No convincing argument

Of all human rights issues that deserve a closer attention, prostitution receives the least perusal.

In my decades-long involvement in UN human rights activities, I have come to the conclusion that prostitution has become a hands-off issue over the years, except when it is related to child or forced prostitution, or is a feature of trafficking or organised crime.

In other words, prostitution on its own is not regarded as a violation of human rights or as a negation of the “dignity and worth of the human person”.

Neither the UN Human Rights Council nor any of the main UN human rights treaty bodies appear ready to take on the issue on its own demerits, preferring to accept the Scandinavian model, which is resigned to decriminalising and tolerating it as long as it regulated.

The European model of legalised prostitution rests on the premise that it would be infinitely safer and wiser to legalise the phenomenon as long as it remains under the supervision of government agencies.

Prostitution is generally viewed as the oldest trade, one that no effort to criminalise it succeeded in preventing, only in sweeping it under the carpet, with those who practise it exploited as sex workers.

This is not to mention the long list of crimes and grave human rights violations associated with human trafficking for sexual services.

One Scandinavian delegation even suggested that prostitution per se entails the exercise of a right by sex workers and therefore warrants only regulation and supervision.

I always all the arguments in favour of legalising prostitution flawed on one fundamental ground: prostitution, I believe, a degrading treatment of a human being that causes one to lose dignity and worth.

Dignity and rights are intertwined; there are no rights as long as there is no dignity.

The very sight of sex workers displayed in shopwindows in some European cities is a degrading treatment of women and must never be tolerated, much less legalised.

No country should leave women with no option except to engage in sex to make a living.

About 140 years ago, women rights champions waged a campaign in England, led by the famous British feminist and social reformer Josephine Butler and supported by the 19th century celebrated literary and political figure Victor Hugo, to abolish prostitution altogether and end the “regulationist” system of prostitution that served as a cover to perpetuate prostitution.

Butler had this to say back then to back up her crusade against prostitution: “Robbery and murder are evils that have always existed but no one society ever thought of saying: since we cannot eliminate robbery or murder, let us agree to a way of living that will submit them to certain regulations and monitoring so that, for example, the law will determine what place, at what time and under what condition, stealing and killing are permitted.”