THE HUMAN COST OF ‘CRUSHING’ THE MARKET CRIMINALIZATION OF SEX WORK IN NORWAY Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 7 million people who campaign for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all. Our vision is for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards. We are independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion and are funded mainly by our membership and public donations. © Amnesty International 2016 Except where otherwise noted, content in this document is licensed under a Creative Commons Cover photo: Empty street in Oslo in area where sex is sold. (attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives, international 4.0) licence. © Samfoto Dagsavisen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode For more information please visit the permissions page on our website: www.amnesty.org Where material is attributed to a copyright owner other than Amnesty International this material is not subject to the Creative Commons licence. First published in 2016 by Amnesty International Ltd Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street London WC1X 0DW, UK Index: EUR/36/4034/2016 Original language: English amnesty.org CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 METHODOLOGY 14 1. HUMAN RIGHTS AND COMMERCIAL SEX IN NORWAY 16 1.1 “The Nordic Model” 18 1.2 Norway’s Human Rights obligations 19 2. HOW NORWAY HARDENED ITS APPROACH TOWARDS COMMERCIAL SEX 21 2.1 Changing demographics: An increasingly internationalized context 21 2.2 Expansion and contraction: the developing indoor market and subsequent crackdowns 22 2.3 The “threat” of foreign prostitution and human trafficking concerns 23 2.4 The introduction of the ban on purchasing sex 25 2.5 Current legal framework 26 3. ‘CRUSHING’ THE MARKET: POLICE ENFORCEMENT OF SEX WORK LAWS AND THE PENALIZATION OF SEX WORKERS 28 3.1 Preventative policing and ‘stress methods’ 29 3.2 The ‘STOP Group’: The Anti-Trafficking taskforce of Oslo Police District 30 3.3 Operation Homeless 31 3.4 The mainstreaming of eviction as a police response to sex work in Oslo 33 3.5 Sex workers subject to forced eviction in Oslo 33 3.6 What is Forced Eviction? 34 3.7 Police accountability 39 3.8 Discriminatory targeting of migrant women and/or women with fewer resources 40 3.9 Sex workers rendered homeless and/or vulnerable to exploitation as a result of eviction 42 3.10 Oslo police use sex workerS’ reports of violence to facilitate their eviction and/or their deportation 44 3.11 Surveillance and monitoring of sex workers 46 3.12 Identity checks and exclusion notices 47 3.13 Fines for refusing to provide address or other informaton 49 3.14 Condoms as evidence 50 4. VIOLENCE AGAINST SEX WORKERS 52 4.1 Perpetrators of violence 53 THE HUMAN COST OF ‘CRUSHING’ THE MARKET: CRIMINALIZATION OF SEX WORK IN NORWAY 3 Amnesty International 4.2 Variations by location and nationality 54 4.3 Sexual violence 55 4.4 Barriers to reporting violence to police 55 4.5 Perceptions and expectations of police 58 4.6 Help provided by police 59 4.7 Anonymous reporting 59 5. THE IMPACT OF LAWS AND POLICING ON HOW SEX WORKERS OPERATE 61 5.1 Sex workers’ risk reduction strategies 61 5.2 Location of the sale of sex 63 5.3 Working with others 64 5.4 A ‘buyer’s market’: bargaining power reduced 65 5.5 The impact of the ban against purchasing sex 68 6. THE TENSIONS BETWEEN ANTI-SEX WORK, ANTI-TRAFFICKING AND ANTI-IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT 70 6.1 Human trafficking in Norway 71 6.2 Norway’s Human Rights obligations on prostitution and human trafficking 72 6.3 Prevention of human trafficking 74 6.4 Conflation of human trafficking and sex work 75 6.5 Claimed reductions in levels of sex work and trafficking in Norway 75 6.6 A human rights-based approach to anti-trafficking 77 6.7 Identification and protection of victims of trafficking 80 6.8 Prosecution of perpetrators 84 7. STIGMA AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SEX WORKERS 87 7.1 Public attitudes towards sex work in Norway 88 7.2 Research on Public Attitudes 88 7.3 Media representations 89 7.4 Impact of public stigma on people who sell sex 91 7.5 Profiling and Exclusions by hotels, bars and taxis 92 7.6 Harmful stereotypes and human rights 95 8. RECOMMENDATIONS 96 THE HUMAN COST OF ‘CRUSHING’ THE MARKET: CRIMINALIZATION OF SEX WORK IN NORWAY 4 Amnesty International GLOSSARY BUYER/CUSTOMER/CLIENT: A person that pays for consensual sexual services provided by a sex worker. CISGENDER: Cisgender is a term used to describe a person whose gender identity corresponds with the gender they were assigned at birth. CRIMINALIZATION: The process of prohibiting consensual adult sex work and attaching punishment or penalties through criminal laws. This includes laws that punish selling or buying of sex and the organization of sex work It also refers to other laws not specific to sex work which are either applied in a discriminatory way against people involved in sex work, and/or have a disproportionate impact on sex workers which can in practice work as a de facto prohibition. Such laws could include those on vagrancy or loitering. Similarly, immigration laws can be applied in a discriminatory way against sex workers as a de facto prohibition on sex work by migrants. DECRIMINALIZATION OF SEX The removal, repeal and cessation of the above-mentioned WORK: criminalization measures. It does not refer to the decriminalization of human trafficking, forced labour or any other exploitative practices; violence against sex workers; rape and sexual abuse; or the sexual exploitation and abuse of children. ERADICATION OF SEX WORK: Used in this report to describe a public policy approach that seeks to substantially reduce/eradicate all forms of commercial sex through the enforcement of criminal and other laws. Also known as prohibition. HUMAN The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in TRAFFICKING/TRAFFICKING: Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (also known as the UN Trafficking Protocol) provides the internationally accepted definition of trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other means of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purposes of exploitation.” THE HUMAN COST OF ‘CRUSHING’ THE MARKET: CRIMINALIZATION OF SEX WORK IN NORWAY 5 Amnesty International Human trafficking, including in to the sex sector, is not the same as sex work. PENALIZATION: The use of other laws, policies and administrative regulations that have the same intent or effect as criminal laws in punishing, controlling and undermining the autonomy of people who sell sex, because of their involvement in sex work. These measures include, but are not limited to, the imposition of fines, detention for the purposes of “rehabilitation”, deportation, loss of child custody, disentitlement from social benefits, and infringement on rights to privacy and autonomy. SOCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS: Used to describe agencies which operate with the purpose of providing social services- such as health care, drop-in centres, legal advice and other forms of practical support directly to people who sell sex. These agencies include those funded by government and those which operate using charitable fundraising. SEX WORK: The consensual exchange of sexual services between adults for some form of remuneration – money or goods – with the terms agreed between the seller and the buyer. SEX WORKER: Adults (persons who are 18 years of age and older) of all genders who receive money or goods in exchange for the consensual provision of sexual services, either regularly or occasionally. For the purposes of this report, it includes those who sell sex consensually but may not necessarily identify as “sex workers”. THIRD PARTIES: Individuals who assist with facilitating the sale and purchase of sex. Distinctions should be made between exploitative third parties and those who provide support services to sex workers at their request (for example, security guards, secretaries, advertisers). TRANSGENDER: Individuals whose gender expression and/or gender identity differs from conventional expectations based on the physical sex they were assigned at birth. A transgender woman is a woman who was assigned the male sex at birth but has a female gender identity; a transgender man is a man who was assigned the female sex at birth but has a male gender identity. Not all transgender individuals identify as male or female; transgender is a term that includes members of third genders, as well as individuals who identify as more than one gender or no gender at all. Transgender individuals may or may not choose to undergo gender reassignment treatment. THE HUMAN COST OF ‘CRUSHING’ THE MARKET: CRIMINALIZATION OF SEX WORK IN NORWAY 6 Amnesty International EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “Last year was really hell for me.” That’s how Mercy, a Nigerian sex worker, described her experiences of discrimination, social exclusion and human rights abuses in Norway. Her story culminated in her being forcibly evicted from her home in 2014. The fact that Mercy was made homeless, without any due process or notice, constitutes a human rights violation under international law. That the forced eviction occurred as a direct result of Mercy reporting a rape and violent robbery that she was a victim of, makes the treatment she received as a sex worker in Norway even more egregious.