Anti-prostitution Pledge - Rationale and Reactions

Rationale and Reactions

In a February 2002 National Security Presidential Directive, President George W. Bush wrote: "The United States opposes prostitution and any related activities, including pimping, pandering, and/or maintaining brothels as contributing to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons. These activities are inherently harmful and dehumanizing. The United States Government’s position is that these activities should not be regulated as a legitimate form of work for any human being."

In February 2005, a group of non-profit organizations including CARE, the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children and the International Center for Research on Women protested the anti-prostitution pledge policy in a letter to US Director of Foreign Assistance Randall L. Tobias. This was followed by a May 2005 protest letter to President Bush, signed by hundreds of organizations worldwide, stating that the pledge "makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to establish the trust necessary to provide services to these hard-to-reach groups" and it will "exacerbate stigma and discrimination against already marginalized groups."

This was countered in August 2005 by a letter to the President supporting the policy, signed by over 100 groups, including the Christian Medical Association, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Sex Industry Survivors, The Medical Institute, The Salvation Army, World Hope International and World Relief. Supporters of the pledge requirement argue that prostitution is inherently harmful and needs to be abolished, reject harm reduction approaches, and hold that legalized prostitution increases demand for sex trafficking.

In May 2005, the Brazilian government turned down $40 million in anti-HIV/AIDS funding from the U.S. government because of the anti-prostitution pledge. Brazil's AIDS commissioner Pedro Chequer was quoted as saying "Sex workers are part of implementing our AIDS policy and deciding how to promote it. They are our partners. How could we ask prostitutes to take a position against themselves?"

The anti-prostitution pledge has been criticized as counterproductive, because projects that work with and support prostitutes are often seen as instrumental in fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS. The Brazilian anti-AIDS program, which employs prostitutes to hand out information and free condoms, is considered by the United Nations to be the most successful in the developing world. The Sonagachi Project is a prostitutes' cooperative in Calcutta, India, that supports sex workers rights and works to stop the spread of HIV; it has received strong positive evaluations from both UNAIDS and the World Bank, and has been cited by UNAIDS as a "best-practice" model of working with prostitutes.

Ronald Weitzer has described the anti-prostitution pledge as a symptom of what he calls the "moral crusade" against sex trafficking, resulting in a broad attack against all forms of commercial sex acts.

The language of the policy juxtaposes the words "prostitution" and "sex trafficking"; it has been pointed out that it is important to cleanly distinguish between these two concepts and that all relevant organizations already strongly oppose sex trafficking.

Randall L. Tobias, the U.S. administration's foreign aid chief who was responsible for implementation of the anti-prostitution pledge, resigned in April 2007 over allegations that he had used an escort service. Some sex worker organizations and commentators called the situation "ironic" and Tobias "hypocritical".

The 2012 final report of UNDP's Global Commission on HIV and the Law denounces the anti-prostitution pledge and includes the recommendation

3.2.8 Repeal punitive conditions in official development assistance—such as the United States government’s PEPFAR anti-prostitution pledge and its current anti-trafficking regulations—that inhibit sex workers’ access to HIV services or their ability to form organisations in their own interests.