The International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), a newly organized lobbying group, has issued a declaration intended to create awareness of their situation among elected representatives, governments, and non-governmental organizations.
According to the group, sex workers are often excluded from the application of human right and labor laws in many countries, merely because government policies "aim to make sex work invisible." The group also complains that prostitution is not recognized as legal labor.
"We are just asking the governments to apply these rights to sex workers, who deserve them as much as anyone else," said Petra Timmerman, a spokesperson for the ICRSE.
In Greece for example, where sex work is legal, prostitutes are not allowed to marry but if they do, they lose their license to practice, making it impossible for them to combine family life with their profession.
Sex workers who are victims of violence sometimes are not given the support and protection of a nation's laws just because they are prostitutes.
"For example, communication for the purpose of prostitution is illegal, and it is these kinds of laws that make it illegal to do your work without being a criminal in some way," she said.
The declaration was created and endorsed by a group of some 200 sex workers from 30 countries gathered in Brussels on October 16 and 17 for the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labor and Migration.
Recommendations formulated by the group say that giving sex workers the same human rights as everyone else could help protect them from violence, exploitation and human trafficking.
The group argues that sex workers should have the same protected rights that have been granted to other groups such as migrant laborers and agricultural workers.
"If people are going to work, they should be working under the best possible conditions, with as many rights as possible, so they're not at the mercy of people who want to exploit them," said Timmerman.
Along with being able to enjoy full rights, sex workers would also become part of their society by paying taxes that would grant them the same rights to health care, schools and pensions as other citizens.
A substantial part of the controversy that brought down the Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court centered on whether she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Unfortunately, "gender" now comes with a vast superstructure of 99% fact-free feminist theorizing about how sex differences are all just socially constructed.
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