World P4P News

In 2014, the Canadian parliament, then dominated by the country's Conservative Party, passed Bill C-36, which for the first time made paying for sex a crime. The new law also outlawed receiving a material benefit from the sale of sex, as well as the advertising of sexual service.

The bill was misleadingly titled the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, but the actual aim of the legislation was to serve as a first step toward stamping out sex work altogether in Canada.

When the 'Liberal' Party won a majority shortly after the bill took effect, the new government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to review the effects of the law after five years.

With 2019 coming to a close, that five-year wait is also up, and Canadian sex worker rights activists say that the 'Liberal' government has done nothing to evaluate or reform the law -- which they say has put sex workers' lives at risk , and been a gift to sexual predators.

According to a VICE report on the law's effects, Canadian sex workers now can't work in brothels, can't hire security and can't properly screen clients, because those clients generally will not give their true identities for fear of arrest.

A spokesperson for Canada's Ministry of Justice said only that the law mandates that a committee study the effects of Bill C-36, and that committee is now being formed.

China is to end a punishment system for prostitution that allowed police to hold sex workers and their clients in custody for up to two years in prison camps it euphemistically called 'education centres'. Detainees were forced to work, allegedly making toys and household goods.

The detention system will come to an end on 29 December. Those still in custody will be released, according to Xinhua, China's state media.

Prostitution remains illegal in China. It carries punishments of up to 15 days in detention and fines of up to 5,000 yuan (£546).

A 2013 report by Human Rights Watch interviewed 140 sex workers, clients, police and specialists and found that many sex workers were beaten by police in an attempt to coerce confessions.

China isn't totally abandoning the idea of 're-educatio'n. Authorities in the country claim a number of camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang are voluntary education camps that help to combat extremism.

Australia's Northern Territory Parliament has voted to decriminalise sex work through the Sex Industry Bill 2019 . The Bill decriminalises brothels, soliciting and indoor sex work, and gives sex workers access to workplace health and safety protections already extended to other workers in the state.

CEO of Scarlet Alliance, Jules Kim said :

This is a momentous day for all sex workers and sets a positive example that sex workers are valued members of the community, deserving of rights and protections. We applaud the NT Government for listening to sex workers and the evidence in fully decriminalising sex work in the NT. Sex work is work and it is fantastic that it is finally being recognised as such. We hope that these critical reforms will demonstrate the importance of best practice partnerships between sex workers and government and lead to similar campaigns for the decriminalisation of sex work in other states and territories throughout Australia.

This past summer, without much fanfare, Facebook updated their censorship rules concerning sexual expression on the company's platforms, including Instagram.

The new language, under the guise of preventing sexual solicitation, restricts even further the posts that sex workers are allowed to share, making them even more exposed to targeted harassment campaigns by anti-sex crusaders.

Among the new things that could get someone Instagram's account flagged and/or removed for Sexual Solicitation: the eggplant or peach emoji in conjunction with any statement referring to being horny; nude pictures with digital alterations or emojis covering female nipples and buttocks.

The new rules include:

Do not post:

Attempted coordination of or recruitment for adult sexual activities, including but not limited to:

Filmed sexual activities Pornographic activities, strip club shows, live sex performances, erotic dances Sexual, erotic, or tantric massages

Explicit sexual solicitation by, including but not limited to the following, offering or asking for:

Sex or sexual partners Sex chat or conversations Nude photos/videos/imagery

Content that meets both of the following criteria:

Criteria 1: Offer or Ask

Content implicitly or indirectly offers or asks for:

Nude imagery, or Sex or sexual partners, or Sex chat conversations

Criteria 2: Suggestive Elements

Content makes the aforementioned offer or ask using one of the following sexually suggestive elements:

Contextually specific and commonly sexual emojis or emoji strings, or Regional sexualized slang, or Mentions or depictions of sexual activity (including hand drawn, digital, or real world art) such as: sexual roles, sex positions, fetish scenarios, state of arousal, act of sexual intercourse or activity (sexual penetration or self-pleasuring), or Imagery of real individuals with nudity covered by human parts, objects, or digital obstruction, including long shots of fully nude butts

Websites based in Finaland and used by sex workers worldwide to advertise and share information with each other have been closed down following a judicial warrant by Spanish police. Spanish police issued the warrant on 26th March, since which point the websites have been unavailable.

The websites, Sihteeriopisto (Secretary College) and the international counterpart, sexworknet, were launched in Finland but maintenance was moved overseas when the sale of sexual services was outlawed in Finland in 2003.

Sex workers report the website had a private forum for sex workers only, which was used to share information and warnings about bad clients. A sex worker in Spain said:

The sex workers are shocked. The website had forum, where sex workers were sharing warnings about bad clients, robbery. It had a private area for sex workers only. There are of course other websites, but none of them has a forum. We lost the platform, where we could share safety tips, where we could communicate and support each other.

Amsterdam Council has banned guided tours of its red light area from the 1st January next year.

The red-light district usually sits quite high on a tourist's list of must-sees when visiting this interesting city but according to The New York Times, Amsterdam's deputy mayor, Udo Kock, recently made a statement explaining it's outdated to allow tourists to gape at sex workers' windows and view them as an attraction.

He claims that as the number of tourists walking through the red-light district grows, the amount of local paying clients decreases. Sex workers then lose business.

Tour companies are a bit put out and claim that tourists will still find themselves strolling the red-light district, but without guides reminding them to keep quiet and refrain from taking photographs.