Sex Workers, NHRC and Pandemic

Topic:     Adverse effect of NHRC guideline on Sex workers in this Pandemic/ vulnerability of Sex workers in this covid pandemic.

Commercial sex and sex workers in India are guided under the regulation of Immoral Traffic (prevention) act 1956 these days the Advisory released by NHRC is heated debate over the rights of sex workers and immorality of commercial sex. Under the advisory of NHRC, sex workers included in informal sector. This advisory is taken to tackle the effect of pandemic on sex workers and accessibility of benefits given to them by government, but the question arises to recognize commercial sex as a work, this will never help to reduce the human and sex trafficking.

Most of the women in the sexual work are not coming voluntary, they forced to do so, forced by relatives and family, forced by vulnerability, forced by society (Non-acceptable in society), and now this advisory as a recognizing sex as a work gives power to these forces and worsen the situation of women in sex work. If Sex as a work recognized then it will be impossible to stop the sex trafficking because most of them are forced, involuntary and caged inside the brothel. If we talked about rights of sex workers and vulnerability of sex workers then first we should talk about their fundamental rights which are guaranteed under constitution but in reality all are zero at ground level, they don’t have life they don’t have liberty in actual sense.

The advisory is not a solution for long term, may be it benefited them for short term in this COVID pandemic, to fulfill the basic needs and to avail the benefits given by government to informal sector, but in actual sense, Are they ready to accept the benefits?

Problems In the path of development of sex workers and accessibility of benefits to them :-

1.    Financial inclusion : - very less of the sex workers have their account in the banks, due to this it is impossible to avail all the benefits through DBT(Direct benefit transfer) given by government.

2.    Right to Freedom :- most of the brothel/ prostitution center are caged and not allowed their workers to go outside, this restrain their freedom and it is not possible to know the information about schemes and benefits without outside interaction.

3.    Vulnerability :- sexual workers are vulnerable due to poverty, lacks of adequate education, restrained freedom, less social interaction, these all causes less confidence of questioning and accessibility of benefits is very less.

4.    NO proper regulation :- There is not a proper regulatory body which regulates the work hours, nature of work and benefits that is given to them, due to this, exploitation of women is more common in sex works.

5.    Improper Law :- Law related to sex workers in india is governed by only one law which is Immoral Traffic (prevention) act 1956 which is not up to date in this modern time pd. And this act is mostly focused on morality and  immorality of sex as a work, There should be a proper law that will improve the life and livelihood of sex workers, that would focus on the situation of worker not work.

6.    Social Unacceptance :- They are not acceptable in society, due to this the social interaction is zero and they always discriminated in their whole life.

These all problems are hinderance in the path of development of sex workers and it is not possible to access the benefits without clearing these problems.

Although the intension of NHRC is very appreciable to improve the livelihood in this COVID pandemic but its impact in long run can be bad on the sex workers, because it is very noticeable that they came involuntary and in long run its impact on prevention of sex trafficking will weakened and causes more exploitation.