The Irish government criminalised the purchase of sexual services under The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017. In 2020 it reviewed the law, specifically its ability to protect sex workers from harm and to identify victims of human trafficking. The ECP provided evidence that it did not achieve either of the above aims and recommended […]
In April 2020, the WEC launched an inquiry into the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on people with protected characteristics (that is people who are discriminated against on the grounds of “age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy and maternity”). The ECP’s submission demanded ‘emergency payments for […]
The remit of the WEC inquiry focused on the “inequalities and harms that sex workers experience at work and the harms associated with prostitution as a whole”. The ECP mobilized its network to submit evidence and ensure that the research didn’t interpret the question of “harm” in a way that reinforces the view that prostitution is inherently […]
In response to the 2016 Home Affairs Committee recommendation that sex workers on the street and working together in premises be decriminalized, the University of Bristol Centre for Gender and Violence Research was commissioned by the government to investigate. The ECP mobilized its network to give evidence to ensure sex workers voices were heard. The […]
Written and oral evidence from the ECP to the Work and Pensions Committee Inquiry into Universal Credit and Survival Sex focused on the impact of austerity on levels of prostitution in the UK. The Committee published its findings in November 2019 and recommended action against some of the worst injustices of the benefit system such as draconian […]
The ECP’s written and oral evidence focused on the intolerable poverty and increase in prostitution faced by women as a direct result of Conservative austerity cuts, as well as highlighting how destitution and criminalisation makes women and young people more vulnerable to exploitation and violence.In 2019, the CHRC published its report ‘The Limits of Consent’ recommending the […]
The UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights reports on UN member states’ ‘initiatives taken to promote and protect the rights of those living in extreme poverty’. The ECP’s submission to the Rapporteur points to the way austerity cuts have targeted women, with special note of single mothers, women who are carers, and EU […]
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution, a self-appointed group of MPs, launched an inquiry into the claimed increase of ‘pop-up brothels’. The ECP response points out how this APPG was deeply biased from the start as it was set up specifically to “tackle the demand for the sex trade”, that is promote legislation to criminalise clients. […]
The ECP welcomed the Home Affairs Select Committee recommendation in 2016 that the law be changed ” “so that soliciting [a charge used against street-based sex workers] is no longer an offence and so that brothel-keeping provisions allow sex workers to share premises”. Crucially the Committee also calls for a law to delete “previous convictions and cautions […]
The ECP objected to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade report on the grounds that it was inherently biased as its stated aim was to ‘end demand for the sex trade’. Blatant inaccuracies in both the methodology and the content of the report were also criticised.Read the full statement