GENEVA, Switzerland – Jordanian activist Reem Alsalem – a special rapporteur on violence against women and girls at the United Nations Human Rights Council who recently released a controversial report recommending that governments abolish all forms of sex work, including pornography – will be one of the speakers at the 2024 summit of anti-porn lobby NCOSE in August.
As XBIZ reported, sex worker organizations, activists and individual sex workers traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last month to denounce Alsalem’s stigmatizing report and its continued calls for full criminalization.
Alsalem’s most recent report made broad statements about sex work and adult content, and also endorsed various forms of criminalization. The report conflates human trafficking with prostitution and pornography, prostitution with pornography itself, and even dismisses the term “sex work” itself – coined in 1979 by pioneering activist Carol Leigh, and embraced around the world – as “a euphemism”.
Alsalem’s ideas are consistent with the pro-criminalization positions of NCOSE, formerly Morality in Media, the most powerful and influential religiously inspired pro-censorship organization in the US.
Alsalem, who consistently refers to sex work with the stigmatizing criminological term ‘prostitution’, insists that all governments must join in ‘urgently recognizing it as a system of violence, exploitation and abuse’.
“Prostitution reduces women and girls to mere commodities and perpetuates a system of discrimination and violence that hinders their ability to achieve true equality,” Alsalem claims, challenging the free will and ability to consent of every adult sex worker who expresses this free will, puts it aside. as well as the existence of sex workers who are not ‘women and girls’.
Other views that Alsalem defends include blaming the existence of all sex work, regardless of context, for “sexualizing and racializing poverty, and targeting women from marginalized backgrounds.”
Alsalem added: “Given the enormous harm women and girls experience in prostitution, it is important to use terminology that is consistent with international human rights law and standards. Terms like ‘sex work’ sanitize the harmful reality of prostitution.”
According to Alsalem’s views, in line with those of the NCOSE, all adult content is part of ‘prostitution’ and thus must be eradicated to save ‘women and girls’.
“The normalization of prostitution, including pornography, creates harmful sexual expectations for men and boys and undermines the safe and equal participation of women and girls in society,” Alsalem said. “Many girls feel distressed by the pornification and sexualization of women and girls, especially in pornography.”
Last month, sex workers from the Netherlands told the UN Human Rights Council that “viewing sex workers as more than just victims is essential,” and demanded more details about how sex workers were involved in the development of the Alsalem report.
Kholi Buthelezi of the Sisonke National Sex Workers Right Movement said on a panel: “Saying that we are ‘commodities of men’ is hurtful. It confuses human trafficking with sex work and uses the code of feminist women and girls. We need the feminist movement to come on board. Our lives are still in danger.”