Upprop för den nordiska modellen

Roks tillsammans med norska Kvinnefronten har tagit initiativ till ett upprop för sexköpslagen enligt den nordiska modellen. Uppropet kommer att användas i diskussioner och lobbyverksamhet i hela världen, för den nordiska modellen. Uppropet är öppet för akademiker och forskare. Läs uppropet och skriv under här!

Support The Nordic Model – sign on The Letter of Support

We are sending out this letter to gather signatories from academics and researchers supporting The Nordic Model. Many of you have already signed on a letter of support of The Honeyball report before the vote in the European Parliament.

Academics and researchers opposing the Honeyball report and opposing The Nordic Model have lately been very active and during the year 2014 they have published one letter with signatories before the voting in the European Parliament, and this May, 75 academics and researchers in Denmark sign on a letter that recognise prostitution as sex work and against The Nordic Model.

Roks, the National Organisation for Women´s and Young Women´s Shelters in Sweden, and Kvinnefronten, the Women's Front, in Norway, have therefore taken the initiative to express our positive experience of the Nordic Model.

In Sweden the Nordic Model was introduced in 1999, as the first state ever. In Norway the law was introduced in 2009, and the at the same time in Iceland. We are proud to have a law which has reduced demand and at the same time recognizes the vulnerability of the woman in prostitution.

The attached letter of support will be used in the coming discussions around the world, this autumn Norway will have a important discussion about law that criminalize the buying of sex = The Nordic Model, effective since 2009. But the conservative and liberal and populist parties that won the election want to withdraw the law.

Later this year the French Senate and the French National Assembly will debate and vote over the proposed law based on The Nordic Model. And important discussions will take place in other countries, in Amnesty International, in UN and among NGOs in connection with the UN sessions on Beijing + 20 until Marc 2015.

We need to let our voices and opinions be heard, it will make a great difference.
The signature will be open until 17th of October 2014. The receiving address will be thenordicmodel@roks.se

Letter of Support

We write as a global network of university researchers from around the world in support of 'the Nordic Model,' as the most effective way of insuring human rights of women in prostitution.

We write on the basis of deep and systematic expertise in prostitution and the sex industry, trafficking and violence against women. Our research draws on contemporary evidence, on historical and philosophical inquiry, and importantly on the testimony of survivors of the prostitution system. Many of us have worked directly with women in prostitution. We have individual and collective links with a wide variety of organisations working for the abolition of prostitution as an institution of gender inequality and exploitation. We draw on both our practice-based evidence and our academic studies to strongly urge each state to adopt 'the Nordic model', making it a global approach to end prostitution.

We believe it is important to signal that our position on prostitution is grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its subsequent covenants and protocols. We recognize from our research and our work with women in prostitution that the purchase of a human being to use for sex, at whatever age, in every culture, held in place by a global sex industry, results in deep harm, physical as well as emotional. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was indeed codified to protect people of the world from it. Our position is centrally with the human rights of women, as protecting the dignity of all women equally, and with an end to all forms of the subordination and degradation of women. It comes neither from considerations about 'public order' nor is it driven by moralistic piety.

Our endorsement of a global adoption, state by state, of 'the Nordic Model,' calls attention to a number of key issues:

the gender asymmetry of the sex industry, that is, men are overwhelmingly the majority of those who buy sex, and women and girls those whose bodies are bought;

countries where buying sex has been criminalised have seen an increase in women exiting prostitution, sex markets shrink, and trafficking reduced. This is a success for women, for these countries as nation states, and the European Parliament adoption of the Nordic model offers the potential to replicate this progress throughout the world;

attitudes shift where the purchase of sex is criminalised, with surveys in Sweden and Norway for example consistently showing that a large majority, in Sweden now over 70% of the population, think the purchase of sex is unacceptable. Law is a powerful tool in defining and changing what is harmful to human beings, and what is not socially acceptable behaviour

Whilst we recognise that some women find selling sex to be personally and economically empowering, these individual stories are not testament to the legitimacy of prostitution as a social institution. We also find that placing emphasis on these stories intensifies the invisibility of women who are and have been harmed by prostitution.

The prostitution system is a reminder of continuing inequalities between women and men: the gender pay gap; the sexualisation of female bodies in popular culture; histories of violence and abuse in both childhood and adulthood that underpin many women's entry into the sex industry. In every country (and globally) the persistence of these economic and social inequalities is well documented in a wealth of academic research. Further, focusing on the supposedly free choice of women to enter into prostitution draws attention away from the buyers whose choice to buy human beings to use them for sex keeps the market in place. At the same time, these layers of disadvantage experienced by women mean that so-called 'free' choices are actually decisions made in conditions of already existing inequality, discrimination and under the dominance of sex industries. Women's choices should not be measured simply by where they end up (in prostitution), but by the circumstances in which these choices must be made. Choices made in conditions of being unequal cannot be considered 'free'.

'The Nordic Model' places the responsibility for prostitution on the buyers and the pimps. Systematic research from Finland and the UK reveals that men who pay for sex do so because they believe that biological urges lead them to 'need' sex from a variety of different women. Some explicitly report that they buy sex because it is a context where they do not have to think about women as equal human beings with their own feelings, wishes and desires. Research on buyers of women in prostitution shows that they buy sex to humiliate and degrade women. Men's own experiences of prostitution, as reported on sites such as Invisible Man, provide a chilling picture of the reality of prostitution for women: of desperation, subordination and despair.

'The Nordic Model' stems from the recognition that the idea and the reality that women's bodies can be bought – and sold – by men, to men, both creates and perpetuates hierarchical power relations between women and men, which subordinates women.

Prostitution is a form and a cause and a consequence of gender inequality. Achieving gender equality means taking steps towards a world where progress goes beyond improving the status of individual women in conditions of discrimination, but addresses those conditions. Criminalising the purchase of sexual services, decriminalising those who sell, and providing specialist support to women to enable them to leave prostitution, directly addresses gender inequalities.

We have an historic opportunity to act as a global beacon to bring universal human rights and gender equality to women by following the pioneering example set by the Nordic countries. We urge you, your organizations and your party not to waste it, but instead to demand that your state adopt 'the Nordic Model.'

Sincerely

Karin Svensson, chairwoman, The Nationan Organisation for Women's Shelters and Young Women's Shelters in Sweden

Agnete Ström, International liaison, Kvinnefronten/The Women´s Front, Norway