2
prostitutes and thus they need to be regulated. The abolitionists firmly believe that prostitutes are
victims and prostitution is a violation to human rights, and thus this practice ought to be
abolished. Since the 1980s, the dichotomy of ‘forced’ and ‘free’ prostitution emerged. This
became another approach of viewing prostitution, and the sex workers’ organizations supported
this approach (Kempadoo and Doezema 1998). Free prostitutes are those who willingly come to
this profession and maintain it willingly. Forced prostitutes are those who come to this
profession as a victim of different circumstances of life ranging from overt force and deception
to economic deprivations and sexual abuse.
Although ‘prostitution’ exists universally, the “prostitutes’ or sex workers’ movement” has
long been perceived as a western phenomenon. In this paper, I have chosen to use the term “sex
worker” instead of “prostitute” because the aim of the paper is to represent the voice of the
women who are fighting in their day to day lives to establish the rights of their work as a form of
labor, challenging the norm to call them by an identity that represents their social and
psychological characteristic (Kempadoo and Doezema 1998).
“Sex workers’ movement” has become the emerging phenomenon in the third world countries
after the world became concerned about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially in the 1990s. The
development agencies started working on the sex workers to encourage them to use condoms,
considering sex workers as most potential bearer of HIV disease. While working on the issue
they observed, it is not possible to control HIV/AIDS, if a sex worker does not have control over
her body and if the relative power base of a male customer is higher than that of a sex worker
1
.
This realization motivated the development agencies to change their strategy from service
delivery to capacity building of sex workers to address HIV/AIDS more effectively.
1
In an in-depth talk with me, Dr. Smarajit Jana, Program Coordinator of anti-HIV/AIDS program of CARE,
Bangladesh gave this opinion.
Convention