Re-posted from Sex Workers Outreach Project
Dear Friends,
There is debate within the movement about how to address the numerous injustices that we see, committed against sex workers in the name of combating trafficking. GAATW has always supported decriminalization of prostitutioni, and their anti-trafficking work is informed by sex worker rights issues.
This petition represents one strategy. I encourage sex worker groups and advocates to review this material, and visit the GAATW website, to see if this strategy works for you. I did sign on!
Carol Leigh
BAYSWAN
member, SWOP San Francisco
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-look-listen.html
GAATW Web site: http://www.gaatw.org
Background
Over the last ten years, human trafficking is gaining increasing global attention; many governments around the world are developing policies and laws to combat it, and hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent worldwide. The logical next step would be to examine these efforts to combat trafficking to assess how anti-trafficking measures are being implemented (including the way money is being spent) and what consequences they are causing.
We urgently need a rigorous review of the situation. Increasingly, human rights defenders and activists world-wide are concerned that these anti-trafficking measures are even leading to further violations. We need to ask what is actually being done by governments to prevent trafficking and to protect the rights of those that have been trafficked. Is it working? Who is benefiting? Are the rights of people migrating, or returning to their home countries, better protected by anti-trafficking policies?
CASE: The Indian Government considered women migrant workers a “particularly vulnerable lot” and “issued an order prohibiting any female household worker below the age of 30 from being employed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under any circumstance.” The concern was that women may be sexually/physically abused or trafficked into exploitative conditions. To avoid this ban, women have to take riskier migration options than their male counterparts, making them more vulnerable to abuse at the destination point.” (Collateral Damage, India chapter, GAATW p.129).
As part of our work to fight against trafficking in persons, we need to hold governments accountable to their international human rights obligations by reviewing their efforts and make appropriate changes to ensure that all anti-trafficking measures are effective and human-rights based.
This petition is part of the GAATW Stop, Look, Listen! urgent action calling for the implementation of a review mechanism and will be presented to governments during the fourth conference of states parties to the UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime and its Protocols (including the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons) – October 2010.
SIGN THE PETITION BELOW, AND SUPPORT THE URGENT ACTION TO CALL FOR A REVIEW MECHANISM OF THE INTERNATIONAL UN PROTOCOL ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-look-listen.html
You may also want to join the facebook cause.
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/296501/15643139?m=1b2abeb2