SEX WORK AND THE LAW - HIV/AIDS Data Hub

offences and offences relating to beggars or vagrants. This may lead to arrest and to
detention in special ‘rehabilitation’ facilities (e.g., Sri Lanka and India).
Birth registration for children of sex workers in South Asia is often problematic, due to
inability to identify the father. Lack of birth registration can mean the child of a sex worker
is unable to attend school, as has been reported in Bangladesh and India.
South Asia
The laws enacted with regard to trafficking in India and Sri Lanka conflate trafficking and
voluntary sex work. People who voluntarily enter and remain in sex work are sometimes
incorrectly regarded as trafficked, as are those who entered sex work under duress at a
young age but who as adults choose to remain employed as sex workers. This is partly
due to the influence of the United Nations 1949 Trafficking Convention 58 and the SAARC
Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children, 2002.
Particular problems arise due to police action against adult voluntary sex workers justified
on the basis of trafficking crackdowns. Many sex workers report that they are subjected
to police abuses during street clean-up operations, police-led brothel closures or ‘rescue
operations’. 59 Sex workers report police roundups, sometimes accompanied by violence
and abuse from law enforcement officers and other government officials. Some report
being sexually assaulted by police as a form of humiliation, and being coerced into
providing sex to police. Laws in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh enable sex workers to be
detained in corrective or protective institutions, often with few procedural safeguards or
rights of appeal.
Some Indian NGOs, such as Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) and Veshya
Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), have developed alternative approaches to addressing
trafficking and involvement of minors in selling sex, based on community mobilization
and self-regulation.
58 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others.
59 International HIV/AIDS Alliance (2008) Sex work, violence and HIV: a guide for programmes with sex workers.
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