Through the Decade of Women and with the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1980), there has been advancement in global recognition of women's human rights throughout the world. Women's movements have progressed in creating consciousness of combating violence against women. However, internationally and domestically considerable confusion and contradiction remains in the area of sexual exploitation. One evidence of that confusion is that while rape, sexual harassment, incest, abuse are treated as violations of women's rights and dignity, prostitution is not. Rather, the prostitute woman is either treated as a criminal or as a "professional" separating prostitution from the range of sexual exploitations of women. Relegated to the position of "other", prostitute women are subjected to different standards of justice: what is sexual violation of non-prostitute women is considered either "free" or "lewd" for women in prostitution. As long as prostitution is treated as different from women's common experience of sexual exploitation, the prostitute woman is dehumanized into the "other" and her human rights denied. 

In considering prostitution as a human rights violation, the group of experts established a common context shared by victims of other forms of sexual violence and by prostitute women: sexual exploitation. Sexual exploitation has been the missing dimension in accounting for violations of women's human rights since the 1949 Convention and 1980 CEDAW. Sexual exploitation involves the use of sex to dehumanize another by objectifying violating their human dignity. Sexual exploitation threatens the integrity of women's identity and promotes devaluation of women's self-worth. It is both a dehumanization of individual women and one of the elements in discrimination against women collectively.

Sexual exploitation takes place in and perpetuates the culture of violence against women which denies women's safety both in public and in private. But because it is sexual, sexual exploitation is not reducible to physical violence; it affects the whole self and being of the person.

In recognizing prostitution as one form of sexual exploitation, we expand upon the findings of the experts' meeting in Madrid (1985) that identified prostitution as a "specific aspect of violence with respect to women".

By the "sexuality of prostitution" we mean a form of male sexuality which, as a product of the dominant, traditional discourse considers prostitution as sex, and pornography as eroticism. By reducing sexuality to this objectified and instrumental purpose not only are women objectified but men are manipulated to believe that this sexuality of prostitution is the solution to their problems from work, war, refugee, and immigrant conditions.

 
ELEMENTS OF A NEW CONVENTION

I. The group of experts notes that there is no international instrument in existence which explicitly stipulates that it is a human right to be free of sexual exploitation. Therefore, a new Convention must be promulgated. We introduce the new concept/definition of prostitution which is under the umbrella of sexual exploitation which we define here:

SEXUAL EXPLOITATION IS A VIOLATION OF HUMAN DIGNITY. THEREFORE,

• "IT IS A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT TO BE FREE FROM SEXUAL EXPLOITATION IN ALL OF ITS FORMS"

• "SEXUAL EXPLOITATION IS A PRACTICE BY WHICH PERSON(S) ACHIEVE SEXUAL GRATIFICATION OR FINANCIAL GAIN, OR ADVANCEMENT THROUGH THE ABUSE OF A PERSON'S SEXUALITY BY ABROGATING THAT PERSON'S HUMAN RIGHT TO DIGNITY, EQUALITY, AUTONOMY, AND PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WELL-BEING"

• Sexual exploitation takes the forms of but is not limited to sexual harassment, rape, incest abuse, wife abuse, pornography and prostitution. Exploitation of prostitution includes casual, brothel, military, pornographic prostitution and sex tourism, mail-order bride markets, and trafficking in women.

• Sexual exploitation violates human rights, in prostitution we must depenalize the prostitute, penalize the customer and anyone who promotes prostitution for sexual gratification, financial gain or advancement including pimps and procurers.

• Sexual exploitation violates the human rights of anyone, female or male, adult or child. Western or Third World persons, subjected to it. Therefore this definition rejects the use of any of these distinctions to determine exploitation as artificial and serving to legitimize prostitution.

• Sexual exploitation preys on women and children made vulnerable by poverty and underdevelopment, refugee and displaced persons, and states economic policies which promote immigration for labor.

• The sexual exploitation of women through prostitution victimizes women both within and outside of prostitution. When prostitution is accepted and normalized, what is legitimized is the sale of body and sex of the individual prostitute and it is the sale of any woman. By reducing women to a commodity to be bought, sold, appropriated, exchanged, or acquired, prostitution affects women as a group. It reinforces the societal equation of women to sex which reduces women to being less than human and contribute to sustaining women's second class status throughout the world.

II. States are asked to take the following measures:

• From the General Conclusions adopted by the experts in the report of the 1986 UNESCO meeting on prostitution: "we need to depenalize the prostitute (in the States where she is still penalized) and on the contrary to penalize the client, without forgetting to apply the laws which repress procuring in all forms and its accomplices" (as defined in Articles 1 and 2 of the 1949 Convention).

• Protect freedom from sexual exploitation as a fundamental human right.

• Prohibit and suppress institutions, public or private, promoting or legitimizing sexual exploitation.

• Protect migrant women throughout the migrating process.

• Protect the right to obtain and retain one's own passport and other travel documents and to travel without intervention and mediation of another person or agency.

• Protect against sexual exploitation of women from production or dissemination of pornography by recognizing that according to Article 30 of International Declaration of Human Rights, one right (freedom of speech) cannot be used to usurp the right to human dignity and equality.

• Women victims of sexual exploitation and the international traffic in women should have the right to seek refuge and protection.

• Eradication of sexual exploitation through education which challenges the traditional concepts and stereotypes conducive to sexual exploitation.

. Eliminate economic structures, policies, and conditions conducive to prostitution that diminish women's choices because sexual exploitation often occurs in a context of absence of economic choice.

• Monitoring Special Working Group to monitor. A Committee of Experts to monitor implementation of the new convention.
1. To receive reports from States on advancement of protections from sexual exploitation of women.
2. To submit annual report to General Assembly.

NEW STRATEGIES

I. Short Term

o States are asked to support and assist non-governmental organizations working against sexual exploitation.

o States are asked to re-examine economic policies that exacerbate sexual exploitation of women in: a. Promotion of tourism
b. Encouragement of migration of women as entertainers and domestic helpers
c. The regulation and legitimization of prostitution

o States are asked to ratify the 1949 Convention because it opposes regulation and prohibition.

o All the means viable in the U.N. system should be used to reinforce the application of the convention.
a. Designate a monitoring special rapporteur at the level of the Commission on Human Rights.
b. Request the monitoring bodies of other human rights treaties to pay special attention to issues of sexual exploitation, and when examining state reports to take into account the work of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

 o International and national agencies in considering prostitution are asked to refuse to develop any policies which de facto promote prostitution especially when addressing such issues as: health (AIDS), free choice, protection of private life which promote prostitution.

o States are encouraged to appoint special ombudsperson on sexual exploitation.

o States are asked to give refugee status to any victim of international traffic.

o The Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery is asked to request the Center for Human Rights to transmit this report to the specialized agencies, in particular the WHO, inviting them to take into account in their work, the new realities which constitute sexual exploitation and promote prostitution.

o The Center for Human Rights and DPI are asked to divulge through the World Public Information Campaign on Human Rights information for the promotion of the human rights of women, including on the issue of sexual exploitation.

o Governments are called upon to elaborate educational programs for the eradication of traditional concepts on girls and women which are conducive to sexual exploitation.

II. Long Term

o NGO community and human rights bodies are called upon to expand and broaden concepts of human rights to include as a fundamental principle women's rights to freedom from sexual exploitation and violence. NGOs and human rights organizations are called upon to pay special attention to combating of sexual exploitation which constitutes a violation of international human rights. As old as the problem of sexual exploitation and prostitution is, it requires, in the light of developments in recent decades, a fresh look and a dynamic and concerted action at all levels for it to be prevented and eventually abolished and for the thousands of its victims to be assisted and rehabilitated without at the same time contradicting those actions by legitimating prostitution. NGOs in particular are encouraged to organize national and international conferences on this issue. They are called to raise the problem before all relevant U.N. human rights bodies, including human rights treaty bodies, and to use other relevant U.N. human rights monitoring mechanisms to bring to the attention of the international community instances of violations of human rights through sexual exploitation and prostitution.
o The analysis of developments since 1949 demonstrate the clear need for new and complementary international human rights standards against sexual exploitation. A new convention should be elaborated and should also provide tor an effective monitoring mechanism.

"By the "sexuality of prostitution" we mean a form of male sexuality which, as a product of the dominant, traditional discourse considers prostitution as sex, and pornography as eroticism. By reducing sexuality to this objectified and instrumental purpose not only are women objectified but men are manipulated to believe that this sexuality of prostitution is the solution to their problems from work, war, refugee, and immigrant conditions."

From: The Penn State Report, International Meeting of Experts on Sexual Exploitation, Violence and Prostitution, State College, Pennsylvania, USA, April 1991. Coalition against Trafficking in Women, pp. 13-14, 19-20.