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Mozambique: Legal Framework for Rights of Prostitutes Needed
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
5 November 2007
Posted to the web 5 November 2007
Maputo
Mozambique's Deputy Minister of Women's Affairs and Social Welfare, Joao Kandiyane, declared on Friday that it was urgent that each southern African country should establish a legal framework appropriate to its own reality, in order to respect the fundamental rights of prostitutes.
Speaking at the end of a three day seminar on HIV/AIDS and prostitution, Kandiyane said that these rights included the right to health, to dignity, protection against violence and other forms of abuse, and respect for the women's choice of profession, regardless of their motives for becoming prostitutes.
Kandiyane said that prostitution is a reality, and everybody in Mozambican society knows it is a reality. What was necessary was to take measures that protected the life and health of prostitutes.
He stressed that prostitutes should not be discriminated against, and if they fall ill, they should be treated decently, and not as if they were criminals.
He noted that while in many countries prostitution is illegal, and in some (such as Senegal) it is legal, in Mozambique the law is silent. "It is neither prohibited nor permitted by law", Kandiyane said. "So what we want is that sex workers should be seen as human beings, rather than the current situation, where they are exploited and have nobody to defend them".
Because of the impact of HIV/AIDS, and its close relationship with prostitution, it was time to look reality squarely in the eye, urged the Deputy Minister.
"Enough of evasions !", he declared. "Let's look at reality as it is, if we want to rid our region of one of the great ills of our time. We know that prostitution is not the only means of HIV transmission, but we are aware that it is through prostitution that many men and women are infected".
Kandiyane called for the involvement of prostitutes in planning, implementing and monitoring programmes against HIV/AIDS. He warned that if instead they were ignored, then this would run the risk that efforts to ensure access to quality health care would fail.
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The same position was defended by Ndolamb Ngokwey, the resident coordinator of the United Nations system in Mozambique. He argued that the efforts to prevent and treat HIV infection would be strengthened if prostitutes were to participate actively in designing and implementing programmes.
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| Copyright © 2007 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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