For anyone interested in the rights of sex workers, the twentieth anniversary of the Palermo Protocol is an unmissable chance to evaluate how sex workers have been impacted by anti-trafficking rhetoric and policy. Whatever opportunities Palermo might have initially presented, it is now inextricably aligned with harmful ideological agendas that sex workers are obliged to resist and reject.
For decades now, sex workers in Europe have been combatting calls to ‘abolish prostitution’. These have gained prominence via the conflation of trafficking and sex work. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that this conflation is flawed, yet it continues to be championed by opponents of the ‘sex work is work’ approach.
At the heart of this dispute is the so-called Swedish Model. Born one year before the Palermo Protocol, this policy criminalises the clients of sex workers in order to end demand for sex work and, its proponents would believe, for trafficked women. Despite its many flaws, this model has now been adopted in Norway, Ireland, France, Northern Ireland, Israel, and Canada. Other countries are currently debating whether to adopt it as well.
