SEX WORK AND THE LAW - HIV/AIDS Data Hub

The National Programme aims to free communes and towns from sex work and to
minimize harms to society, and addresses law enforcement, vocational training for
former sex workers and the role of mass media in disseminating information on HIV
and STI prevention. The National Programme encourages women and children involved
in sex work to access social services. Although sex work remains unlawful, the National
Programme includes harm reduction approaches, such as HIV prevention, treatment, care
and support as well as health services and social protection measures for sex workers.
Community-based efforts to help sex workers build alternative livelihoods are also parts
of the Programme of Action.
In 2011, the government passed a new Anti-Trafficking Statute and a five-year national
action plan on trafficking.
6.11.2 Law enforcement practices
There are reports of periodic anti-prostitution police crackdowns. One report describes
streets being blocked without warning and people taken into custody unless they could
prove that they had a legitimate reason to be on the street:
Men, weapons, searchlights and vehicles including transport vehicles with sirens
were involved. Mostly women, but some men as well, would be apprehended as
prostitutes, along with their clients, and taken to police stations...The peer educators
complained that they were often mistaken for prostitutes and apprehended. The
police would let them go only after their cards identifying them as AIDS educators
were produced and condoms and health flyers were found in their bags. 598
MOLISA reported that in the first six months of 2011, police arrested 750 sex workers and
300 pimps, and revoked business licenses of 251 businesses for involvement in sex work.
According to MOLISA, as of July 2011 approximately 1,300 sex workers were being ‘treated
and educated’ at ‘rehabilitation’ centres. 599 Women who solicit in street-based venues
are more likely to be detained than those who solicit clients from an entertainment
establishment.
Doussantousse and Tooke describe the adverse impact on HIV prevention of punitive
approaches against sex workers follows:
“THE PEER EDUCATORS
COMPLAINED THAT THEY
WERE OFTEN MISTAKEN
FOR PROSTITUTES AND
APPREHENDED.”
[A] fear of detection appears to limit prostitutes’ access to
institutionalised health care and means that STDs, including
HIV, go undetected and consequently untreated while the
women continue to work. Even when they become aware
of infection, they tend to rely upon self-treatment or try to
ignore the symptoms. Incarceration cuts off their means of
income thereby increasing the burden of those in debt. This is
particularly so if a woman has dependent children or relatives
who, although relying upon her earnings are unaware of their
source, because she is then obliged to borrow to maintain the
pretence.
598 Thu-Hương Nguyễn-Võ, (2008) The ironies of freedom: sex, culture, and neoliberal governance in Vietnam,
Seattle: University of Washington Press, p.115.
599 Prostitution could not be a job, Viettnamnet, 18 July 2011, available at: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/en/
society/10802/-prostitution-could-not-be-a-job-.html.
168