The World Charter for Prostitutes' Rights is a declaration of rights adopted in 1985 to protect the rights of prostitutes worldwide.[1][2] It was adopted by the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights (ICPR).
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The distinction between voluntary and forced prostitution was developed by the prostitutes' rights movement in response to feminists and others who saw all prostitution as abusive. The World Charter for Prostitutes' Rights calls for the decriminalisation of "all aspects of adult prostitution resulting from individual decisions."[3] The World Charter also states that prostitutes should be guaranteed "all human rights and civil liberties," including the freedom of speech, travel, immigration, work, marriage, and motherhood, and the right to unemployment insurance, health insurance and housing.[4] Furthermore the World Charter calls for protection of "work standards," including the abolition of laws which impose any systematic zoning of prostitution, and calls for prostitutes having the freedom to choose their place of work and residence, and to "provide their services under the conditions that are absolutely determined by themselves and no one else."[4] The World Charter also calls for prostitutes to pay regular taxes "on the same basis as other independent contractors and employees," and to receive the same benefits for their taxes.[4]
In an article announcing the adoption of the World Charter, the United Press International reported: "Women from the world's oldest profession, some wearing exotic masks to protect their identity, appealed Friday at the world's first international prostitutes' convention for society to stop treating them like criminals."[5]
The World Charter emerged out of the prostitutes' rights movement starting in the mid 1970s. It was established through the two World Whores Congresses held in Amsterdam (1985) and Brussels (1986) which epitomised a worldwide prostitutes' rights movement and politics.[6][7] The Charter established a human rights based approach which has subsequently been further elaborated by the prostitutes' rights movement.[8]
In 1999, the Santa Monica Mirror commented on the popularization of the term "sex worker" as an alternative to "whore" or "prostitute" and credited the World Charter, among others, for having "articulated a global political movement seeking recognition and social change."[9]
In 2000, the Carnegie Council published a report commenting on the results of the World Charter, fifteen years after its adoption.[8] The report concluded that the human rights approach embodied in the World Charter had proved "extremely useful for advocates seeking to reduce discrimination against sex workers."[8] For example, human rights advocates in Australia utilized the language of human rights to resist “mandatory health tests” for sex workers and to require that information regarding health be kept confidential.[8] However, the report also found that efforts to define prostitution as a human rights abuse had led some governments to take action to abolish the sex industry.[8]
And in 2003, a writer in the journal "Humanist" noted that the World Charter had become "a template used by human rights groups all over the world."[10]
The World Charter was initially met with scepticism and ridicule. Time reported: "Just what were all those hookers doing in the hallowed halls of the European Parliament in Brussels last week? The moral outrage echoing in the corridors may have suggested that a re-creation of Sodom and Gomorrah was being staged. Reason: about 125 prostitutes, including three men, were attending the Second World Whores Congress."[7] The Philadelphia Daily News asked, "Does it contain a layoff clause?"[11] Another writer referred to it derisively as "a Magna Carta for whores."[12]
The Charter remains controversial, as many feminists consider prostitution to be one of the most serious problems facing women, particularly in developing countries. In Jessica Spector's 2006 book Prostitution and Pornography, Vednita Carter and Evelina Giobbe offer the following critique of the Charter:
"Pretending prostitution is a job like any other job would be laughable if it weren't so serious. Leading marginalized prostituted women to believe that decriminalization would materially change anything substantive in their lives as prostitutes is dangerous and irresponsible. There are no liberating clauses in the World Charter. Pimps are not 'third party managers.'"[13]