web analytics

Africa

You are currently browsing articles tagged Africa.

‘Sex-hungry’ babes lure and trick client-victims: a change from the usual

26 February 2010 in sex work by laura agustin | 1 comment | print print

SyphilisProstitutes are not seen as victims everywhere in the world. The news may come as a surprise, given the predominance of that view in most news stories, especially in the west. Not that long ago, however, other stereotypes were commoner: predatory females who bring good men down. Both images here warn against woman-as-venereal-disease, traditionally a synonym for prostitute. 

The story below from contemporary Angola reveals a similar view, and it isn’t the only one I’ve seen recently. Notice language that seems to come from another era: sex-hungry young ladies, babes, on the prowl, robbers, clever prostitutes, sex hawkers. The article seems to be blaming the local authority for distributing condoms, as though doing that caused commercial sex. And note that these predators are migrants: well, they would be, wouldn’t they?

Sex Hawkers On The Prowl
as LOC Distributes 5m Condoms To Participants

14 January 2010, PM News

The ongoing Angola 2010 African Cup of Nations is unique in a way, as those who usually seek for pay-per-round sex in foreign countries will have no problems here. Despite the effort of the Local Organizing Committee, LOC, to chase off prostitutes, otherwise known as commercial sex workers, from the cities hosting the matches of the tournament, thousands of sex-hungry young ladies still find ways to do their ‘businesses.’

Majority of the ladies woo their ‘lovers’ in grand style, with class and in their own posh cars. Although, the campaign against HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are everywhere as the Nations Cup gathers momentum, the sex workers are on the prowl here. Three of such babes had a brief encounter with our man, who is covering the competition in Angola.

The conversation goes: “Hey, you need help?” asked a dark and very pretty damsel, whose curves could easily tempt an unsuspecting visitor. Because this writer was in a hurry to catch up with an interview date, he walked to the car to see if these good Samaritans could help him. But the story changed when one of them, Sophiela, asked him if he would like a friend in Benguela. That offer sounded palatable, based on the high cost of living and transportation problems in Angola.

Then out of curiosity, our man asked the ladies what he would do to compensate them for their presumed kind gesture. It was at this point that they told him in French language that they would charge $200 per ‘service,’ and that the sum of $100 extra would be paid if the ‘deal’ goes into the night. Obviously, the ladies migrated to Angola from one of the French speaking countries because majority of Angolans speak Portuguese, while just a few could communicate in passable English. Anyway, that ‘offer’ goes beyond driving the writer around the town. The ladies are clever prostitutes, who are moving around to spread sexually transmitted diseases.

Findings here revealed that the sex workers also serve as agents of robbers, who trick unsuspecting victims with their exposed bodies. Reports, however, revealed that the LOC, in conjunction with the Health Commission in Angola, have distributed about 5 million free Lubricated Latex Condoms to all hotels and strategic locations in the country, especially in the cities where matches are played.

Share

Tags: , ,

Egypt: ‘Prostitutes’ are not whores, and vice-versa

18 February 2010 in sex work by laura agustin | 7 comments | print print

Rudolph.A.Furtado
Nile Cruise: Photo Rudolph.A.Furtado

Do you know whether or not you are a prostitute? asks a sign in Shanghai I wrote about last year. Like that piece, the one below mulls over the slippery meanings ascribed to women’s behaviour in regard to sex, whether any money is involved or not. This time the setting is urban, middle-class Egypt. Excerpts highlight the anthropologist’s attempts to pin down what her companions mean when they call a woman a prostitute, in part revolving around her studies of Gulf tourists visiting Egypt. What’s being discussed is sometimes known as whore stigma, according to which certain behaviours signify dirty status for women who are certainly not sex professionals.

What is a Prostitute? 

L.L. Wynn,  24 June 2008, American Sexuality

It was 2000 and I was at a dinner party in Cairo. I was sitting with Malak, a belly dancer, and we were eyeing up a young woman who had large oval eyes thickly lined with black kohl and a wide mouth painted salmon.. . . Malak looked her up and down skeptically, and then she said to me in a low voice, “She’s a prostitute. Look, obviously that vulgar man thinks so too, because he wouldn’t dare put his hands all over her like that unless he was sure she was a prostitute.”

. . . It took me a long time to understand what Egyptians meant when they said “prostitute” . . .  But it wasn’t until I could finally shed my own cultural preconceptions about prostitution fundamentally being tied up with money and sex that I finally understood what my Egyptian friends meant. . .

. . . they imagined that Saudis came to Egypt to drink, visit prostitutes, and do everything else that was forbidden back in Saudi Arabia. . . . If I said that I was going to such-and-such a nightclub to observe, and that nightclub was known to be a hangout for Gulf Arabs in the summer, my friends would all try to dissuade me: “Don’t go there, men will harass you. They’ll think you’re a prostitute.” . . .

. . . when suddenly he said to me, “Look, Lisa, a case study.” With the fork he pointed in the direction of two women with short hair who were sitting at a table in the corner. “You really think they’re prostitutes?” Case study had become our code word for a prostitute because of my academic interest in the subject. Lina looked over and agreed with Ayman. “Definitely case studies.”

“I just don’t see it,” . . . Ayman just shrugged, but Lina made an attempt. “It’s a lot of things—they way they look, the way they dress, their makeup, their attitude, the expressions on their face, their body language . . .”

. . .  you don’t look like a prostitute. First of all, you’re always with the same people, in a mixed group of men and women. The worst they might think is that you’re the girlfriend of one of the guys in the group, but we don’t sit close together or touch, so they probably wouldn’t even think that. Second of all, your makeup isn’t like those women. They’re wearing thick black kohl all around their eyes, top and bottom. Third of all, your clothes are more decent—you cover up more than they do.” “Okay, maybe tonight I’m covered up, but sometimes I show more skin.”

. . .” Okay, look, I found one thing that I can point out about those women. You see that one that’s wearing the short sleeveless dress? Look, you can see her bra underneath the arm-holes. And the hem keeps turning up and showing her slip. Put the two things together and you can see that they aren’t used to dressing up and looking comfortable in elegant clothes.”

. . .  “You see that woman with the long wavy black hair sitting at the end of the bar?” The one wearing the skirt with the long slit up to her thigh?” “Right. This woman is well known for being very wealthy and loose. Her father died and she inherited a lot of money and she has her own apartment and she has sexual relationships with men just for pleasure. She’s a prostitute.. . . it’s obvious by the fact that she has her own apartment. A respectable woman does not live alone. . . ”

. . . Eventually I realized that the reason I was struggling to understand the concept of a prostitute had everything to do with my own preconceptions about sex and money. I thought of prostitutes as women who had sex for money. But as I reflected on my friends’ relationships and the role that money played in them, I remembered that all of my Egyptian female friends took money from the men they were dating or married to. It didn’t matter whether they were rich or poor, or even whether the men could afford it. No matter what, their boyfriends, fiancés, or husbands paid for evenings out, for doctor visits, and often for luxury items such as jewelry and designer sunglasses. When they married, men paid women a large bride price, a sum of money up to $10,000 that was hers to spend as she liked. Married men usually gave their wives stipends, even if the wives had their own jobs.

In short, it was not the injection of money into a sexual relationship that defined it as prostitution. . . . Nor was “prostitution” even necessarily about sex, since a woman could be labeled a prostitute when there was no proof that she was sexually active at all. For example, sometimes Zeid and Lina would have disputes over whether a particular friend of Lina’s was a “prostitute” or not. Zeid, for example, claimed that one of Lina’s childhood friends was a prostitute because she drove around alone after midnight. . .

Note: language issues are covered in the article, such as the use of the English word prostitute to distinguish certain meanings from those carried by Arabic words.

Share

Tags: , ,

‘Economic’ an insult only when applied to migrants: Israel builds fences to keep them out

4 February 2010 in migration by laura agustin | No comments | print print

Melilla-Morocco fence

Fences and walls are still seen as a reasonable barrier to keep unwanted migrants out. Along the Mexico-US border, between Morocco and Spain’s colony of Melilla and now on two of Israel’s borders: a physical barrier to stop migrants identified as ‘economic’ from getting past. It seems strange that this adjective, referring to migrants’ desire to make money, should become a negative term, when all of life is suffused with the message that we must make lots of money and buy lots of stuff in order to be successful. Some people in Europe cite the fear that national characters will be lost and authentic cultures spoilt if too many outsiders get in. Those ideas are overt in the reasoning of Israel defending the building of fences to keep migrants out.


Israel orders new fence to keep out African migrants

12 january 2010

Ben Lynfield, The Independent

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the construction of two massive fences along his country’s southern border with Egypt in a bid to keep out African asylum seekers he claims are threatening the country’s Jewish character. The barrier will also thwart terrorists from infiltrating the porous border, according to Mr. Netanyahu. “We are talking about a strategic decision to guarantee the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. The prime minister insisted that the step will not stop refugees in dire need from reaching Israel, saying that the country would “remain open” to those with a genuine claim.

But critics dispute this. “This nationalist and racist rhetoric is divorced from reality,” said Dov Khenin, a left-wing member of the Knesset. He added that it was “intended to frighten the Israelis that ‘the Africans are coming’. Sudanese and Eritreans make up many of the about 20,000 asylum seekers to reach Israel via Egypt since 2005.

The project is expected to cost $270m, and will cover two parts of the border, near the city of Eilat and on the edge of the Gaza strip. Although the army began planning the fence in 2005, Mr. Netanyahu’s backing for it now is part of a wider crackdown against the influx, which refugee-rights activists say has dropped somewhat recently because of Israel’s policy of immediate returns of refugees to Egypt and shootings of refugees along the border by Egyptian troops.

The government insists the asylum seekers are economic migrants seeking a higher standard of living, but the refugees themselves often have harrowing tales of persecution in their home countries and Egypt. Egyptian police killed at least 28 Sudanese refugees during a protest in 2005, the year people began trickling to Israel. Egypt has also come under criticism for forcibly repatriating refugees to Eritrea and Sudan, where human-rights groups say they face imprisonment and even torture.

To justify its often harsh approach, the Israeli government has been repeatedly playing on the core fears of public opinion. Tzahi Hanegbi, the chairman of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committee, told Israel Radio yesterday that there is no alternative to building the fence. “The infiltration of the migrants is threatening the very existence of Israel and its character,” he said. The country defines itself as both a Jewish and democratic state, something its leaders believe depends on maintaining the country’s present clear Jewish majority.

But critics of the government believe that it is contriving the threat. They note that the government itself issues visas each year to 120,000 non-Jewish migrant workers who arrive at Israel’s borders legally and that hundreds of thousands among the wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to reach the country during the 1990s were not Jewish. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: , , , ,

MSM, some sex workers, want services without being counted and outed, Kenya

21 December 2009 in sex work by laura agustin | 10 comments | print print

‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’

Stigma for homosexuals is strong in Kenya, as this earlier story showed. The issue in these excerpts is the government’s belief that before it can provide HIV-prevention services to these men they have to be identified, surveyed and counted. But, as often happens, those to be researched don’t want to have to identify themselves to authorities when homosexuality is against the law in Kenya. Seems obvious, no?

Kenya: New survey to inform HIV programming for MSM

Photo IRIN

Irin Plus News
10 November 2009

Nairobi: A planned national survey of men who have sex with men (MSM) will be the first step in the government’s plan to incorporate this high-risk group into the country’s HIV programme, a senior government official has said. “We have continued to ignore this group of people yet they are responsible for a big chunk of new HIV infections; we have resolved as a government that we cannot sit back and wait for things to get out of hand,” said Nicholas Muraguri, head of the National AIDS and Sexually transmitted infections Control Programme (NASCOP). . . .

HIV programming for MSM is extremely limited despite the country’s national strategic plan for HIV/AIDS classing them as a “most at-risk population”. “We cannot do this [provide HIV programmes for MSM] without knowing roughly how many they are and what special needs they require; I hope the survey that we will embark on will help us answer some of these questions,” Muraguri said.

He noted that the survey - due to start in December and last six months – will attempt to discover information such as the specific sexual health risks and needs of MSM, MSM “hot spots” around the country, and the number of MSM-friendly health facilities available. It will use respondent-driven sampling, recruiting openly gay men to reach out to other MSM who may not be out of the closet, and using existing MSM-friendly facilities to help conduct the research. . . .

Joshua* is a male commercial sex worker in Nairobi who recently received training from NASCOP on reaching out to his peers with HIV/AIDS messages. “Today I talked to 75 male commercial sex workers – 40 of them are HIV-positive but they do not know what to do,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. “Many are homeless after being kicked out of their homes due to stigma.” Joshua hopes the survey will enable the government and NGOs to provide more services to MSM.

“Currently at a clinic in Nairobi, we are given one bottle of [water-based] lubricant to last three months but you know as a commercial sex worker, you finish it in a week,” he added. “So it means for the remaining time, you engage in sex without the lubricant, putting yourself at great risk.”

He noted that there was also a lack of sufficient knowledge about the risks associated with HIV and anal sex in the general population. “Many women [clients] approach us for anal sex wrongly believing that it lowers their chances of getting infected,” he said. “Everybody should be educated on the dangers of this kind of sex because it seems people have the wrong perception.”

However, not all MSM are as enthusiastic about the prospect of being counted and questioned by a government that has thus far shown little support for the rights of MSM. “People in this country are still very homophobic and we are stigmatized a lot; who will want to come out to agree that he is a homosexual? Let them address issues of stigma first,” said Donald*, who has not come out of the closet. “How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in?”

“I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us,” he added. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: , , , ,

Exiting in the opposite direction: from maids to sex workers in Ethiopia

15 October 2009 in migration, sex work by laura agustin | 11 comments | print print

Pious commentary on prostitution often revolves around the concept of Exit Strategies: getting out of the sex industry. Everyone agrees that anyone who doesn’t want to sell sex shouldn’t feel forced to and should be helped to get out. Quite right. And what about people who’d like exit strategies to get out of other unpleasing jobs? Many assume that prostitution is particularly difficult to get out of, especially ensnaring and fraught with obstacles, even when there are no exploiters stopping people from changing occupations (pimps or traffickers). Obviously when people are too poor, not only in terms of money but also in terms of social capital – contacts, information, resources, ideas – it is misleading to talk about ‘choice’, as though a lot of easy alternatives were lying about. I usually talk about preference, instead: the fact that those with limited options nevertheless can prefer one to another.

In this story from Ethiopia, maids in a rotten situation sometimes prefer sex work, possibly another rotten situation but in a different way they might tolerate better. Those so worried about prostitutes being locked in to brothels often don’t notice that the job of live-in maid usually involves being available to employer-families around the clock, having tiny unprivate spaces for themselves with no use of telephone or internet, being loaned out to employers’ friends and getting a single day off a week, or maybe one day and another afternoon. There are better situations and worse ones, so it is possible that switching to sex work, even if people don’t like it, can bring advantages like more flexible time in which to figure out what to do next. As the person from DKT-Ethiopia says, the beginning, when people know least, is when they are most vulnerable.

ETHIOPIA: Maids, condoms and kerosene

africanpress, 3 October 2009

Addis Ababa – The life of a domestic worker in Ethiopia is rarely an easy one. Often escaping a deeply impoverished existence in the rural areas, these women find themselves in employment hundreds of miles away from their hometowns as maids – or serategnas in the national language, Amharic.

A lack of education, minimal opportunity for normal interaction with society and anecdotal evidence of sexual activity and abuse have led health workers to classify domestic workers as a high-risk group for the contraction of HIV.

  • “Many are coming from rural areas and they do not have awareness; many are sexually active with guards and are also frequently raped by their masters or their master’s children”
  • “They go to night school and they might have affairs with their classmates,”
  • ”The anecdotal evidence is that many domestic workers become sex workers”

Another potential pitfall for domestic workers is commercial sex work, which they frequently enter into if they run into problems with their employers. While sometimes preferable, the terms of employment are nevertheless incredibly harsh, with a working day of 18 hours, a paltry monthly salary of between US$9 and $15, and one day off per month.

“The anecdotal evidence is that many domestic workers become sex workers… this is one of the exit paths for them,” said Ken Divelbess, project coordinator of DKT-Ethiopia. “There is very limited evidence about domestic workers in general; it could be 5 percent who become sex workers, it could be 90 percent.

“It is critical [to reach them] as we believe that the first month as a sex worker is the most dangerous, as that is when people can take advantage.”

Share

Tags: , ,

What Vice Squads do to stop street prostitution, Cape Town

5 October 2009 in sex work by laura agustin | 1 comment | print print

What an old-fashioned term Vice Squad sounds. I imagined, foolishly, that any contemporary police force would look for a blander, more politically correct term: Orderly Cities, or Safe Streets. But no, right there in Cape Town, South Africa, they are setting up a Vice Squad to get rid of prostitution, on the grounds that it attracts other crimes like money laundering. The vices that Vice Squads address involve drugs, alcohol, commercial sex including pornography and gambling. Even the word vice sounds dated to me.

Many people new to sex-industry debates don’t know what anti-prostitution laws actually mean for sex workers: what police do to stop their activities. I posted a video showing street round-ups in Spain not long ago. Here are tactics summarised by a Cape Town police official, relating only to street prostitution. These plans go directly against a court order obtained by SWEAT (Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce) preventing police and the city’s officers from detaining prostitutes without proceeding to prosecution. That’s another story; here I’ve included only excerpts from an article by Murray Williams in the Cape Argus, 28 September 2009. Note: 500 Rand = 44.6 euros.

        ‘The City of Cape Town has launched a vice squad to crack down on prostitutes working the streets of the city’s suburbs – and their clients can also expect harsher treatment. As part of the city’s new strategy, it also plans to arrest the sex workers’ clients, instead of just giving them spot fines as is the current practice. . . These officers would be specially trained to carry out surveillance on prostitutes, to arrest them and ensure their successful prosecution.

  • 18 prostitutes were arrested along the main road through Bellville, Goodwood and Parow on Friday night.
  • This week the squad plans to focus on the city’s other notorious red light areas. . .
    Smith said the police . . . would specifically aim to prosecute.
  • “we are going to document these cases very carefully,” Smith explained. “In the past, [prostitutes] have lied about the details. So during the 12 hours that we are allowed to detain them, we will be checking up on their addresses, to ensure that we can compel them to pay their fines.” The fines were R500 for a first offence, R1000 for a second offence and R1500 for a third offence.
  • the city would be photographing the prostitutes on their arrest, to enable officers to charge them accordingly for repeat offences.
  • . . . the city would also be increasing the fines. . . [to] R1000 for a first offence, R2500 for a second offence and a “non-admission-of-guilt” charge for a third offence, meaning they would not have the option of paying a fine but would have to appear in court..

. . . “We want to find out why these cases are being thrown out, and what evidentiary chain is necessary. We will then train these staffers to get the evidence, so can successfully get convictions” . . .  Prosecution of prostitutes is governed by both the national Sexual Offences Act and the city’s bylaws preventing “nuisances in the streets and public places”.’

Share

Tags: , ,

Ghana Sex Workers Hold Elections

11 August 2009 in sex work by laura agustin | 3 comments | print print

This story is an odd mix that I’m posting because we rarely see anything like it from West Africa. The demand for sex workers’ rights is encouraging, but what about those chairpersons? If anyone has corroborating information, please share it.

Sex workers hold elections

Spectator,  8 August 2009

Accra: Spectator investigations have revealed that a well organised sex trade is currently in place in some parts of the capital, an indication that sex workers are gunning to legitimise the flesh trade to demand their rights.

Indeed, the infamous ladies of the night have been observed to be organising their vocation in a more closely knit fashion and some of the emerging groups have held elections to select executive officers to run and co-ordinate affairs of members.

Talking to The Spectator, one of the sex workers (with a fixed address), on condition of anonymity, said the elected officers of the group she belongs to include a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer, supported by a disciplinary committee. “The executives have been constituted as a result of challenges we face in this business,” she said. According to her, if she was seen talking to the press she would be slapped with a fine of GH¢50 and two bottles of schnapps for divulging information to an outsider.

In an answer as to the type of customers they serviced, she said most of the customers belong to the lower income group who are faced with accommodation problems.”People who sleep in groups or in the open and therefore cannot host women, find solace in our rooms,” she said.

She, however, admitted that apart from such groups, other people like married men who are fed up with their wives visit their abode and never regret it. Some of the customers, she said, preferred to bond with the women they liked most and visited them as friends, but such customers are bad business and cannot be entertained.” According to her, when such a customer wanted a different woman for a change and matters were not handled carefully “it often erupted into full-scale-verbal exchanges and even degenerated into blows”.

The sex worker said sometimes the low patronage of their services was an indication that a customer has become fed up with his regular woman. Under such circumstances the magajia‘s (chairperson’s) duty is to liaise with other clients facing the same form of disinterest for a swap of partners. “This strategy makes us look fresh to the new man and business picks up again,” she said, adding that “the trade is such that when a fresh young lady also appears on the scene and all the attention of customers is on her, she is given a directive by the magajia to close ‘business’ early so that other people will get their fair share of the cake. “Failure to comply with the directive means an automatic transfer from the base to another place so that other people’s businesses will not suffer,” she added, implying that there are some forms of stringent business edicts that cannot be defied.

Another revelation was that all the sex workers who happen to have either husbands or serious boyfriends must make them stay away during business hours and admit them only after mid-night to warm the bed of their partners. “There is no room for maternity leave as our rooms are hot cakes for other potential sex workers,” said the woman. “Both pregnant and lactating mothers are made to find elsewhere because when children are brought into the picture it brings about many difficulties.” According to her, “Children beyond a certain age are encouraged to excuse their mothers by hanging around with neighbours when a session is in progress or taking a stroll until business is over”. She said if they are young and fast asleep in the room, they are not bothered and business could still go on with out any fuss.

When asked whether she knew her HIV status, the lady answered in the negative, contending that “having stayed in the business for long, I am too much afraid to go for voluntary counseling and testing (VCT)”. She said in the past, they charged special rates for ‘raw’ sex, but ever since the menace of HIV/AIDS dawned on them, no matter the money or the status of the person, “we fit you with a condom before any sex act takes place.”

Some of the flash points for the commercial sex workers who parade the streets in Accra are the Cantonment area especially near the Akufo-Addo Circle, Danquah Circle and surrounding areas and the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and its immediate environs. The sex workers hide in the dark and show themselves when they see men coming, with some boldly calling up saying, “Do you want to know the colour of my underwear?”

When a sex worker hooks a customer who doesn’t want to follow her home, she takes him to a cheap hotel where the customer pays a fee of between GH¢5 and GH¢10 for short time of about 30 minutes, so says this lady of the night. For those men who cannot afford that ‘luxury’ they are bundled into nearby kiosks, urinals or makeshift brothels operated by small drinking spots for quick service.

King Trinity Akpalie, executive director of Great Vision Africa, a non-governmental organisation based in Accra which is committed to promoting abstinence and faithfulness against the spread of HIV in Ghana has this to say: “Such people are living in a fool’s paradise with their reliance on condoms as a preventive measure against the HIV/AIDS virus”.

According to him, the American Foundation for AIDS Research had stated that 20 per cent of American condom users were infected with HIV due to misuse and manufacturers’ deficiency. Mr Akpalie said research indicated that the level of education of users influenced their ability to use condom correctly. “This puts the developing world; especially the low come groups, who are, predominantly illiterates and patronise the services of sex workers, at a higher risk of contracting the HIV virus while using condom,” he said.

Ghana’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) released in 2006, which monitored the situation of children, women and men in the assessment of condom use in Ghana came out with the finding that the likelihood of engaging in higher risk sex and using a condom increased with the people’s level of education. The survey said 25 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men aged between 15-49 with primary education used a condom during their last high-risk sex encounters in the year before the MICS, while 48 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men with secondary and higher levels of education used a condom.

Share

Tags: , ,

Taxi-drivers protest police discrimination against migrant sex workers, Mallorca: Taxistas denuncian discriminación policial contra prostitutas migrantes

7 August 2009 in migration, sex work by laura agustin | 3 comments | print print

Taxi drivers in Palma de Mallorca have complained about excessive police controls intended to dissuade migrant prostitutes from entering Magaluf, a tourist area. More specifically, they accused police of targeting taxis carrying women from sub-Saharan West Africa (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, etc). This is obvious discrimination based on an idea that sex workers from this part of the world are more aggressive about getting business, because they work in groups, plant themselves in front of cars to talk to drivers and so on. The unnamed group here are the clients they are travelling to get to, so I’ve put a picture of guys here.

La idea de que ‘las nigerianas’ son las más agresivas es, claro, discriminación flagrante. Viene de su estilo de trabajar: en grupos, plantándose frente a los carros para hablar con los choferes. El grupo invisible que no está nombrado en este reportaje son los clientes, así que pongo una imágen de chicos aquí.

Taxistas de Palma, molestos por los controles sobre las prostitutas, diariodemallorca.es

I. M. Calvià: Taxistas de Palma han expresado su malestar por la excesiva rigurosidad de los controles policiales que ha habido en los últimos días a la entrada de Magaluf, unos controles que, según el relato de varios profesionales, iban encaminados a disuadirlos de transportar prostitutas a la zona turística de este núcleo calvianer.

La explicación ofrecida a este diario por algunos conductores fue corroborada posteriormente por el presidente de la Asociación de Autónomos del Taxi de Mallorca, Gabriel Moragues, quien detalló que esta semana han mantenido una reunión con representantes municipales para pedir explicaciones acerca de estos hechos.

En esta reunión, los taxistas reprocharon que la minuciosidad de los registros se centrase únicamente en aquellos vehículos que transportaban mujeres subsaharianas. Según destacó Moragues, los representantes municipales les pidieron disculpas y les garantizaron que no se volvería a producir una situación así.
Los conductores consultados por este diario relataron que en los controles policiales objeto de polémica se paraba a los taxis que llevaban mujeres subsaharianas, se las obligaba a bajar y eran registradas por policías equipados con guantes y mascarillas, ante el temor a un posible contagio por gripe A. A continuación, de acuerdo a esta versión, los agentes procedían a inspeccionar con esmero la documentación del taxi.

Share

Tags: , , , , , ,

Tax on sex work where prostitution is illegal? Uganda

30 July 2009 in sex work by laura agustin | No comments | print print

Here’s yet another illogical idea: tax sex workers even though their work is illegal. And some sex workers say they would be happy to pay the tax if it stopped arrests. I believe this is better described as extorsion: you pay us and we’ll let you conduct business – unless they somehow legalise sex work as well.

Tax for sex workers proposed 

2 July 2009, Walakira Nyanzi, Ultimate Media


Commercial sex services in Kampala and the nearby districts are likely to cost more following an introduction of an annual operating fee by the local authorities. The authorities have ordered commercial sex workers in divisions to pay 100,000 shillings before they are allowed to operate.

The Resident District Commissioner (RDC) of Kawempe, Edward Sekabanja says the move is aimed at reducing prostitution in Kampala and other towns. He says Kampala, Mukono, Wakiso and Mpigi RDC’s in their recent general meeting proposed for the new tax and urged local authorities to implement it.

Sekabanja also urges government to come out with the law that will legalize tax for sex workers. Sex work or prostitution is still a crime in Uganda. Sekabanja says there are more than 5,000 sex workers permanently stationed in Kampala alone. The RDC says town councils will be able to collect millions of shillings if the sex work tax is fully introduced in all town councils.

According to research this reporter conducted from the main sports of Kampala where prostitutes operates most, sex workers earn an average of 15,000 shillings daily. This writer talked to most of the sex workers in Kampala but the majority of them said the tax is illegal but they are ready to pay it to avoid arrests.

Share

Tags: , , ,

West Africa’s children: are they trafficked? What are child rights?

6 July 2009 in migration, trafficking by laura agustin | 1 comment | print print

Young girl in Benin’s largest market in Cotonou. Whether she is an economic migrant or victim of trafficking is central to a study of children’s migration in West Africa. Photo Phuong Tran/IRIN

Research into how ‘child trafficking’ works is revealing the flaws inherent in this notion. Recently I published a post on some of the cultural contradictions that impede research with migrant children in the US. The following article confirms problems in West Africa. I’ve highlighted significant new ideas from people questioning issues in the region.

WEST AFRICA: But is it really trafficking? 

Lomé, Togo, 6 January 2009 (IRIN) – For years children’s rights groups have been fighting child trafficking in West Africa. Now, some of those groups are questioning how children have benefited from anti-trafficking interventions as they launch a project to understand children’s perilous migration throughout West Africa.

The nearly one-million dollar initiative led by UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Organization for Migration (IOM), and NGOs Plan International, Save the Children Sweden, and Terre des Hommes will conduct national and regional workshops and focus groups to produce a 2010 report on the reasons behind children’s regional migration. Terre des Hommes’ Olivier Feneyrol told IRIN assigning blame for children’s exploitation on rogue traffickers is misdirected.

Mobility

Largely absent from the planning documents of the project, “Mobility of children and youth in West Africa,” is the word trafficking. Rather, partners undertaking the study in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and Togo speak of regional mobility.

“Children have been moving around the region for centuries and working just as long. That is the cultural reality here,” said Feneyrol, regional adviser for the West Africa office of non-profit organisation Terre des Hommes. “Some of that movement and work is dangerous. For years, we have approached this problem as a fight against trafficking, but this has not really benefited children. We have to move beyond focusing exclusively on trafficking to a more global strategy where we take into account children’s reality.”

Child rights groups and law enforcement agencies are fighting something they have not truly understood, Feneyrol told IRIN. “Do we really know the varied forms of migration? Who are the intermediaries? How are these voyages financed? What are the conditions that children leave behind? “Why are they taking risks and what are they searching? How can we fight a phenomenon we do not truly understand?” Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: , , , , , , ,

« Older entries § Newer entries »