HRC 57: Action Canada, The Canadian Alliance Sex Work Law Reform & SRI Statement to the ID with SR on slavery

57th session of the Human Rights Council

Item 3: Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery

Statement by Action Canada for Population and Development

We make this statement on behalf of Action Canada, the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform and the Sexual Rights Initiative. 

We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s report on his visit to Canada and his strong recommendations, with respect to sex workers’ human rights, particularly the recommendation for the urgent need for the total decriminalization of sex work. This report adds to the growing body of evidence in Canada and globally that demonstrates how criminalization of any part of sex work violates sex workers’ human rights. It also highlights the harmful conflation of sex work with trafficking, and how this creates conditions for exploitation and abuse. Lastly, the report highlights how criminalization of sex work disproportionately impacts communities that are already profiled and harassed by law enforcement, including people who are Indigenous, migrant, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+.

We appreciate the Special Rapporteur’s efforts to hear directly from sex workers in Canada who are experts in their own lives and have solutions to the harms caused by the criminalization of sex work.  This is a fundamental principle of human rights - those who are most impacted have a right to participate in the decisions that affect them.  We urge Canada and other Special Procedure mandates to heed this principle. Canada can’t uphold itself up as a champion of gender equality, indigenous rights, bodily autonomy, women’s rights and 2SLGBTQ+ rights as long as sex work remains criminalized in Canada.

Thank you.