Focus on selective legal practices against sex workers

The launch of Kafa's latest campaign last month which focuses on the sex industry in Lebanon and which was covered in WEEPortal on September 16th 2014, instigated several articles in local newspapers. The latest was an article published yesterday in the Al Akhbar newspaper tackling the ways in which judges and investigators deal with sex workers.
According to the writer, sex work in Lebanon is considered to be a vice crime and law enforcement extends large efforts to arrest sex workers as they are considered criminals, adding that in most cases, law enforcement does not investigate the possibility of trafficking and coercion.  In this context, the author referred to a study produced by Nizar Saghieh and Ghida Frangieh entitled “Prostitution is a moral crime or an exploitation crime?” that was launched by Kafa in 2013. The study indicated that the law is enforced selectively on the marginalised sex workers, but that a blind eye is turned on the various forms of illicit organisations of sex work, and on trafficking in women across borders for the purpose of sex work. Moreover, the study stressed that clients do not have any legal liability whereas sex workers are given harsh sentences against a background of superficial investigations which fail to take into consideration their vulnerable social and legal background.

Source: Al-Akhbar 7 October 2014