Human Trafficking Bill: Stormont vote has done sex workers a real disservice

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women says that such laws "not only fail to reduce trafficking and sex work, but [have] also resulted in further harms and human rights violations against sex workers"

By Fionola Meredith

So they did it. In defiance of decisive international evidence, in defiance of expert academic opinion and research, in defiance of the clearly expressed will of the very people on whose behalf they were supposedly acting - sex workers themselves - Stormont voted to make paying for sex a crime.

Women's Aid says it is a victory for women. It doesn't feel like that to sex workers. Their opinions were not sought by this frightening feminist/fundamentalist coalition, which claims to act in their best interests.

According to research commissioned by David Ford's Department of Justice (DoJ) and carried out by Queen's University, Belfast, no Northern Ireland-based sex workers surveyed supported criminalising the purchase of sex; indeed, 61% of sex workers practising here thought it would make them less safe. And 85% believed it would not reduce sex trafficking.

They're right. Banning the purchase of sex doesn't work. It doesn't wipe out prostitution and it harms the women - and men, let's not forget about them - who are involved in it.

Informed and humane people - the World Health Organisation, Human Rights Watch, the respected UK medical journal The Lancet - know this.

Unaids, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids, states that "these laws do not reduce the scale of sex work, but they do make sex workers more vulnerable".

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women says that such laws "not only fail to reduce trafficking and sex work, but [have] also resulted in further harms and human rights violations against sex workers".

Why does Lord Morrow, and now, by extension, Stormont itself, think they know better?

Evidence from Sweden, the inspiration for Lord Morrow's dream, shows that prostitution is still prevalent there, but now sex workers are at increased risk of violence and find it harder to access vital services.

Stewart Dickson of the Alliance Party, tried to point this out during the "debate", but there is obviously no place in Stormont for calm, analytical thinking, or evidence-based policy-making.

Let's be clear about one thing: this is not a simple argument between victims of trafficking, who allegedly support Lord Morrow's Bill, and independent sex workers, so-called "happy hookers", who oppose it. That is not what the DoJ study shows.

Crucially, sex workers of all kinds did not support further criminalisation, including those who hated the work and those who had been raped, beaten and pimped. Even these people did not think criminalisation was the way to go.

The proponents of the Bill keep saying that the vulnerable need to be protected and that their concerns count more than those of independent sex workers. But it's obvious that many of the most vulnerable (including street-based sex workers) do not support criminalisation, either.

By the way, I don't believe that the hardline advocates of the Bill are truly concerned about the fate of the people they are legislating for. In my view, they "care" for them in the same way that protesters outside the Marie Stopes clinic, who scream into clients' faces, "care" for women - just as far as they comply with their own blinkered beliefs and no further.

What makes this situation even more of a farce is that the PSNI, by its own admission, will not be able to enforce any law banning the purchase of sex. Limited by scant resources, the police say their priority will be to target organised sexual exploitation, not consensual exchanges.

But what does it matter anyway? I've come to the conclusion that the proponents of Lord Morrow's Bill - which now includes Sinn Fein, the latest converts to the heedlessly irresponsible moral crusade - know that this law will not work. They're stupid, yes, but they're not that stupid.

This was never about actually ridding Northern Ireland of prostitution. It's about being able to declare it closed to prostitution, in much the same way that anti-abortion campaigners like to declare Ireland, north and south, as abortion-free. A symbolic gesture, a myth of purity, in blatant defiance of the facts.

That's why you get people like that well-known women's rights activist, Paul Givan of the DUP, and David Smyth from Evangelical Alliance, saying that the legislation will "send the message" that the buying of sex is unacceptable.

Exactly. The message is the point, not the reality, and it allows the absolutists - of both the feminist and fundamentalist variety - to claim a moral victory.

Back in the real world, sex workers will bear the grim consequences of their posturing.