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*