La Strada Documentation Center

Trafficking, Demand and the Sex Market

Document number
1334
Date
2007
Title
Trafficking, Demand and the Sex Market
Author/publisher
Lin Lean Lim, International Institute for Labour Studies (IILS), International Labour Organization (ILO)
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Meeting Documentation/Conference Reports,
Keywords
International Symposium on Gender at the Heart of Globalization, Prostitution, Abolitionism, Prohibitionism, Sex work, Sexual exploitation, Clients, Demand, Sexual exploitation, Labour exploitation, Domestic labour,
Summary
Until recently, efforts to tackle trafficking tended to focus on the supply side with measures aimed at addressing the conditions, in particular poverty and unemployment, that drive people to leave their home in the first place. Attention has now shifted to the demand side of trafficking, in particular the demand for trafficked persons’ services in the sex market. The presentation emphasizes that trafficking should not be conflated with prostitution and that a “prohibitionist” or “abolitionist” approach to end demand in the sex market is not an effective solution to tackle trafficking. It examines demand and the demand side of trafficking and the particular characteristics of the market for commercial sexual services, including the economic and social bases of the market. The challenge we face is to address the real root causes of trafficking – the reasons why people migrate and are trafficked and the reasons why other people are able to traffic them. It is not enough merely to regulate the sex market; we need to address the areas of vulnerability. At the same time, the related – and perhaps more difficult - challenge is to place the respect for and protection of human rights at the centre of all measures to combat trafficking and to disentangle human rights concerns from morality biases concerning prostitution.
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