UFI at the United Nations:
Lives Damaged and Destroyed:
Update from the CEDAW Committee Meeting at U.N. Headquarters in New York

By Linda Ash, United Families International UN Representative

January 23, 2007

In its zeal to liberate women worldwide from the chains of discrimination, the CEDAW Committee seeks to uphold the rights of women. Sounds good so far. But it may come as a shock to know that one of the rights recognized by the Committee is the right to engage in voluntary prostitution. On this basis, for example, the Committee has urged China to decriminalize prostitution. [1]

I wasn't there when that happened, but I was there last year when a Committee member played the same tune by insisting that countries legalize prostitution for the protection and welfare of their women. Today I noticed that this same Committee member was present when a young woman from the Netherlands spoke on behalf the Coalition against Trafficking in Women. Because this young woman was from the Netherlands , where prostitution is legal, we all expected her to support the status quo in her country. Not so.

“I have lived in the Netherlands for 15 years,” she began, “more than half my life, and perhaps I have been naïve as I have watched the effects of legalized prostitution and the resultant attitudes of our society concerning women and their value in society.”

She proceeded to explain that nearly 75 percent of the prostitutes in her country are migrant women. In the 1980's the women behind the showroom windows were mostly of Latin American decent. But the appetites of the clientele began to crave something different, so in the 1990's the women were mostly Asian and African.

Again, however, appetites changed as the clients again sought new sex objects, and now the women in the showroom windows are East European. In addition, the prostitutes are younger than ever. Nor are they limited to young women, but include young boys also. Anything to satisfy the clientele. Anything to make money.

And what finally happens to these glamorous prostitutes? Wracked by disease, they finally end up of no further use to their clients or “employers.” The heavy toll is not just physiological, but emotional and spiritual as well. Their lives are damaged, destroyed—and the CEDAW Committee is there to make sure such “rights” are not denied.

The young woman from the Netherlands pled with the CEDAW Committee to force her country to prohibit prostitution and stop its damaging effects on women and girls and society. As I listened, I looked at the CEDAW Committee member who last year insisted that countries decriminalize prostitution. I wondered what she was thinking. I'm not sure she was listening.

[1] U.N. document, A/54/38REV.1(SUPP), paragraphs 288-289, January 1, 1999 .