“If rape is done for profit, it is not rape. If rape is done to poor and low-caste women it is not rape but ‘sex-work’.”
This is the message that millions of victims and survivors of prostitution will hear if their experience of violence is invalidated by our politicians and policy makers, who want to remove prostitution as an explicit form of exploitation in the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill. Prostitution was clearly defined as exploitation in the 3rd February 18, 2013 Presidential Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, but now there is a move by some in the law ministry to retreat from it. They use the excuse that defining prostitution as exploitation will deprive the prostituted girls of a livelihood. Continue reading.
