No to Resolution Normalising Prostitution at Council of Europe

victory

On October 3rd, members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will vote on a resolution aimed at liberalising prostitution throughout Europe.

According to this resolution, prostitution would be classified as a job like any other, and prostitutes would be described as doing it freely, out of a desire to be “sex workers”.

This would mean abolishing all penal sanctions, including against clients and pimps, who would become employers, following the “model” in force in Belgium in operation since 2022 with negative consequences for women.

But no woman chooses prostitution freely and for pleasure.

Most prostitutes are unfortunately victims of international human trafficking networks. For example, “of the 30,000 or so people in prostitution in the Netherlands, 70% are considered to have been forced into prostitution by violence, or to have been lured into it by a ‘loverboy’. Most of the remaining 30% do it for reasons of poverty.

Prostitution is not normal work, but instead an attack on women's dignity, contrary to their freedom and physical wellbeing, which systematically exposes them to violence and is closely linked to human trafficking.

This proposal to effectively promote prostitution is a scandal because the debate in committee was largely biased: reports by activists or NGOs in favor of prostitution were put forward, and, conversely, critical European Parliament resolutions, UN expert reports, and women's aid associations against the liberalisation of prostitution were deliberately sidelined.

The draft resolution on prostitution is the work of lobbies who recently took action at the UN and before the European Court of Human Rights, to get them to define prostitution as a freedom.

They failed there, so now they're trying to get the Assembly of the Council of Europe to pass a resolution along these lines.

We can stop them!

There is still time to act and send this letter to members of the Assembly of the Council of Europe so that they take into account international conventions, European Parliament resolutions, and the opinions of other experts: women's bodies are not objects of commerce.

We must never encourage trafficking in women's bodies, but fight against prostitution and human trafficking networks:

Sign the petition!