U.S. Anti-prostitution pledge

On June 20, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the anti-prostitution pledge policy, a provision requiring U.S. organizations to denounce prostitution as a condition for receiving funds to fight HIV/AIDS globally, unconstitutional.  It was a major victory in terms of promoting the rights of sex workers, and allowing HIV prevention to be funded on a wider scale.

Organizations like SANGRAM, though, have been fighting against this policy for years, and even turned down 11 laks (roughly equivalent to $20,000) in funding from USAID because they did not want to be held to this policy, and did not want to be controlled in this way. SANGRAM believes in working to strengthen communities to fight against HIV/AIDS. One op-ed was published by Meena Seshu, the Secretary General of SANGRAM, in 2005 saying that SANGRAM was not going to listen to the U.S. government’s pledge, and would break the contract and return the money they had been given, out of principle. SANGRAM did this not because they believed so strongly in the first amendment, but because SANGRAM was a sex workers collective, and felt that this was an unnecessary burden on the people who were tirelessly fighting to prevent the spread of HIV.

Back in 2005, after the anti-prostitution pledge was passed, a letter was written by Mark Souder, a U.S. Congressman presenting a seemingly straightforward and logical argument—that the US should not fund organizations abroad that promote the trafficking of children and prostitution. The problem with this, though, is that he did not get his facts right, in that he mentioned SANGRAM as a trafficking organization because SANGRAM did not sign the anti-prostitution pledge. As a result, VAMP members were working for a year without pay, but continued to do HIV prevention work for the sake of saving lives.

With the exception of the fact that Souder mentioned SANGRAM as a trafficking organization, I found the rest of the letter fairly logical and making sense. However, I realized that I have socialized to believe that trafficking is wrong (which I still believe), that prostitution is wrong (which I now do not believe), and therefore any policy that aimed to prevent trafficking and prostitution was right and good. However, I was reminded by boss that it’s not right that policymakers in the U.S. can decide that SANGRAM is a trafficking organization without even sending a single email or making a single call to the NGO to figure out what it really does. It does not make sense that U.S. policy makers in Washington could decide what was right and wrong for a sex worker in Sangli, when they don’t know their background and don’t understand what sex workers want. It does not make sense that the US expected SANGRAM to change their policy because they did not understand the difference between prostitution and sex trafficking.

So, while Mark Sounder’s intentions were probably good, the fact that he did not do proper research about what he was advocating for is extremely problematic. But, it’s good that the Supreme Court in this instance did not listen to the Mark Souders of the world, and instead chose to open their minds and choose what was right over what sounds logical.