Prostitution is an issue of poverty and a
result of labor exploitation
*Systems of prostitution* rely on economic inequality as one of
the main supports for violations of the human rights of poor
people, particularly poor children and women. When people do not
have basic rights to employment, a
living wage, healthcare, housing and food, there will always be
parts of societies who do not have the economic option to survive
without prostituting. The choices become death, homelessness,
and/or exchanging sex for money or survival resources. In other
cases, people, usually *women and girls* are literally enslaved
or are trapped in the sex industries through physical and sexual
violence, and/or through forced or pre-existing addiction to
drugs. This is possible partly because there are not baseline
protections for people who are poor or for workers, especially
for children and women, who make up the vast majority of poor
people globally. The bodies of people who are refugees, homeless,
unemployed, undocumented or unprotected immigrants, enslaved,
abandoned *children* or otherwise without economic rights or
protection can be owned or rented by people with more money and
power.
Corporations profit from the sex industries through organized
prostitution rings, phone sex and stripping, mail order bride
services, domestic and international trafficking, and through the
mass distribution of pornography. *Massive abuses of human
rights*, *extreme economic exploitation*, chronic or permanent
injury, illness and trauma, and sometimes death put money in the
pockets of *those who profit from the sex industries* While tens
of billions of dollars are made off of sexual exploitation and
abuse, the vast majority of prostituted people, especially girls
and women, become increasingly impoverished, and face increasing
physical, economic and social barriers to escaping prostitution.
These abuses often occur simultaneously with the destruction of
local economies, and the destruction of environmental resources,
both needed to
give people economic alternatives to the sex industries.
Prostitution may accompany sweatshop labor and the disintegration
of immigrant families, with adults sent to sweatshops and
children sold directly into prostitution and pornography.
Prostitution is a part of the process of corporate domination.
Some anti-*globalization* and anti-poverty activists have
combatted prostitution as an issue of imperialism and abuse of
power between industrialized countries and the children and women
of third world countries such as Thailand, who are used in "sex
tourism"- prostitution of people in colonized or economically
vulnerable countries for use, mostly by men in industrialized
nations. Anti-poverty activists have also fought the sex
industries impact on the neighborhoods, safety, and communities
of poor people and people of color in industrialized and
non-industrialized countries. Prostitution relies on class and
race inequalities.
The labor movement in industrialized countries has most often
addressed this issue through support for *legalizing
prostitution* or unionizing adults in the sex industries as "sex
workers". It is important to address how legal harassment or
persecution of prostitutes makes the problem much worse and
sometimes these efforts have been initiated partially as a
response to police harassment and the extreme economic
exploitation experienced by adult women in the sex industries.
When the *economic vulnerability and deprivation* which are at
the root of prostitution are taken for granted, it may feel like
the only possibility to improve the situation is to attempt to
regulate or control some of the most horrific exploitation and
abuses, and treat prostituted girls, boys and women like any
exploited labor force.
This approach does not fully address the core problems and
reasons for prostitution:
-> most prostitutes are either children or are women who were
brought into the industries as girls
-> on a global scale, prostitution continues to exist only
because there is no basic standard of living, living wage or
right to employment prostitution is a weapon against the working
and poverty classes; people who are shut out of employment or
deprived of the basic resources needed to survive lose the right
to control over sexuality, physical safety, and the integrity of
one's own body
-> prostitution can only exist given the extreme global
vulnerability and oppression of girls and women, economically,
socially and sexually
It is time for organized labor, working class, and
anti-globalization movements to unite in opposition to sexual and
economic exploitation and violence! The bodies of poor children
and women must not be for sale!
We call on activists, organizations, working people, and people
of conscience working for economic justice, unionization and
labor equity, and an end to corporate and imperial dominance over
our lives, bodies and communities to support the International
Day of No Prostitution.
Organizations and organizers are invited to *sign a statement* in
support of the IDNP or to *write your own endorsement*.
Find out more about how you can *organize to stop prostitution*
and *support escape from and alternatives to prostitution*
*Find out what corporations are among the worst offenders and
participate in boycotts!*
*Find out more about how to support anti-globalization,
anti-poverty, and labor movements*