of Telegram users rallied to continue challenging the order to maintain Telegram services in Russia. Ultimately, users' multiple court challenges failed, sending the case before the ECHR while Telegram services seemingly tenuously remained available in Russia.

The Russian government told the ECHR that "allegations that the security services had access to the communications of all users" were "unsubstantiated" because their request only concerned six Telegram users.

They further argued that Telegram providing encryption keys to FSB "did not mean that the information necessary to decrypt encrypted electronic communications would become available to its entire staff." Essentially, the government believed that FSB staff's "duty of discretion" would prevent any intrusion on private life for Telegram users as described in the ECHR complaint.

Seemingly most critically, the government told the ECHR that any intrusion on private lives resulting from decrypting messages was "necessary" to combat terrorism in a democratic society. To back up this claim, the government pointed to a 2017 terrorist attack that was "coordinated from abroad through secret chats via Telegram." The government claimed that a second terrorist attack that year was prevented after the government discovered it was being coordinated through Telegram chats.

However, privacy advocates backed up Telegram's claims that the messaging services couldn't technically build a backdoor for governments without impacting all its users. They also argued that the threat of mass surveillance could be enough to infringe on human rights. The European Information Society Institute (EISI) and Privacy International told the ECHR that even if governments never used required disclosures to mass surveil citizens, it could have a chilling effect on users' speech or prompt service providers to issue radical software updates weakening encryption for all users.

In the end, the ECHR concluded that the Telegram user's rights had been violated, partly due to privacy advocates and international reports that corroborated Telegram's position that complying with the FSB's disclosure order would force changes impacting all its users.

The "confidentiality of communications is an essential element of the right to respect for private life and correspondence," the ECHR's ruling said. Thus, requiring messages to be decrypted by law enforcement "cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society."

The ruling "strikes a blow to authoritarian measures that seek to undermine fundamental rights protections in the digital age," Ioannis Kouvakas, senior legal officer for Privacy International, told Ars. "By finding that Russia's efforts to circumvent encryption of online messaging services violated the European Convention on Human Rights, the Court sends a clear message to other governments currently toying with similar ideas: risking the privacy and security of each and every user is certainly not the way to go."

Martin Husovec, a law professor who helped to draft EISI's testimony, told Ars that EISI is "obviously pleased that the Court has recognized the value of encryption and agreed with us that state-imposed weakening of encryption is a form of indiscriminate surveillance because it affects everyone's privacy."

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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found Switzerland guilty of three human rights violations Tuesday.

The ECHR determined that Swiss courts failed to adequately address the question of whether racial profiling was at play when police subjected Mohamed Shee Wa Baile, a Swiss national, to an identity check at Zürich station while on his way to work. He refused to present his identity papers, believing the check was a case of racial profiling

According to the report filed by the police officer concerned, police stopped Wa Baile due to his suspicious behavior. “He looked away when he found out I was a policeman and that he wanted to pass by me,” the officer noted. The officer suspected a possible infringement of the Swiss Federal Act on Foreigners Nationals and Integration . Wa Baile asserts that police did not subject any other individual to an identity check, and he received no answer to his questions about why he was being checked.

Wa Baile was subsequently ordered to pay a fine of 100 Swiss Francs (CHF) for refusing to comply with the police’s injunctions and 150 CHF in procedural costs. Swiss courts upheld the fine, asserting that even if the subsequent court deemed the police check illegal, compliance was still mandatory under Swiss law. However, the ECHR ruling contested this stance, highlighting a failure to effectively examine the claim of discrimination based on skin color.

The court found Switzerland in violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights . Additionally, the court found a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) since Wa Baile’s claims had not been effectively addressed.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) previously expressed concerns over the persistence of racial profiling in Switzerland and the absence of laws prohibiting this. This was considered in the judgment by the ECHR.

Amnesty International Switzerland’s Legal Advisor Alicia Giraudel stated that “the European authorities have repeatedly failed to recognise or combat the longstanding and systemic issue of ethnic profiling,” pointing to a larger issue in Europe. Amnesty International submitted a third-party intervention in the case and called for Switzerland to revise its law, guidelines, and practices to prevent ethnic profiling.

European Court rules against hitting schoolchildren in the UK

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Income tax amendment ratified

On February 25, 1913, the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, creating the Income Tax. Read more from FindLaw on the history and purpose of the 16th Amendment .

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  1. Chapter 5: Human Rights Violations

    Chapter 5: Human Rights Violations | Five Case Studies Destination: Occupation Chapter 1: Background | The Israeli Occupation Chapter 2: The Tourism Industry of the Settlements Chapter 3: Israeli Settlements and International Law Chapter 4: Online Tourism Companies Doing Business in the Settlements

  2. The case against human rights

    The United States and Europe have recently condemned human rights violations in Syria, Russia, China and Iran. Western countries often make foreign aid conditional on human rights and...

  3. Protecting Women s Human Rights: A Case Study in the Philippines

    The first part pres-Assistance, with support from the Georgetown University Law ents a historical overview of the relevant laws, which reflect the Center's International Women's Human Rights Clinic, filed a interplay between colonialism, nationalism, minority protection, lawsuit on behalf of twelve petitioners challenging discrimina- and patriar...

  4. Human Rights Violations Through Structural Violence: A Case Study of

    Human Rights Violations Through Structural Violence: A Case Study of Human Rights Education in New York City - Diana Rodríguez-Gómez, S. Garnett Russell, 2022 American Educational Research Journal Impact Factor: 3.6 5-Year Impact Factor: 5.7 JOURNAL HOMEPAGE SUBMIT PAPER Free access Research article First published online November 25, 2021

  5. Experiencing human rights protections in prisons: The case of prison

    As Kerr states, prisons 'present a special context for the interpretation of constitutional rights' ( 2015: 483), where respect for the rule of law, the promotion of human dignity, and the maintenance of security all come into sharp relief in day-to-day decision-making.

  6. Historic Cases

    Peña-Irala, which opened U.S. courts for victims of serious human rights violations from anywhere in the world to Rasul v. Bush, which established the right of Guantánamo detainees to challenge their detention. Jewish National Fund v. US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

  7. Human rights and ideology in foreign policy discourse: A case study of

    At the same time, human rights are not only a legal concept, but also require political, cultural, and societal negotiation both in national and international realms (Freeman, 2017).This article examines human rights discourses in the context of the United States in the 21st century, using the annual human rights report produced by the U.S. State Department as a case study.

  8. World Report 2021: United States

    The US continues to lead the world in reported incarceration rates. Approximately 2.3 million people were locked up on any given day in 2020. There are about 10 million admissions into jails each ...

  9. 2021 Global Human Rights Litigation Report

    From securing the release of a declassified U.S. intelligence report that established responsibility for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, to protecting freedoms of expression and association in Hungary, to seeking damages from the harm caused by mismanaging Ebola relief funds in Sierra Leone, the Justice Initiative continues to be on th...

  10. World Report 2020: United States

    In September, the Census Bureau released a study showing that income inequality in the US had hit the highest level in five decades. About 40 million people live in poverty, many of them members ...

  11. Human Rights Court Cases

    Barrani v. Salt Lake City Hundreds if not thousands of Salt Lake City, Utah, residents have nowhere safe to stay and must live and sleep in public. This case—brought by a small group of residents and businesses—involves the question whether this citywide homelessness crisis constitutes a nuisance under Utah state law.

  12. Human rights and the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective and prospective

    When the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, the failure of many states to live up to their human rights obligations should be a central narrative. The pandemic began with Wuhan officials in China suppressing information, silencing whistleblowers, and violating the freedom of expression and the right to health. Since then, COVID-19's effects have been profoundly unequal, both ...

  13. World Report 2023

    Ignoring human rights violations carries a heavy cost, and the ripple effects should not be underestimated. But in a world of shifting power, we also found opportunity in preparing our 2023 World ...

  14. PDF MANUAL ON MONITORING

    MANUAL ON HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORING 3 08 UNITED NATIONS A. Key concepts Heads of human rights field presences and human rights officers are involved in different levels and types of analyses, which should be complementary. W A broader national or thematic analysis guides the design of a field presence's overall strategy to protect human rights and the choice of priorities for action.

  15. Casebook on human dignity and human rights

    Casebook HD & HR 12pt.indd 37 14/6/11 13:56:04BIOETHICS CORE CURRICULUM 38 Casebook Series: Human dignity and Human RigHts Case study 10 Right of refusal HA is confined to a correctional services medical facility, where he is serving a life term. On May 24, 1991, while he was in prison, HA jumped or fell off a wall.

  16. Preventing human rights violations

    The contribution of the Human Rights Council to preventing human rights violations. The Human Rights Council has highlighted the importance of prevention since its creation in 2006 through regular resolutions on "the role of prevention in the promotion and protection of human rights" (see below). In 2014, the Council mandated OHCHR to ...

  17. Human rights

    Signatory rights; Serious violations policy; Formal consultations; Signatories. Signatory resources. Become a signatory; Get involved; Signatory directory; ... Human rights case study. ABN AMRO: Developing a human rights risk register. 2021-11-19T06:49:00+00:00. Human rights case study.

  18. PDF UNFPA at Work

    ment of the human rights of excluded and marginalized groups. It also presents information on how the use of the human rights-based approach benefits governments and communities alike, with a view towards identifying good practices, gaps, trends, challenges and opportunities. More specifically, the publication aims to:

  19. PDF Human Rights: A Brief Introduction

    provide redress for alleged victims of human rights violations. After a brief discussion of the use of human rights in ethical, legal and advocacy discourse and some historical background of the concept of human rights, this essay will examine the tensions between human rights and state sovereignty, the challenges to the

  20. Global Burden of Violence and Other Human Rights Violations Against Sex

    Globally, sex workers experience a disproportionate burden of violence and human rights violations linked to criminalisation, punitive law enforcement, and lack of labour protections. Social injustices including poor working conditions, violence and victimisation, police harassment, and discrimination constitute severe violations of sex workers' health, labour and human rights, and abuses of ...

  21. QHRC : Human rights case studies

    A complaint about an act or decision of a public entity that is dealt with under the Anti-Discrimination Act might also indicate that the act or decision is incompatible with human rights, or that the public entity has not properly considered human rights in making the decision. The human rights claim can be added to the discrimination complaint.

  22. The global politics of human rights: From human rights to human dignity

    The emphasis on dignity also means the rejection of the paternalistic paradigm of human rights promotion, as in the case perhaps of the EU (see Kinzelbach, 2014), the US (see Renouard, 2015) and other powerful states (see the discussion in Erickson (2015)). In practice, the current global order systematically privileges the 'human rights ...

  23. Recent Cases of Human Rights Violations in the Philippines

    ASIAN PEOPLE PHILIPPINES Recent Cases of Human Rights Violations in the Philippines 03/16/2021 admin Philippines President Duterte's murderous tyranny continues. On March 7, another nine human rights activists were murdered by the Philippines military and police in the Calabazon area.

  24. Sudan: Horrific violations and abuses as fighting spreads

    GENEVA (23 February 2024) - The armed conflict in Sudan has resulted in thousands of civilians killed, millions displaced, property looted, and children conscripted, as fighting has spread to more regions of the country, says a wide-ranging report from the UN Human Rights Office. The report details multiple indiscriminate attacks by both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support ...

  25. What's the ICJ case against Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine

    The case whose hearings start on Monday, is not linked directly to the current war that Israel is waging on Gaza, though it pertains to many of the concerns of international law violation that ...

  26. Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court

    The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. The international court's decision could potentially ...

  27. ECHR finds Switzerland in violation of human rights in racial profiling

    The court found Switzerland in violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Additionally, the court found a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) since Wa Baile's claims had not been effectively addressed.

  28. World Court to Review 57-Year Israeli Occupation

    Human Rights Watch | 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor | New York, NY 10118-3299 USA | t 1.212.290.4700 Human Rights Watch is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 13-2875808 Human ...