Can Prostitution be Eradicated

Can Prostitution be Eradicated?

Other well rooted practices in human history such as slavery have been eradicated. To eradicate this form of exploitation our attitudes and mentality must change. Prostitution is not the oldest profession but the oldest violation of women’s human rights. In itself, it is violence against women and a harmful cultural practice fostered not by primitive cultures, but by the so called civilized and developed countries. Even the UN avoids applying such terms to the practice. But survivors of the violence of prostitution wept before the UN in testimony demanding its eradication worldwide.

Where to Start?

At Home. Parents, especially mothers, can perpetuate patriarchal culture by promoting gender stereotypes in the way they treat their children at home. Children, though, can be agents of change if they learn how to live and understand their sexuality in a positive, healthy way, with all its potential for relationships for pleasure and love. They can adults to change their mentality and behavior. The experience of emotional support and respect within the family is also essential. Around 80% of men with inappropriate sexual behavior experienced sexual abuse or emotional abandonment in their families.

In education. Wherever we are we can work to change the concept of masculinity. In the Philip-pines and in Mexico, educators work with youth

groups to prepare them to become agents in fostering a new model relationships between men and women built on mutual respect and understanding – a way built on a more human and humanizing way of living our sexuality.

In the Mass Media. We do not need to accept helplessly the way the bodies of women and girls are stereotyped and commodified.

A greater awareness of the role the mass media has been playing in the promotion and advertising of the sex industry is necessary. UNANIMA International proposes a special campaign for the media calling for the production of a code of ethics to prevent facilitating the growth of the global sex industry particularly through pornography. Exploitative sexual behavior is now developed in men much earlier and quicker because of the easy access to pornography particularly on the Internet.

In our choice of financial investments. Banks and other financial institutions have invested in this business. For example, a major brothel is listed on the Australian stock exchange. But we can make a difference as a group of women in Ireland discovered on learning that a local bank wanted to invest in a semi-porno magazine. They made a call to all their women contacts to withdraw their money from the bank. The influence of this action resulted in the bank deciding by the end of the week that it would abandon the project.

In assisting to reduce demand at its source -the purchasers of sexual acts.

Participate in campaigns to ensure your national and local governments pass and implement legislation which punishes the purchasers of sexual acts. Sweden has developed a law which can be a model for such legislation. Encourage the development of recovery programmes for those whose demand is based in sex addiction, and cooperate with them. Research on the deeper causes of unhealthy sexual behavior.

For more information:

email to anamadeluco@yahoo.es

or consult www.unanima-international

Uproot the Demand for Trafficking

of Women and Children

for Sexual Exploitation.

Together we can do it!

Trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the use of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

The Trafficked Victims are used for prostitution, domestic services, begging, and work in factories and plantations. . They are often sexually abused, raped, beaten, tortured, exposed to hazardous working conditions, placed in forced confinement and denied basic health care and food. They are forced to have unprotected sex, exposing them to AIDS and are controlled by being forced to take drugs.

The supply of trafficked victims is sustained and fostered by poverty, weak socio-political and economic structures, lack of employment, lack of education and human rights awareness, and a materialistic, patriarchal, violent culture. These elements are manipulated by advanced technology and with a well paid mass-media in a globalized system of extreme capitalism in which $=god and where everything is for sale, possession and use –even human beings.

Human trafficking has become the greatest world-wide illicit business today because of the grow-ing demand for victims to be used for commercial sex acts. Demand comes from three sources:

The men who seek out women, children, and sometimes men, for the purpose of soliciting and buying sex acts are the primary actors and consti-tute the primary level of demand. Without them prostitution wouldn’t exist. Such buyers are all around us. By way of example, in Spain 39% of males go, or have gone to prostitutes and around 30,000 go every year as tourists to Latin America to have sex with minors. In Thailand, 73% and in Japan 37% of males go/have gone to prostitutes. In India approximately 10 million women and girls are exploited through prostitution. This means that many million men there exploit prostitutes. In Mexico alone 80% of women and girls brought out of the country for sexual exploitation are sent to the USA. ... and the list could go on and on.

Activities which legally or illegally market and/ or sell sexual services/products in an organized way to profit from the sexual exploitation of chil-dren and women and men (D. Hughes)

Organized prostitution is the main form of sexual exploitation -in forms like escort services, call girls, operation of brothels, street prostitution, internet prostitution, massage parlours, strip clubs, lap-dancing clubs, telephone sex, marriage bu-reaus, and sex tourism.

Pornography plays a central role in the sex industry. Its production is a multimillion activity and it serves as a manual for the other forms of sexual exploitation. Porn has been one of the most powerful forces in the development of the Internet. Companies active in the porn industry try to sell their products via the mobile phone network. (D. Hughes)

The sex trade brings in around $10 billion a year and the greater the demand the greater the search for a supply. Profiteers, organised criminals, search for victims in all corners of the world among the most vulnerable people. Around 4 million women and 2 million children are trafficked every year. The vast extent of this network is due to the globalization of the economy with its world-wide exchange of information and services. The end is profit! As the profiteers say: Drugs are sold once and then consumed; women (or children) can be sold over and over again.

What kind of Culture Fosters Demand? Globalized Capitalism promotes gender, race and class inequality - ideal for the booming sex industry. It exacerbates these inequalities, supporting a patriarchal culture that relegates women and girls to second class and reinforces men’s domination and possession of women and children as commodities. The media of globalised capitalism also fosters commercial depictions of the female body and sex. It influences knowledge and public opinion to develop in the viewers the need to try everything to experience pleasure, and with younger and younger children. Groups ad-vocate for the legalization of prostitution as a form of work for women, based on the principle of free choice. But more than 90% never chose it and around 50% had been raped or abused prior to being exploited in prostitution..