Amnesty International Policy on Sex Workers
Our policy on sex workers is supported by rigorous global research which shows that sex workers face serious human rights violations across the world, such as rape, violence and human trafficking. Therefore, we launched our policy on sex work decriminalisation in May 2016 in hopes of ending abuses to sex workers’ rights. We demand that governments should implement their obligations of protecting human rights through three levels of intervention:
- Applying criminal laws to prevent forced labour, human trafficking, abuse and violence in the context of commercial sex and the involvement of children in commercial sex acts.
- Ensuring that legal protections pertaining to health, employment and discrimination are accessible to sex workers and are effective in protecting them from abuse and exploitation.
- Putting in place specific economic, social and cultural law and policy measures in order to address the intersectional discrimination, harmful gender stereotypes and denial of economic, social and cultural rights that may lead to entry into sex work, stigmatize sex workers and prevent exit for those who wish to stop selling sex.
Amnesty International also calls for the decriminalization of all aspects of adult consensual sex work due to the foreseeable barriers that criminalization creates to the realization of the human rights of sex workers
Our policy paper can be downloaded here: