Author: Associazione Aura

Categories
SURROGACY

CIAMS petition: reject Reject Opinion No. 86 of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics

CIAMS petition: reject Opinion No. 86 of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics

Feminist organisations in Belgium are taking a stand against Opinion n. 86 of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics, which seeks to bringin a legal framework for surrogate motherhood. 

According to the organisations signing and supporting CIAMS petition, Opinion n. 86 takes no account of women’s and children’s rights and further commodifies women’s bodies and children’s lives. Furthermore, it was solely informed by stakeholders who take a favourable approach to legalising surrogacy.

For this reason, the coalition of Belgium-based organisations demand that the Committee take into account: 

Consequently, the signatories call for Opinion n.86 to be considered null and for public opinion to be provided with genuine information about surrogacy and the human rights violations’ resulting from surrogacy.

 
 
READ AND SIGN THE PETITION
Categories
PROSTITUTION & PORNOGRAPHY

The Belgian Presidency to the Council of the EU 2024 meets  with European Justice Ministers to debate the regulation of “sex work” and deliberately ignores survivors of prostitution

The Belgian Presidency to the Council of the EU 2024 meets with European Justice Ministers to debate the regulation of “sex work” and deliberately ignores survivors of prostitution​

The Belgian Presidency at the EU 2024 Council me with EU Justice Ministers on 26 January 2024 to discuss the regulation of “sex work” and deliberately ignores prostitution survivors.

It is disconcerting to see the Belgian Presidency of the EU 2024 Council inviting EU Justice Ministers to talk about “sex work” without even consulting the groups most affected by prostitution and sexual exploitation – women and girls who are survivors of prostitution and who recount the horrors they have experienced in the system. Consulting the pro-prostitution lobby does not mean engaging meaningfully with those who have been inside the system and are now speaking out against it, as Belgium did before adopting its new law by which it regulated prostitution.

We regret that the Belgian Presidency deliberately ignores the testimonies of prostitution survivors and insists on calling their sexual exploitation “work”, and we remind the Presidency of the September resolution voted by the European Parliament, which clearly states that sex must be based on consent and cannot be replaced by the exchange of money.

READ THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT'S RESOLUTION ON PROSTITUTION
Categories
PROSTITUTION & PORNOGRAPHY

“What Prostitution Hides” campaign – Knowledge for Change

"What Prostitution Hides" - Knowledge for Change

We at Associazione Aura support the “What Prostitution Hides” campaign, funded by the Fonds de solidarité pour les projets innovants, les sociétés civiles, la francophonie et le développement humain of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
 
The campaign focuses on the main actors of the prostitution system, who are often hidden or invisible: sex buyers, pimps and traffickers. It explains how women suffer from a traumatisation process, exposes why it is so difficult to exit the system of prostitution and presents how international human rights law has solved the issue. 
 
These materials will allow for readers to understand and be able to explain to others the realities of prostitution and what prostitution hides. It aims at being a material for societal change.

The sex buyer: his 'creation', buying prostitution and pornography

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD INFORMATION ON THE SEX BUYER

Pimps and traffickers: techniques they use to keep women in prostitution

Prostituted women: Trauma and traumatisation in the lives of two women

The prostitution system: Human Rights legislation to abolish the system

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD INFORMATION ON THE PROSTITUTION SYSTEM
Categories
WOMEN'S RIGHTS @ EUROPEAN UNION

Migrant women’s rights organisations in Italy call for the protection of trafficking victims

Migrant women’s rights organisations in Italy call for the protection of trafficking victims

As a group of migrant-women led organisations and organisations working towards the full achievement of migrant women’s rights in Italy and Europe, we consider the Anti-Trafficking Directive as one of the key instruments in protecting women and girls against trafficking, a very specific type of male violence against migrant and refugee women in the European Union. Migrant and refugee women and girls face a very high and disproportionate risk of becoming victims of human trafficking, particularly trafficking for the purposes of prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation. Migrant and refugee women are also vulnerable to being trafficked for the purposes of forced marriage, labour exploitation in marriage, reproductive exploitation in surrogacy and egg harvesting, trafficking for exploitation in domestic work and other forms of trafficking. Prostitution, trafficking for prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation are intrinsically linked in all contexts and all constitute a violation of women and girls’ rights. Statistically, trafficking in human beings for purposes of sexual exploitation remains, by far, the most prevalent form of trafficking in the European Union, with 51% of victims being trafficked for sexual exploitation. Out of 51% of these victims, 87% are women and girls. 

Prostitution and sex trafficking, being two of the most egregious women and girls’ rights violations, cannot be analysed separately. They must be analysed together as consequential: sex trafficking exists because the purchase of sexual acts, including prostitution exists and is still allowed in many European jurisdictions. 

Alongside the crucial need to provide women-specific psycho-social, legal and economic support and assistance to migrant and refugee women victims of sex trafficking, targeting the demand and hence the means (trafficking) that foster prostitution and sex trafficking remains the only solution to adequately support and protect victims from a systemic point of view. From a women’s human rights perspective we support the European Parliament’s step in criminalising all “users” of sex trafficking victims, since prostitution is one of the root causes of women and girls being trafficked.

Thus, it is with deep regret that we read that ASGI and EcST, the Association for Legal Studies on Migration and the Expert Group against Exploitation and Trafficking respectively, two leading entities in terms of migration in Italy, condemn and oppose the provision concerning the criminalisation of the buyers of prostitution and other sexual acts. Migrant and refugee women and girls are the primary target of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. The criminalisation of buyers of sexual acts ensures that trafficked women and girls are dully protected, since it analyses the problem at the source: the demand for prostitution and sexual exploitation. Advocating for victims’ protection while protecting the perpetrators of the exploitation and rights violation of women and girls is contradictory and counterproductive. They cannot go hand in hand. Our coalition is very sorry to see ASGI and EcST align with pro-prostitution organisations such as the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA). The incongruity of protecting pimps and buyers of women and girls in the sex trade, while purporting to protect the women and girls being exploited by them, is self-evident and should have been fully analysed.

 

READ THE FULL STATEMENT
Categories
SURROGACY

European Parliament – surrogacy for the purpose of reproductive exploitation as part of the crime of human trafficking

European Parliament - surrogacy for the purpose of reproductive exploitation as part of the crime of human trafficking

In October 2023, the Committee on Women’s Rights and Civil Liberties (LIBE) adopted the European Parliament’s draft position on the revision of the anti-trafficking rules. The text focuses on prevention, strengthening protection and support for victims, and a more effective fight against the crime of trafficking in human beings.

The adopted text addresses surrogacy for the purpose of reproductive exploitation in the context of trafficking and states that if a woman is recruited to become a surrogate mother or threatened to become one for the purpose of reproductive exploitation, she will be considered a victim of trafficking while traffickers will be prosecuted.

Surrogacy involves the objectification of the woman, commodification of the newborn, human trafficking and violation of the human dignity of the woman exploited as a “surrogate mother” and the child, thus undermining the rights of the woman and the child. Therefore, the Aura Association opposes this practice and welcomes the text criminalising reproductive exploitation.

However, we are saddened that the text does not ban surrogacy in general, but only criminalizes surrogacy in the context of trafficking. Moreover, only surrogacy carried out through the use of force, threat or coercion would fall under the Directive.

As a women’s rights organization, we know that many crimes against women are not committed through the use of force or threat, and that direct, physical violence is not the only means that structures violence against women.