The Philippines was the first Asian country to ratify the 2001 United Nations Human Trafficking Protocol. It also enacted its own anti-trafficking law in 2003, which continues to be nationally celebrated as a victory for women’s rights. The campaign for this law was led by women’s rights groups such as the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific (CATW-AP) and the governmental Philippine Commission on Women* (PCW). Ending the sexual exploitation of women and children was a core focus of their campaign.
The introduction of the anti-trafficking law has created confusion regarding whether sex workers should be treated as criminals or as victims of trafficking. The law defines ‘trafficking’ in broad language such as the “abuse of the vulnerability of individuals for the purpose of exploitation”, and this regularly leads to the conflation of all forms of sex work with “sexual exploitation” in anti-trafficking policies and practices. At the same time, the sale of sex is criminalised under the Philippines’ Revised Penal Code and law enforcement agencies can legally arrest and detain sex workers. This regulatory tension has allowed law enforcement officers discretion in their actions and rendered sex workers vulnerable to harassment, extortion, and violence.
Dominance of the ‘victim’ perspective
For CATW-AP and PCW, anti-trafficking represents a political opportunity to redefine sex workers as victims, or ‘prostituted women’, rather than criminals. Since 2004, PCW has championed an anti-prostitution law based on the Nordic model, which decriminalises the sale of sex while criminalising buyers and third parties. This proposed law is backed by the Philippine Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT), whose members include PCW and CATW-AP as well as NGOs like International Justice Mission (IJM).
