Joseph Hall

Out of the shadows, risks are reduced

Legalizing sex trade touted to cut HIV. Researchers back sex workers' view

As Donna Summer moans "Love to Love You Baby" in the background, three prostitutes are lolling provocatively across a satin-covered bed — amid a scatter of sex toys — while half a dozen others sway to the music nearby.

That this is happening in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre — with plenty of the city's finest patrolling the facility — is a little disconcerting on first approach.

But there's a sharp point to the scene, a highlight of the International AIDS Conference's huge Global Village area.

"While it's meant to be fun and humorous, we really did want to make this look like a typical workplace," says Anna-Louise Crago, a prostitute and spokeswoman for a Montreal sex-workers' alliance called Stella.

"This is exactly the kind of setting we work in, " says Crago, who helped organize the contingent of sex workers from 21 countries attending the conference.

Recognizing prostitution as legitimate legal work, in both criminal law and labour codes, is a key step to stamping out HIV and other diseases among sex workers and the broader population, several researchers have told the conference.

Prostitution remains a main conduit for HIV in many parts of the developing world, and was the focus of several research presentations.

Even former US president Bill Clinton came to the defence of sex workers Tuesday, criticizing the Bush administration's ban on AIDS funding to groups that don't officially oppose prostitution.

"I wish they would just amend the law and say, `We disapprove of prostitution but here's the money — go save lives,'" Clinton told a conference meeting.

"They are people, too, and they deserve the chance to be empowered to save their lives. To me it is a no-brainer."

Studies presented this week urged countries to legally recognize sex workers, to improve their safety and lower their susceptibility to AIDS.

"Sex workers are part of the solution in the fight against HIV," says Crago. "And sex workers need workers' rights and human rights in order to fight AIDS."

Many of the visiting sex workers took to the streets around the conference centre yesterday to voice their demands for legal recognition, which they say would help combat the spread of AIDS by allowing prostitutes to come in from the dark and marginalized areas — geographical and social — in which they typically ply their trade.

Having legal rights would provide the financial stability they need to refuse high-risk encounters, and give them easier access to medical treatment and education.

It would also reduce their vulnerability to rape and sexual assault, lowering their chances of contracting HIV, says Glenn Betteridge, a senior policy adviser with the Canadian HIV/ AIDS Legal Network.

"In many countries the law makes engaging in sex work illegal, and in those countries the law disempowers women," Betteridge says.

"And we know, from the history of the HIV epidemic, when women are disempowered they don't have control over HIV prevention methods."

Betteridge said data indicates that sex workers in Canada, who began to insist on condoms and other protections early on in the AIDS crisis, don't pose a threat as an HIV vector in this country.

In Southern Africa, however, sex workers remain one of the most volatile links in the spread of the disease.