Countries: Kenya
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"Faith Mutindi, the co-founder of Dial a pad, said: 'Women are already struggling to get this commodity. Now that the price has doubled, you can imagine what kind of struggles and vices, like transactional sex, it opens these girls up to'" (para 14).

Countries: New Zealand
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"The sex trade and exploitation is so normalised in New Zealand that the media quite often minimises any abuse or violence reported by those in the sex trade, especially of children, by referring to them with terms like 'the victim’s boyfriend.' The media minimises this abuse instead of focusing on the grooming, coercion, trafficking, and exploitation they experience. This is most disappointing and frustrating, as just like sexual abuse, rape, and domestic violence were once taboo subjects that no one wanted to hear about, the violence, racism, and discrimination against women and children of colour in the sex trade is being swept under the carpet. Recently five men were arrested...more

Countries: Malawi
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"For three consecutive days in October 2018, Catherine (real name withheld) went to a fishing camp in Luwuchi community on the shores of Lake Malawi to buy fish known locally as usipa. On each occasion, the widowed mother of three returned empty-handed because the fishermen she approached all wanted sex in exchange, not money. 'I always refused but then life was becoming very hard for me and my children [and] I was in desperate need of making sales since the [fish-selling] business was my only source of income,' Catherine, now 44, told Al Jazeera. 'The next day, I went back to the beach and when the first fisherman demanded sex...more

Countries: Sweden
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"[T]he government carried out a big investigation. They talked to porn club owners, clients at porn clubs, sex buyers, women who sold sex, porn actors, everyone, and they concluded that prostitution is an extreme version of our patriarchal society. I know that many people will say differently. Many people – probably the people outside [people protesting, saying that the Nordic model made it more dangerous for women to be prostitutes]– say that women in prostitution in Sweden don’t want the Nordic Model, but that’s not true" (para 12-13). "I’ve been speaking in Sweden for three or four years now and I have met only a handful of women in prostitution...more

Countries: Japan
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"As Japan’s economy struggles under the weight of the weak yen, the depleted currency has in parallel attracted record numbers of overseas visitors, with Tokyo emerging as a globally recognized red-light destination — with some drawing comparisons to Thailand’s Pattaya, long associated with sex tourism" (par. 1). "Through social media, influencers have inadvertently popularized the seediest parts of Tokyo’s nightlife, often reinforcing harmful stereotypes of Japanese women as submissive, sexually permissive and exotic. These stereotypes, however, are not merely foreign misrepresentations: Japan’s own postwar legal framework and cultural conditions sustain and reinforce them" (par. 2). Beyond audiovisual content, adult entertainment businesses — fūzoku — have also flourished, taking up the...more

Countries: New Zealand
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

“Sex workers are now less tolerant of poor working conditions and expect safe environments that will uphold their rights. They expect the justice system to safeguard these labour and human rights. Successful prosecutions have taken place against those who seek to harm sex workers, such as violent offenders or brothel operators who have sexually harassed sex worker” (para 11).

Countries: Mauritius
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

“Prostitutes have not only been stigmatised, but also treated as criminals and prosecuted” (para 1).

Countries: Ireland
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"Most sex purchases are made through Escort-Ireland, the country’s largest sexual services website, which provides virtual and in-person sessions, mainly with women, in towns across the country. The site contains explicit reviews of women selling sexual services and allows clients to rate them from one star to five. An investigation by this newspaper found that you can create an account on the site without providing identification to prove you are 18. You must provide ID to advertise yourself as an escort but you can still receive messages from users of the sites as well as promotional emails without doing so" (para 3-5). "Google searches for Escort-Ireland here have remained consistently...more

Countries: Haiti
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"One midwife at another clinic in the southern limits of the city, who asked to remain anonymous for their safety, said most of their patients were young women who had got pregnant after being forced to sell sex for food, or were raped by gang members" (para 10).

Countries: United States
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"Those policy decisions coincided with the implementation of two state laws that altered how law enforcement approaches sex work: One ended police officers’ power to arrest people suspected of loitering for the purpose of prostitution, and another allowed for old prostitution-related convictions to be erased. Supporters of those changes argued enforcement of prostitution laws had long disproportionately affected transgender people and people of color" (para 3). The changing of laws indicates changing public opinion about prostitution (MB-CODER COMMENT).

Countries: North Korea
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"When women and girls want to leave North Korea, the violence they face ranges from forced marriage to forced prostitution, she [Elizabeth Salmon, United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in North Korea] said" (para 5).

Countries: Vanuatu
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

“Women in commercial sex face physical and sexual violence and are reportedly coerced into forced pregnancy and forced marriage; reports acknowledge a correlation between the lack of economic opportunities and an increase in commercial sex. The limited ability for women and girls in commercial sex to seek justice increases their vulnerability to trafficking. Reports show taxi drivers may facilitate the exploitation of children in commercial sex.”

Countries: Afghanistan
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

“The practice appears to be most prevalent among those Shia Afghans who fled to Iran in the years after the 1979 Soviet invasion and during the civil wars of the Nineties. They have now begun to return, bringing customs they adopted while exile. Returnees say sighah is fairly common in predominately Shia Iran. It remains to be seen whether sighah will catch on among the Shia minority in Afghanistan, a country where sex and marriage are surrounded by taboos. “Temporary marriage is against Afghan tradition,” said Dr Mohammad Hussain, a Shia believer who owns a pharmacy in Mazar-e-Sharif. “I know that if I entered into a temporary marriage contract, all...more

Countries: South Sudan
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"Human Rights Watch’s research in numerous countries, including South Africa and Tanzania, has shown that criminalization leaves sex workers extra vulnerable to violence, including rape, assault, and murder. Their attackers see sex workers as easy targets, because they are stigmatized and unlikely to receive help from the police" (para 5).

Countries: Swaziland
Variables: IRP-PRACTICE-1

"This has sparked a series of conversations amongst citizens in the country. Some could suspect that the recent reports of notorious sex work activity could be a result that sex work is no longer considered as a criminal activity" (para 3).