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.