Sex tourism, international trafficking in women, prostitution attributed to declining economies here and with prosperity there, all seem to be growing rapidly, though reliable figures are hard to find. Scholars and activists continue to debate whether buying and selling sexual services should be treated like an industry.
Should prostitutes be regulated, allowed to form unions, be given legal and medical protections? Should governments tax this trade and cash in on a wildly lucrative enterprise? Or should every legal, social, and cultural prohibition against prostitution be sought to stamp it out? Serious people make reasoned arguments on both sides of the divide between ''abolitionists'' and ''regulationists. One is Vienna, where deliberations are taking place to craft language for a United Nations response to trafficking, including inthe sex industry.
Delegations from or so countries have been devising treaty language since May to deal with transnational organized crime. They want a document in place for governments to consider signing by next October, and they are pushing hard to get that done. One of the protocols is designed to ''prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children.
At the risk of oversimplifying a complicated issue, you could say that one word draws more ire than any other: consent. The draft protocol has two options for negotiators to decide between for the section on ''scope'' and ''definitions. Anything less would leave a huge loophole for traffickers, she says. Her position as a feminist is that purchasing access to a body almost always a woman's for intercourse is exploitation and that no regulatory line can be drawn and no legal framework crafted to get around that fact.
For her, it is a human rights issue: A society that allows some women to be degraded for the gratification of men inevitably demeans all women. The other option being debated in the United Nations draws a distinction between consensual and forced prostitution.
