“Sex Workers are Entitled to Human Rights too” Statement from feminists in response to Ms Sunitha Krishnan’s letter to the NHRC

As activists and organisations working for decades on issues related to violence against women it is deeply disturbing to see the damaging letter by Ms Sunitha Krishnan and her organisation, Prajwala (Ltr.N0.06/CF/Praj/2020) to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). This letter, in response to NHRC’s advisory titled “Human Rights Advisory on Rights of Women in the Context of Covid19” (File No R-17/8/2020-PRP&P-Part (3) dt October 7) is a direct attack on the rights of vulnerable communities like sex workers in the context of COVID 19 – the biggest pandemic of our times. The myopic and moralistic objections in the letter to the NHRC advisory – which recommended that sex workers be recognised as informal workers in order that they are able to get worker benefits – are violative of women’s rights at several levels:

First, it totally delegitimises the attempt of the State and the NHRC through this advisory (put together with the help of several civil society organisations working on women and human rights), to set right a historical wrong. The advisory affirms the basic rights due to adult consenting women in sex work as citizens which have been denied because their livelihood is stigmatised and criminalised. The entitlements mentioned in the NHRC advisory include additional nutrition for lactating mothers, temporary documents so that they can access welfare measures like PDS; inclusion in schemes and benefits for migrant workers since many of them are living shadow lives in cities that they have migrated to in search of livelihood; recognition that they can also be victims of domestic violence from partners and families that increased during the lockdown and pandemic; free testing and treatment for Covid19 and continued health care services for prevention and treatment of HIV. By denying the fact that these women are citizens and workers, instead reducing them merely to victims of sexual violence the letter divests them of basic rights and entitlements that fundamentally acknowledge that they are even human.

It is indeed unfortunate that by conflating trafficking and sexual violence which are illegal and criminal acts with sex work that per se is not illegal in law, the letter wilfully ignores the voices of millions of adult women who independently sustain themselves and their families through sex work. By consistently dehumanising these women for the work they do by reducing them merely to “sex slaves” who need to be “saved” through forced incarceration and/or inappropriate rehabilitation programmes this letter does a great disservice to those very women that organisations like Prajwala purport to support.

Further, by also demonising organisations and sex worker collectives that are fighting for their basic rights and dignity as citizens and workers and also fighting exploitative practices like trafficking from within, the letter wilfully ignores the fact that even the Supreme Court in its various rulings has made a clear distinction between adult women who are in sex work by choice and minors and women who have been trafficked and exploited for monitory gain by third parties. It also wilfully ignores the fact that these organisations and the self-regulatory processes they have set up are – as acknowledged by the Supreme Court – far more effective in fighting trafficking and exploitation from within even while evolving alternative livelihoods for those women who want to opt out of sex work.

Second, through these objections, the letter also delegitimises the efforts of women’s groups across the country and through the decades which while addressing gender-based violence have sought to affirm the autonomy of every woman to make her own life choices while dealing with violence, exploitation and discrimination.– This could be violence within the family, the community or her work place, and the workplace could be the street, office or domestic space. Be it domestic violence or sexual violence, there is an attempt to move away from patriarchal, moralistic and patronising approaches that end up infantilising the woman divesting her of agency, towards ensuring structural and institutional changes that enable and empower her to make her own choices. Therefore women in sex work too instead of being perceived collectively solely as women who need to be saved and rehabilitated, should be assured that existing social processes and legal structures can help them deal with the violence and exploitation without being stigmatised or criminalised for their work.

Instead of understanding this complex negotiation that women make to survive, the letter unfortunately proceeds to dismiss the agency of a woman who chooses to stay on in sex work (even if she has been initially trafficked) as somebody “who after many years of exploitation normalises the abuse and believes that it is her destiny and considers her ill fated destiny as work”. By this definition of exploitative living conditions, should we then also criminalise marriages and families since domestic violence studies tell us that one in every three women is a victim of domestic violence since it is a fact that women and after years of exploitation have normalised the abuse within marriage believing that it is their ill-fated destiny?
Organisations such as Prajwala that are working for “rehabilitation” are at liberty to provide alternative livelihood choices for women who are living and working in multiple exploitative conditions including those who might have been forced into sex work but these cannot be coercive. Blanket statement made in the letter like “institutionalised commercial sex work is akin to slavery and can’t be termed as work” reinforces a highly colonial, moralistic and criminalised approach to a complex site of work where both “commercial” and “transactional” sex coexist. Such an approach ultimately ends up pushing women workers from marginalised and vulnerable communities further into criminalised spaces from which it is more challenging to seek any form of help or justice except that of forced rehabilitation.

The autonomy and dignity of women be they sex workers or victims of sexual violence are non-negotiable in democratic societies and no organisation or individual can arrogate to themselves the authority to decide their destinies. Instead of seeing organisations of sex workers as adversaries, it would be more effective to offer solidarity to enable women who want to opt out of sex work to access training and opportunities to make and implement these choices in a non-judgmental atmosphere.

Otherwise we would only be complicit in perpetuating the worst of patriarchal practices and moral policing that are constantly judging and punishing women – especially those who do not conform to the dominant notion of a “good” woman – one who does not belong to the acceptable class, caste or gender norm. The very comprehensive and inclusive Advisory from the NHRC gives all of us working with survivors of sexual violence as well as women workers an opportunity to examine our biases, strategies and interventions. We hope we can all rise to that challenge.

'New Labour Laws Won't Create the Millions of Jobs We Need; Already 20M Have Lost Hope, Opted Out'

Mahesh Vyas, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy CMIE.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-5cO21raEA

Indian Express article:  ‘We need a 5-year, 10-year plan to get labour participation rate (LPR)  right’
LPR It was around 50% till recently, then in around 2016-2017 or 2017-18, according to official statistics it came to 48% (we say it came down to 46%). Now, in recent times, it has come down to 43% in 2019-20, and now it is 41%. It went down all the way to 35% in April when the big lockdown hit us and it’s back to 41%.

The labour participation rate for men is of the order of 75% (72% according to us) and for women is 25%. That’s a huge difference. According to us, 72% of men are willing to work and only around 11% of women are willing to work.

If we are willing to live in the conditions in which we are right now, we require about 6-8 million jobs per annum. That’s going to be very poor. So the number of jobs we should be creating… what we should be doing strategically for a country is to say, “How do I get my labour participation year up to 60-65%?” Maybe a 5-year, 10-year perspective plan to get that right, and that’s how we will be able to exploit our demographic dividend. Otherwise we are letting it go by.

The Historic Harsud Rally https://youtu.be/2pBnowufJhs
25 years ago, movements, organisations, NGOs, concerned professionals came together at Harsud to rally against Destructive Development. A young Medha, the senior Baba Amte, as well as veterans like Sunderlal Bahuguna, Swami Agnivesh joined issue on the development model where adivasis, peasants, students took a "sankalp" . It is worthwhile looking at some the discourse and the practice, and how far we have traveled down the Long & Winding Road!

Baba Amte's speech at Harsud Rally https://youtu.be/k-L0tu1VwvU
Baba Amte pledged to be with the people of Narmada against teh Dam till his last breath.

Swami Agnivesh at that rally https://youtu.be/wJvhw-BJUao
Swami Agnivesh had bought with him soil sent by the people of Indonesia who were also fighting against a dam there. In his speech he spoke about how the new development is taking over our rights to good and public seed and poisoning the soil with chemicals. And that this was not restricted to India alone.

Medha Patkar Speech at Harsud Rally https://youtu.be/5CHLUD8eNdk
Harsud is now under water. But from here, Medha gave the call for opposing Destructive Development. She noted that People's Organisations all states had come to support the People from the Narmada Valley.