How Dare You? Sex Trade Survivors Urge UN CEDAW Committee to Reject Prostitution as Work

[0:06] The CEDAW Committee is a United Nations body of independent experts responsible for monitoring countries’ implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), also known as the International Bill of Women’s Rights.

[0:22] In February 2026, the CEDAW Committee published a report concerning the Netherlands using the terminology of “sex work” to describe the system of prostitution. It also advises the Dutch government to further expand its sex trade, including lifting the ban on home-based “sex work” and increasing the number of licensed brothels.

[0:41] Sex trade survivors and their allies sent an open letter to the CEDAW Committee urging it to remove those recommendations and all references to “sex work,” which contravene international laws and human rights principles.

[1:09] It’s really disappointing to see “experts” talking about the bodies and lives of people they don’t know, that they haven’t read about. I don’t believe these experts who call prostitution work would be on a street waiting for someone to come and buy their body, like we did. Like so many migrant women still do.

[1:36] I want the CEDAW Committee, and every committee in the UN that uses “sex work” language, to understand prostitution is not a job. And sex is supposed to be about mutual pleasure for both parties involved. When you say words like “sex work,” what you’re doing is actually going inherently against your own language about what human rights are. And for you, the CEDAW Committee, who actually normalizes “sex work”: you are degrading women into an object. Once we start taking away the real language for what women go through, we take away their humanness.

[2:17] The term “sex work” implies that women have the upper hand, as if they have a choice, or they have chosen prostitution. The reality of prostitution is exploitation and violence against women, and it is not an experience that disappears simply by quitting prostitution.

[2:39] It’s abuse. Violence, torture, murder. There but for the grace of all the goddesses go your daughter.

[2:49] If we are going to normalize this and legitimize this as a job as any other — for me as a Survivor Leader, we can’t treat prostitution as something empowering. Prostitution is not work; it’s a crime against humanity.

[3:03] I think it’s very important to understand that the pimp lobby operates very subtly and at very high levels.

[3:09] It’s not a job. There are no job specs for “sex work.” It’s a form of exploitation. It has nothing to do with “sex”; it’s all about exploitation and control, and organized crime. Everyone should make no mistake: this is organized crime on a global scale.

[3:33] For leaders and decision makers, institutions: how dare you think that you can use terms like this? I see this as ten steps back — going backwards. You know, think about what you’re doing here. What is the message you are sending? And the message especially for the most vulnerable populations everywhere: that they’re going to think that this is okay, this is a form of work, which it’s not. It’s a brutal system.

[4:01] Prostitution is sexual violence. It is gender-based violence. It really needs to be recognized as a form of gender-based violence. When you legitimize prostitution as a job like any other, you are basically standing up and saying to the rest of society that it is okay to purchase marginalized people, that we can commodify somebody’s value based on their appearance or their lack of resources, and that it is okay for sex buyers to continue to cause harm to the people that are in our society. And that is not a human right. That is a human rights violation.

[4:33] Every time they tell us that prostitution is work, they are placing the blame on us survivors, by saying that we are to blame because one chooses to “work” — one isn’t there being exploited. So, I want you to reflect on this. You are going to make decisions about our lives and about the lives of a lot of people, including women who are dying today in prostitution. So be responsible and take ownership of the words you are saying.

[4:59] And my message is directed to those women who are still young, or who see it, who still hold feminist principles, who continue fighting for women and girls: that they count on us, on the activists, on the feminists. Because it is the only way we have to continue to keep up the pressure and to ban from those platforms those who want women to be nothing more than an object for consumption and an object of entertainment. Because we are not willing to tolerate it, nor are we willing to allow this “sex work” terminology to be imposed on women.