European Centre for Law and Justice — “Pornography is Filmed Prostitution” Says UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women says he UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Mrs Reem Alsalem (A/HRC/56/48)

Exclu­sive inter­view with the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on vio­lence against women and girls, its caus­es and con­se­quences, Mrs Reem Alsalem. This inter­view led by Gré­gor Pup­pinck, ECLJ Direc­tor, is focused on her report: Pros­ti­tu­tion and vio­lence against women and girls (A/HRC/56/48 — 7 May 2024).

Video’s Google automatic transcription 

Pornog­ra­phy is filmed pros­ti­tu­tion and in my report I demon­strat­ed that pros­ti­tu­tion is a sys­tem of exploita­tion and vio­lence against women and girls : it is very gen­dered, it pre­dom­i­nant­ly affects   females and it is per­pe­trat­ed by males.

Pornog­ra­phy oper­ates in the same way it has the same mod as operan­di the same per­pe­tra­tors of vio­lence the same exploita­tion the same con­se­quences in terms of all forms of vio­lence inflict­ed on women and girls in terms of being exploit­ed by pimps being a vic­tim is not some­thing undig­ni­fied on the con­trary being vic­tim is a legal term that means you have been sub­ject­ed to gross vio­la­tions of human rights and you are enti­tled to assis­tance pro­tec­tion and repa­ra­tions so this is why I say they are vic­tims that they have we have an oblig­a­tion and states have an oblig­a­tion to assist so Madame mrsm wel­come in Stras­burg thank you we are very pleased to wel­come you here at the Europe cen­ter­al fell and Jus­tice in in Stras­burg um it’s a great and a real plea­sure and hon­or to have you with us you are the cur­rent un spe­cial reporter on vio­lence against women and girls since 2021 cor­rect   you are from jor­da­nia Jor­dan M and you are most often trav­el­ing   often in Gene­va at the Unit­ed Nations you have a man­date giv­en by the human right Coun­cil which is a body of states in charge of human rights based in Gene­va depend­ing on the   Unit­ed Nations so you are part of the UN Human Rights sys­tem yes and you are the   un expert for vio­lence against   women and girls so thank you very much it’s a very impor­tant top­ic   cur­rent­ly it’s also an impor­tant top­ic for for our orga­ni­za­tion um you have pub­lished recent­ly reports   on var­i­ous issues includ­ing the mat­ter of pros­ti­tu­tion you’re also work­ing on pornog­ra­phy   so issues of dig­ni­ty human traf­fick­ing   against women espe­cial­ly so we would like first to give you a pos­si­bil­i­ty to explain to the peo­ple what is this date M what is the pur­pose and more impor­tant­ly   why do you choose to address so dif­fi­cult ques­tions as pornog­ra­phy and pros­ti­tu­tion well first of all thank you very much for hav­ing me   this is     my first time in Stras­burg which I regret I should have come a long time ago because of course the Coun­cil of Europe and in par­tic­u­lar   but not only   the body that mon­i­tors the imple­ment men­ta­tion of the Istan­bul con­ven­tion is a very impor­tant part­ner of course also I fol­low very much what the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights   says but also the the assem­bly the Par­lia­men­tary assem­bly the debates and the poli­cies so   real­ly a plea­sure to be here   the Human Rights Coun­cil   of the Unit­ed Nations is like the kitchen where human rights pol­i­cy gets cooked and um it was pre­ced­ed by the um Human Rights Com­mis­sion which is the one actu­al­ly that cre­at­ed the Man­date   my man­date is very old   last year we cel­e­brat­ed 30 years of the Man­date is actu­al­ly one of the old­est     spe­cial pro­ce­dures   that exist and   I’m not a staff actu­al­ly of the Unit­ed Nations a lot of peo­ple mis­un­der­stand that they think that I’m an offi­cial that has paid a salary that reports to   our Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Anto­nio gues of the Unit­ed Nations but that is not     the casee I’m an inde­pen­dent expert so I do this actu­al­ly for free I’m appoint­ed by the coun­cil by virtue of my exper­tise in order to actu­al­ly work on   issues of pre­vent­ing vio­lence against women   and girls the Man­date for per­haps the longest time was vio­lence against women and I believe two years ago the Man­date was expand­ed to include also vio­lence against   girls M and that is some­thing I request­ed because we always speak about a Con­tin­u­um of vio­lence right that   vio­lence against women par­tic­u­lar­ly struc­tur­al vio­lence um sex­ism misog­y­ny   harm­ful  social   Norms they don’t start affect­ing   females when they become adults yes they often start   from some­times from birth some­times even before birth and into adult so I have a very   big port­fo­lio which is to work with all stake­hold­ers but par­tic­u­lar­ly States in order to   yes pre­vent vio­lence which as you know has reached epi­dem­ic lev­els   this is a fact this has been acknowl­edged of course it’s been also exac­er­bat­ed by the many crises we’ve seen um espe­cial­ly in the last let’s say decade or so   we’ve seen an exac­er­ba­tion of human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis you add to that cli­mate change you add to that aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures and eco­nom­ic cri­sis   and how states are also let’s say   reduc­ing bud­gets and atten­tions ded­i­cat­ed to   those to vul­ner­a­ble groups and I would put also women and vic­tims of vio­lence in gen­er­al into that   so the needs are becom­ing more more but the the resources let’s say are becom­ing less so I do my work through   var­i­ous ways   I write the­mat­ic reports you referred to one of them we’re going to speak about it now   I also write let­ters to   gov­ern­ments but also non-state actors busi­ness­es   um   mil­i­tary groups     on behalf of vic­tims that   that have suf­fered   vio­lence and I remind these stake­hold­ers of their human rights oblig­a­tions   these let­ters become pub­lic   they are pub­lished and also if there is a response that we receive the response is pub­lished so any­one any­where in the world can can see the   the feed­back we got and the let­ters we wrote and then of course we engage also on poli­cies M   whether it’s   draft legis ative reforms or it’s also pub­lic poli­cies let’s say that affect women and girls and so and final­ly we do also coun­try vis­its I do two coun­try vis­its a year where I look com­pre­hen­sive­ly at the sit­u­a­tion of women and girls and the risk of vio­lence   for them and also what the gov­ern­ments are putting in place in order to address their needs in terms of assis­tance and pro­tec­tion so giv­en that we as man­date hold­ers have real­ly the Lib­er­ty to decide how to exer­cise our man­date I have always   want­ed to address com­plex time­ly issues on which I see a lot of dis­cus­sions on which I see a lot of gov­ern­ments grap­pling   with these issues   so that I can   do a report that can con­tribute to this con­ver­sa­tion and that can also demon­strate the human rights con­se­quences for women and girls and unpack the rela­tion­ship between an issue and expo­sure to vio­lence for women and girls and giv­en that the issue of pros­ti­tu­tion and pornog­ra­phy has been very top­i­cal there’s a lot of dis­cus­sion about what’s the best way to approach pros­ti­tu­tion and pornog­ra­phy   the harms of pros­ti­tu­tion and pornog­ra­phy not just for the women and girls that are vic­tims I would say chil­dren in gen­er­al but I’m going to speak about girls since it’s my man­date but also   soci­ety as a whole now you may ask me why am I speak­ing about pros­ti­tu­tion and pornog­ra­phy togeth­er yeah that’s because in my report I address them togeth­er because in fact pornog­ra­phy is film Med pros­ti­tu­tion and in my report I demon­strat­ed that   pros­ti­tu­tion is a sys­tem of exploita­tion and vio­lence against women and girls it is very gen­dered it pre­dom­i­nant­ly affects   females and it is per­pe­trat­ed by males and um pornog­ra­phy oper­ates in the same way it has the same modus operan­di the same per­pe­tra­tors of vio­lence the same exploita­tion the same con­se­quences in terms of   all forms of vio­lence inflict­ed on women and girls in terms of being exploit­ed by pimps   in terms of also hav­ing immense harm­ful impact on um all Soci­ety includ­ing I would say men and boys but includ­ing also   younger girls and   harm­ful to gen­der equal­i­ty over­all in soci­ety because we can­not   ever pre­tend that we will achieve   a soci­ety where there is equal­i­ty between men and women if we nor­mal­ize that men can buy wom­en’s bod­ies or chil­dren that   we com­mod­i­fy   women and girls that   every­thing can be bought and sold also because   it hypers sex­u­al­izes now the Young Gen­er­a­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly girls and it is giv­ing them the mes­sage that the best envi­ron­ment for them to thrive is an envi­ron­ment where they can be sex­u­al­ized MH that this is real­ly the best Avenue for them to pros­per to make mon­ey   to be appre­ci­at­ed is if they are   if they sell   sex­u­al Ser­vices if they sell their bod­ies and   it goes with­out say­ing that this is incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous very harm­ful and goes against um coun­tries human rights oblig­a­tions and busi­ness’s human rights oblig­a­tion towards women and girls this is why I think it’s very impor­tant to remem­ber that because you know some­times I’m asked oh you should­n’t be so moral­is­tic isue it’s not a dis­cus­sion about morals it’s a dis­cus­sion about human rights how do you explain that   I mean   West­ern Soci­ety   is   full of pornog­ra­phy   pornog­ra­phy is every­where   there is a huge use of pornog­ra­phy   and in the mean­time we we hear a lot about femin Fe fem­i­nism and how do you explain that we tol­er­ate so eas­i­ly   pornog­ra­phy in the soci­ety   it’s so dif­fi­cult to fight to fight against it even to be con­scious of the prob­lem yes I would­n’t say it’s restrict­ed to West­ern soci­eties I think   nor­mal­iz­ing con­sum­ing pornog­ra­phy has become an issue that is an epi­dem­ic as well on glob­al pro­por­tions of course it varies the expo­sure a lit­tle bit from coun­try to Coun­try depend­ing also on their laws there are coun­tries for exam­ple that Out­law it offi­cial­ly com­plete­ly ban it com­plete­ly   and oth­ers who just also allow it com­plete­ly um the issue is that I think I think   a lot of peo­ple um would like to I think a lot of peo­ple don’t under­stand actu­al­ly how vio­lent the world of pornog has become of course the con­sumers know this   but I I still believe that the major­i­ty of well-mean­ing peo­ple in soci­ety   may not under­stand that it’s that the vio­lence it incites the the grotesque   the degrad­ing treat­ment um is actu­al­ly the major­i­ty of what we see they also I think believe wrong­ly that there are safe­guards in place   espe­cial­ly age ver­i­fi­ca­tion for exam­ple one would expect that there would be age ver­i­fi­ca­tion I think until recent­ly many peo­ple may have believed that um there are also ways of mon­i­tor­ing who is depict­ed in these videos is it vic­tims of traf­fick­ing for exam­ple is it     women that have been   beat­en and real­ly coed into the sit­u­a­tion or not and then also they are bom­bard­ed by this nar­ra­tive that glam­or­izes   MH pornog­ra­phy in a sense that we are now hear­ing more and more this dis­course that it’s empow­er­ing there are many women and girls that are con­sent­ing to this we for­get the fact that actu­al­ly chil­dren are chil­dren and con­sent is irrel­e­vant right um but you have also that dis­course hap­pen­ing and that tries to attract more girls in par­tic­u­lar into this busi­ness   into the sys­tem of exploita­tion by   giv­ing a lot of vis­i­bil­i­ty to the eco­nom­ic   side of it the mon­ey that you can make out of it and then you also have peo­ple of course and gov­ern­ments that   play the card of free­dom of speech and um and thought and of course free­dom of belief and thought and expres­sion and is very impor­tant and should be safe­guard­ed but already in inter­na­tion­al law includ­ing in Euro­pean law you have lim­it ations on Free Speech which is writ­ten enshrined in the law that   you can have it but it has a lim­it which is not to incite vio­lence not to incite hatred but some­how we don’t think about the link between pornog­ra­phy and phys­i­cal vio­lence because often pornog­ra­phy and the con­sump­tion of vio­lence   pornog­ra­phy leads to vio­lence in real life we know that from study­ing   con­sumers of   pornog­ra­phy the men and how their atti­tude changes to the women in their lives to their chil­dren but also to   wider Soci­ety to sex to nor­mal­iz­ing um vio­lent sex­u­al inter­course um so but some­how that does­n’t feed back into the pol­i­cy­mak­ing as being a red flag is it a mat­ter of time or is it just   they don’t see it are they are they in the process of see­ing because we see an increase of of vio­lence between the Youth of of rape yes from teenagers so we see the increas­ing vio­lence with­in Soci­ety sex­u­al vio­lence yes but we don’t always make the con­nec­tion with with pornog­ra­phy yes and more­over   what we can real­ly see is that even if every­body’s almost con­scient of some issues espe­cial­ly when you have chil­dren yes   it seems that the soci­ety is even not capa­ble of or will­ing to do any­thing I mean politi­cians some­times speaks about reg­u­lat­ing pornog­ra­phy   hav­ing a bet­ter sys­tem of age ver­i­fi­ca­tion but they don’t do any­thing so do are we even able to do some­thing against it or we just not able to do it yes is it a mat­ter of tech­niques or is it a mat­ter of polit­i­cal will yeah so I think there’s now more aware­ness because it has also now per­me­at­ed every­thing in soci­ety it has come into the our very homes yes um and with the explo­sion of social media and social media access by also the Young Gen­er­a­tion and the ease with which   the young   the Ado­les­cent young pop­u­la­tion can access Inter­net con­tent and um we are now see­ing much more clear­ly the hor­ren­dous neg­a­tive con­se­quences I think there’s been an AA moment for   a lot of peo­ple in soci­ety because as you right­ly men­tioned they are start­ing to real­ize this link between expo­sure to pornog­ra­phy and vio­lence we are see­ing in some coun­tries   sex­u­al crimes being per­pe­trat­ed more by a younger and younger pop­u­la­tion includ­ing very seri­ous things like gang rape of course we now hear a lot more about stran­gu­la­tion um so I think there is more aware­ness I also think there is more aware­ness now   about the modus operan­di and the busi­ness mod­els of   dig­i­tal   plat­forms and how they also host pornog­ra­phy and porno­graph­ic mate­ri­als I I think some of us the old­er gen­er­a­tion may may have not real­ized that um a lot of the   social media apps are gate­ways to pornog­ra­phy host porno­graph­ic con­tent you know the Tik Tok the Insta­gram the the the X   we because in our gen­er­a­tion you would go you know it was like it had a spe­cif­ic for­mat you know it would be a movie it would be in a spe­cif­ic place it would be a side ded­i­cat­ed for that now it’s being insert­ed every­where and   and now you have all they peo­ple under­stand more things that are sort of self‑d do self-ser­vice right like Porn­Hub   only fans where you   I mean with Porn­Hub you upload con­tent and you get mon­e­tized for it so I think the the the pub­lic is catch­ing up but as you right­ly said it’s impor­tant that politi­cians also quick­ly catch up CU they don’t have the lux­u­ry to wait because this the impact is so immense yeah and so all-encom­pass­ing that and and of course tech­nol­o­gy also advances you know the AI the Deep fakes the that we don’t have the lux­u­ry to it you you men­tioned   some coun­tries that for­bid   do they which coun­tries for­bid are they effec­tive in real­ly for­bid­ding yeah that’s   some­thing I would need to look more in in in you know in detail on   of course   I guess every­thing for­bid­den fine you know a black mar­ket um is how­ev­er   the ban work­ing I I imag­ine to an extent yes   I mean just by com­mon sense but I don’t I I can’t real­ly I mean if we see some con­trol from the state reg­u­la­tion on social media yeah   I mean if you speak you know bad­ly if you have racist state­ments online for exam­ple I mean you are quite quick­ly iden­ti­fied yes even if you speak against covid you know some­times you are quick­ly iden­ti­fied by the algo­rithm so I don’t see how we can so eas­i­ly con­trol some kinds of Explo­rations absolute­ly while hav­ing no con­trol at all absolute­ly on pornog­ra­phy I mean we do have the the sys­tem to con­trol   at least to avoid the num­ber of things that are extreme­ly vio­lent or or involve chil­dren yes and how so for me it’s real­ly a mys­tery how do we let it do um yes I mean is it a mat­ter of mon­ey as well   is it a mat­ter of cor­rup­tion   because of course all those pornog­ra­phy web­site they have a lot of clients they have a lot of bankk ref­er­ences of clients yes so they know a lot about the per­sons   so I mean what is the side of cor­rup­tion we have been deal­ing   with   this   sys­tem with this indus­try   we have seen how much close this indus­try is to Mafia   so we know that it’s also dan­ger­ous to deal   or to try to you know to to look how it works finan­cial­ly   so it’s real­ly a mat­ter for the police   it’s a mat­ter for the tax police to look in also   so what the state is doing also to to address all the um vio­la­tions of the law in terms of social pro­tec­tion of the woman non Dec­la­ra­tion of of incomes   because we see the com­pa­nies of pornog­ra­phy open­ing one day in one coun­try clos­ing mov­ing to Roma­nia then going to Bul­gar­ia yeah and   so do we have an intern are we able to have   um an answer in term of act­ing also on the finance aspect because they need Banks yes   and is there any U transna­tion­al or Inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion to   address   those   com­pa­nies yeah so you remem­ber how I said that pornog­ra­phy is film pros­ti­tu­tion and shares a lot of the modus operan­di with phys­i­cal pros­ti­tu­tion and we see this very clear­ly in terms of the huge web of peo­ple orga­ni­za­tions and states that ben­e­fit from the exploita­tion of women includ­ing in pornog­ra­phy coun­tries that host let’s say the head­quar­ters of these big sites make an enor­mous amount of mon­ey and every oth­er sort of busi­ness   that is relat­ed you know if we think about um I don’t know tourism if we think about bank­ing if we think so real­ly a lot of busi­ness thrives around the busi­ness of pros­ti­tu­tion includ­ing crim­i­nal activ­i­ties so as I’ve said in my report um crim­i­nal activ­i­ties like traf­fick­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing drug traf­fick­ing all this thrives around the issue of   phys­i­cal and online   sti­tu­tion um I also think that just as   pornog­ra­phy shares with phys­i­cal pros­ti­tu­tion the harms it also shares the key to Solu­tions what do I mean by that as I said in the report I think the best pol­i­cy mod­el we have it’s tried and test­ed to deal with the harms of pros­ti­tu­tion is the Nordic mod­el and we have to then also think how to apply the Nordic mod­el to online pros­ti­tu­tion which is pornog­ra­phy I’m not I don’t think actu­al­ly coun­tries that have the Nordic mod­el even think about it in this way but I would encour­age U them to do that which is to also think of the con­sumer of pornog­ra­phy as a as a buy­er of sex­u­al acts yeah so if we think of him yeah as a buy­er of sex­u­al acts that means he has to be crim­i­nal­ized we have to address the demand we have to cut the demand we have to make it more dif­fi­cult to just get online and just and we have to increase aware­ness about the fact that they are part of this sup­ply chain that they are there­fore par­tic­i­pat­ing yeah active­ly whether they like it or not in the vio­lence and exploita­tion of   women and chil­dren that are depict­ed in pornog­ra­phy   so so that has to hap­pen um and you know there’s very inter­est­ing things that we can learn from from you know what hap­pened   to Porn­hub for exam­ple in the US   as you know Porn­Hub there’s been you know sev­er­al very   impor­tant lit­i­ga­tion cas­es by vic­tims par­tic­u­lar­ly vic­tims of traf­fick­ing   they have even when to exact­ly you know exam­ine this link between bank­ing inter­me­di­aries I for­get which   card you know it was whether it was Mas­ter Card or yes mas­ter yeah but real­ly also um yeah you know try­ing to severe that link and also sham­ing and nam­ing yes that you as a bank are also and as a or bank­ing sys­tem are are know­ing­ly tak­ing advan­tage and ben­e­fit­ing um and and and I think these court cas­es were dam­ag­ing mhm   nec­es­sary but dam­ag­ing of course not every­one has nei­ther the per­se­ver­ance nor of course the the abil­i­ty to pro­tect vic­tims that come for­ward or the mon­ey to loue your­self into such expen­sive lit­i­ga­tion cas­es yeah but with regards to Porn­hub I think they’ve worked it has led also to changes in leg­is­la­tion   for exam­ple if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly a num­ber of states in the US have um you know imposed on Porn­Hub the the duty to have age ver­i­fi­ca­tion yeah and I think and and this is indica­tive of how prof­itable this is   Porn­Hub chose to actu­al­ly Retreat from those states that enforced     age ver­i­fi­ca­tion so I think there are lessons that we can learn from that but what I’ve also said to   the polit­i­cal groups in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment I think States need to um also move towards um bind­ing reg­u­la­tions right and enforce­ments of um of reg­u­la­tions reg­u­la­tions actu­al­ly so right now what we have in place is depends too much still on   get­ting the Good­will if of these plat­form providers   encour­ag­ing entic­ing them to play nice encour­ag­ing them to do this or that yes you can keep the dia­logue   ongo­ing and it’s impor­tant of course to to to dia­logue with all busi­ness­es and we do this with all busi­ness­es   includ­ing those that are com­mit­ting oth­er kinds of vio­la­tions in oth­er fields but it can’t be the only mod­el it you you will nev­er get any­where what you men­tioned in the US against porub I mean has been done by asso­ci­a­tion which is very impor­tant yeah unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s not the state I mean the gov­ern­ment did­n’t real­ly act   I mean so what is need­ed in front of pornog­ra­phy is real­ly deci­sion from gov­ern­ments to act yes um and also from the banks because one of the dif­fer­ence between pros­ti­tu­tion and online pros­ti­tu­tion pornog­ra­phy that online you need a cred­it card yes   which means   it’s a mid­dle between you and   the ser­vice yeah you have a bankk yes which takes a com­mis­sion yes so when you pay for some­thing that is clear­ly ille­gal implies traf­fic implies young per­sons and so forth the bank takes a com­mis­sion on a crime yes so   exact­ly yes the bank gets mon­ey from a crime and often not often always the banks knows exact­ly what is the activ­i­ty C yes so they know what they do so I can say that for France I know the name of two or three big French banks yes that do have those activ­i­ties yes and   do some­thing like you know   you know chge Char pros­ti­tu­tion so they know that they get I mean com­mis­sions from from pros­ti­tu­tion online and so forth so   my ques­tion is I with­in your your your your man­date at the un do you get sup­port   from group of states   from every­where or is it quite rare   would you say that you are main­ly sup­port­ed by we could imag­ine the socalled Nordic States or are you more sup­port­ed by the Mus­lim states or the west­ern states which states are con­scient   of this issue so look I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised that when I pre­sent­ed my report   in June 2024 in front of the mem­bers of the coun­cil the report was very well received by the major­i­ty   of states that inter­vened this is on record any­one can actu­al­ly go and check that out and you will see that there was pos­i­tive feed­back from coun­tries across regions good of course there were coun­tries um I that weren’t hap­py also because I       I put out the the term pimp­ing State oh yeah as I said to real­ly make the point that there are states that are very con­scious­ly ben­e­fit­ing yeah from the exploita­tion of women and by the way that term I heard from a vic­tim of pros­ti­tu­tion okay so   she was speak­ing with so much anger actu­al­ly about how states are real­ly doing this with pur­pose and with­out car­ing and   so to to answer your ques­tion I think there were coun­tries real­ly from all over the the regions that um wel­comed the report   I remem­ber one del­e­gate telling me that for them it felt like a breath of fresh air yeah because it um real­ly tried to look at this in a in an objec­tive vic­tim sense cen­tered human cen­tered   man­ner U irre­spec­tive of the noise and the pos­tur­ing and the polit­i­cal sort of   views   that are being pushed around which   as you know also try to present pros­ti­tu­tion as a dig­ni­fied   work that should be legal­ized   that should be nor­mal­ized that should be called sex work I think they were sur­prised that a spe­cial reporter um was will­ing to   be led to   through the inquiry to reach dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions they did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly expect that I did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly expect that because I had not real­ly had a very firm posi­tion on   on pros­ti­tu­tion in that way until I start­ed this report   I had not real­ly thought about the exploita­tion and abuse con­se­quences and in fact you will see that   in a num­ber of reports pre­ced­ing this report yes I had used the term sex work regret­tably because I had nev­er thought about it the the aspects of pros­ti­tu­tion as being exploita­tion but that I think I’m say­ing this because I think it also   strength­ens the fact M the point I’m try­ing to make that I came to this report and and its con­clu­sions because I was over­whelmed by the evi­dence yeah but that I had no sort of   spe­cif­ic agen­da or pre­con­ceived ideas on the issue how do you   explain that there was big pres­sure to   legal­ize   pros­ti­tu­tion yes and pornog­ra­phy yeah um and where does it comes from yeah I think you prob­a­bly would know more about this than me I just know that there’s a big Push by cer­tain     groups Lob­by groups busi­ness­es as I said   those who prof­it in order to   try to   make it eas­i­er to nor­mal­ize this so there­fore sell­ing a mod­el   or a dis­course that might sound actu­al­ly log­i­cal on the paper yeah on paper and on the sur­face ER par­tic­u­lar­ly you know if you say well if you argue or if you claim that most women con­sent to this most women want to do this this is bod­i­ly auton­o­my this is   their free­dom to decide um this results in low­er­ing   expo­sure to vio­lence it will   lead them on a road to   work legal­ly and there­fore get   a salary and there­fore be cov­ered by Social Secu­ri­ty and there­fore have access to health ser­vice so by legal­iz­ing the sale and the pur­chase and there­fore the the pimp­ing you um you actu­al­ly reduce harm um and would­n’t we all want that so as I said you know if you lis­ten to the sound bites you might say well yeah I mean we all want the best for the vic­tims and to reduce   harm the the issue though as I argued in my report very con­vinc­ing­ly I think is that the data does­n’t show this at all in fact if you look at the data it proves that none of these declared objec­tives are achieved they they sound nice but the real­i­ty is very dif­fer­ent and if we look at coun­tries that have legal­ized all aspects of pros­ti­tu­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly the that is not what has hap­pened in fact   quite the con­trary has hap­pened now where I and the group   push­ing for the legal­iza­tion of every­thing agree because believe it or not there’s a few things we agree on is that   the vic­tims the pros­ti­tut­ed women should not be pun­ished for   being in pros­ti­tu­tion that they   should not be deport­ed they should not be um impris­oned they should not be fined they should­n’t have a crim­i­nal record and those that have a crim­i­nal record that should be removed I go a step fur­ther and I say not only should they not be crim­i­nal­ized but they should be treat­ed as vic­tims vic­tims of gross human rights vio­la­tion and by being treat­ed as vic­tims I’m not belit­tling them or say­ing they are pas­sive or U per­sons who were sub­ject­ed to vio­lence because being a vic­tim is not some­thing undig­ni­fied on the con­trary being vic­tim is a legal term that means you have been sub­ject­ed to gross vio­la­tions of human rights and you are enti­tled to assis­tance pro­tec­tion and repa­ra­tions so this is why I say they are vic­tims that they have we have an oblig­a­tion and states have an oblig­a­tion to assist them and to ensure non- rep­e­ti­tion but also to rep to offer them repa­ra­tions um that’s   that’s I think the the the the main issue and I feel that the more we Cen­ter vic­tims and vic­tims voic­es in any pol­i­cy-mak­ing dis­cus­sion the more States and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and leg­is­la­tors give room to vic­tims to speak MH the bet­ter the poli­cies will be the prob­lem right now is that in many pol­i­cy­mak­ing plat­forms there are very select­ed voic­es that are allowed to speak   and and so it’s not it does­n’t   bring in the diver­si­ty of voic­es par­tic­u­lar­ly the vic­tims so those rep­re­sent­ing I hate to say but   they could be rep­re­sent­ing pimp­ing   pimps they could be rep­re­sent­ing   busi­ness­es that get a lot of inter­est and mon­ey yeah and mon­ey   they get they have the access right to these pol­i­cy­mak­ers so then if you if you don’t make a delib­er­ate effort to open the space to all voic­es par­tic­u­lar­ly those that find it dif­fi­cult to access pol­i­cy­mak­ing   places includ­ing Front­line orga­ni­za­tions that work with vic­tims you know wom­en’s orga­ni­za­tions grass­root orga­ni­za­tions that work with vic­tims of sex­u­al exploita­tion and traf­fick­ing and um and pros­ti­tu­tion   you will always get this   one-sided view that every­thing is fine that where’s the prob­lem you know the women want this um of course if you if you shut the door and you only let some peo­ple in you’re going to live in your own Echo cham­ber and you will say but we have prob­lem you mean you would only let those who have a direct inter­est in the busi­ness yes because of course are how much mon­ey does it gen­er­ate a lot I mean   in my report I I men­tioned about Switzer­land I can’t caller but it’s I mean we’re speak­ing so so it’s com­pa­nies it’s pro­fes­sion­al per­son so they have the mon­ey to to have Con­sul­tants to have lob­by­ists absolute­ly to do cam­paigns to cre­ate to cre­ate NOS yes   to hire peo­ple   yes ambas­sadors ambas­sadors to go to the to the ccil of Europe to go to the UN and of course the poor vic­tim from from Africa who is traf­ficked in in Europe   she does­n’t have access to the   yes to the ccil of Europe to to speak about her her sit­u­a­tion I would say all mar­gin­al­ized vul­ner­a­ble women that are the prin­ci­pal um Source or   affect­ed group   for pros­ti­tu­tion um don’t have that access so as you right­ly said it’s often migrant and Refugee women or women actu­al­ly flee­ing con­flict women flee­ing pover­ty   but also it’s   women it you know it can be also um women   from poor­er back­grounds from bro­ken homes   women and girls that have sad­ly already expe­ri­enced sex­u­al abuse   by a fam­i­ly mem­bers may have already been also   let’s say pros­ti­tut­ed even by an inti­mate part­ner you know there’s The Groom­ing by boyfriends right   so that can hap­pen Also let’s say to um to white girls you know from the coun­try but the major­i­ty let’s say is obvi­ous­ly what what you said so we have seen in the last months a real offen­sive to obtain legal text yes rec­om­mend­ing legal­iza­tion of pros­ti­tu­tion yes as Europe Par­lia­ment is in Brus­sels a motion for res­o­lu­tion that at the end was reject­ed yes then we saw here in Stras­burg at the Assem­bly of the cons of Europe as well a motion for res­o­lu­tion that pushed for lib­er­al­iza­tion of Con­sti­tu­tion and it was at the end s reject­ed yes a case brought before the Euro­pean Court of human right and at the end the court also reject­ed   this this strate­gic lit­i­ga­tion but what we can see is that at every lev­el many insti­tions there is a coor­di­nat­ed effort to push for recog­ni­tion of human kind of human right to sex work human rights to pros­ti­tu­tion yes   through the human rights sys­tem   so obvi­ous­ly we have to be clear there is such effort to push yes   what do you see as   the good legal instru­ments to be opposed which are the Norms in terms of human right in term of inter­na­tion­al law that can be strong sup­port for Nation­al and inter­na­tion­al polies against human sex­u­al traf­fick­ing yeah so um I think all these motions were for­tu­nate­ly defeat­ed because   as we said there are many more politi­cians and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans but also um   lawyers and judges that are becom­ing aware of this um I pre­cise­ly want­ed through this report to show that um there are grave human rights con­se­quences and   where grave human rights con­se­quences hap­pen   con­sent is inv valid con­sent can­not be raised as a defense we would nev­er go to a vic­tim who has of slav­ery some­body who’s been enslaved right even if let’s say they were enslaved 6 years old even if they start­ed   devel­op­ing a Stock­holm syn­drome and love their mas­ter so to speak yeah     and wants to say would we ever ever say you con­sent­ed to this we would not right my pur­pose was to show to make it clear that pros­ti­tu­tion results in grave human rights con­se­quences par­tic­u­lar­ly for the vic­tim eco­nom­ic vio­lence phys­i­cal vio­lence psy­cho­log­i­cal vio­lence I’ve list­ed them in detail   and I think there has to be more aware­ness of that that it results in mul­ti­ple   lon­glast­ing     dev­as­tat­ing   human rights con­se­quences and there­fore by Fram­ing the con­se­quences as harm­ful and as um crimes against human­i­ty   they can rise in many instances to being inhu­man degrad­ing treat­ment they can even be tor­ture   they can amount to forced enslave­ment to enslave­ment you know so again involv­ing TR they can or not involve traf­fick­ing these are very big crimes right this is not a walk through the park this is not a you know you you hurt my toe kind of thing this is a very these are very seri­ous real­i­ties that   these women are sub­ject­ed to day in day out and that we just   are invis­i­ble in soci­ety actu­al­ly we live in par­al­lel like there are so many vic­tims of pros­ti­tu­tion that prob­a­bly are here in our you know around us we would nev­er see them we would nev­er hear from them we would nev­er come into con­tact with them right like we would nev­er know what what their expe­ri­ences so it’s impor­tant then to make to to show states that these are very seri­ous human rights vio­la­tions and they go against your oblig­a­tions as States and you have a duty to there­fore   pre­vent   them to end them but also to address   the needs of the vic­tims and to pro­vide repa­ra­tions for them so it takes the con­ver­sa­tion out from um sort of a   pros­ti­tu­tion being   pre­sent­ed as a harm­less busi­ness that allows peo­ple to find a way to make ends meet to some­thing that is actu­al­ly a an an emer­gency that should be treat­ed as a human rights emer­gency and that requires   it to be pri­or­i­tized so it it shifts   that con­ver­sa­tion um and it also   puts the oblig­a­tion on states to you know how states have this oblig­a­tion to address harm­ful   social norms that lead to inequal­i­ty   and dis­crim­i­na­tion of women so if you know if nor­mal­iz­ing the the the pur­chase and sale of women leads to   con­sol­i­dat­ing is harm­ful stereo­types leads to increased sex­ism misog­y­ny   vio­lence against women um then states have a duty to also cam­paign against the sale and buy­ing of women that’s why the Nordic mod­el has this as a fifth com­po­nent you know in the pro­gram Nordic mod­el has dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of what you need to do and one of them is cam­paigns edu­ca­tion cam­paigns infor­ma­tion cam­paigns mak­ing it clear that you that it’s harm­ful to that you should­n’t buy   women and chil­dren and that you   have respon­si­bil­i­ty and you need to be aware of it and you will be held respon­si­ble MH so so yeah so do you see sup­port from noos   from large NOS in your in this   task I see sup­port from a lot of ngos   across the world I see over­whelm­ing sup­port from vic­tims who many of them said that   they were so touched and so um hap­py to see a report like this com­ing out from a un let’s say organ­ism or expert even um and that   lis­ten to them that cen­tered   their voic­es are there Nos and um indi­vid­u­als   in pros­ti­tu­tion that are against it yes um what about your reli­gions MH do you have sup­port from reli­gious groups or orga­ni­za­tions of Islam­ic coun­tries or Catholic Church I think there’s sup­port across the board from sec­u­lar and faith-based orga­ni­za­tions again you know I try to make this very clear that I’m not address­ing this from a moral­i­ty point of view that this is not my m moral­i­ty I mean noth­ing against it you know   and noth­ing against it if there are orga­ni­za­tions that are   fight­ing for advanc­ing moral­i­ty I mean I’m not judg­ing any­one but I’m say­ing my man­date is human rights but do you have sup­port from   Islam­ic coun­tries or as the UN or from Catholic coun­tries I mean espe­cial­ly do you see   spe­cial mind­set or con­science of the issue we could imag­ine that per­sons with a reli­gious   think­ing of human per­son would have a bit of com­mit­ment to fight   human traf­fick­ing no I don’t think the this defin­ing fac­tor is reli­gion because in fact there are many coun­tries that um let’s say claim or or   yeah claim to to to to pri­or­i­tize reli­gion and Faith or whose legal sys­tems are inspired or built on on faith that do some­thing also very harm­ful when it comes to pros­ti­tu­tion which is they com­plete­ly ban and crim­i­nal­ize every­thing which means also they end up crim­i­nal­iz­ing the vic­tim which means that   that that in a way they Al it also means that   they’re not doing enough they don’t care enough about help­ing the vic­tim and in fact ban­ning all aspects of pros­ti­tu­tion includ­ing   includ­ing   crim­i­nal­ized I mean the move to crim­i­nal­ize the vic­tim itself leads to the own­ers falling on the vic­tim the buy­er still gets away with it law enforce­ment is often involved in get­ting the buy­er off the hook I see but it’s the woman that will get deport­ed land in prison be exploit­ed or abused in prison and so um you know   claim­ing that you you just pre­tend pros­ti­tu­tion does­n’t exist because you’re reli­gion says it’s it’s not allowed that’s also not   a good pol­i­cy approach it’s actu­al­ly very harm­ful so you have these two um oppos­ing   poli­cies at the end of each at the end of the spec­trum and both are are very very bad good the com­plete legal­iza­tion but also the the com­plete crim­i­nal of every­thing yes and the hyp­ocrite approach so mer thank you very much for this very inter­est­ing   dis­cus­sion we wish you the best thank you also for your next report thank you   we will fol­low very close­ly your your work and thank you again for your your courage because what you do   what you you know address is dif­fi­cult we know so   but you are doing very good work for Human­i­ty address­ing those dif­fi­cult ques­tions so thank you very much and mer­cy thank you.