IWRAW Asia Pacific’s Statement on Sex Workers’ Rights in CEDAW

IWRAW Asia Pacific’s Statement on Sex Workers’ Rights in CEDAW

In response to the Open Letter of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls (SRVAW) on the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Observations on the Seventh Periodic Report of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

On 24 March 2026, the Special Rapporteur on Violence against women and girls published a letter to the CEDAW Committee critiquing their recently delivered Concluding Observations on the Seventh Periodic Report of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

IWRAW Asia Pacific strongly disagrees with the Special Rapporteur’s letter, with specific attention to her misanalysis of CEDAW’s norms and standards, the Committee’s ways of working, and anti-rights narratives.

On ‘Agreed Language’

The Special Rapporteur argues that the term ‘sex work/workers’ is not defined and recognised in international law, an argument previously raised in her 2024 report on ‘Prostitution and violence against women and girls’, where she uses the terms “victims” and “prostituted women and girls” rather than “sex workers”¹ citing the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. The 1949 Convention is an anti-human rights, racist, colonial, and patriarchal document which has come under scrutiny by feminists and mandate holders² for its complete disregard of women’s rights to self-determination and bodily autonomy, and instead reinforcing a protectionist approach to trafficking.

The terms ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker(s)’ has widely been used across multiple UN mandates, including the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls, the Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, and the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, among others.

IWRAW Asia Pacific takes this opportunity to assert that the claim of “sex work being inconsistent with international law” is not supported by the diversity of practice across UN mechanisms. While IWRAW Asia Pacific recognises that the term ‘sex work’ is contested across processes, States and mandates, this contestation—and the argument of the lack of UN- or system-wide accepted language—cannot be used to undermine, violate and deny the human rights, bodily autonomy and agency of sex workers.

On CEDAW’s interpretative function

The CEDAW Committee’s concluding observations to the government of Netherlands are the result of a structured and well established process: the submission of the State party’s report, engagement with shadow reports from diverse civil society actors (including feminist, women’s rights, and sex worker organisations), constructive dialogue with the State party, and collective deliberation among the Committee members.

The CEDAW Committee, like other treaty bodies, is not bound to predicate their monitoring of the Convention based on existing standards, especially in dimensions where rights are yet to be fully realised, and discrimination persists. They are mandated to evolve the interpretation and scope of the Convention to all fields of discrimination—in this case, discrimination against sex workers.

The CEDAW Committee has instituted the rights of sex workers into the scope of the Convention’s framework through the constructive dialogue process and their concluding observations with specific regard to Articles 5, 6, 11, and 12, among others, legally binding States, in line with their obligations under CEDAW, to respect, protect, and fulfil the human rights of all women.

To this extent, IWRAW Asia Pacific firmly asserts that the Committee’s use of the term ‘sex work’ is a legitimate exercise of its interpretive function, a function which the Special Rapporteur, as a fellow United Nations gender equality mandate holder, must respect.

On narratives of ‘exploitation’ and labour rights

The Special Rapporteur claims that the CEDAW Committee’s use of the term ‘sex work’ and their calls for the recognition of sex workers’ rights contradict the Committee’s condemnation of the trafficking of women and girls. This once again reinforces the dangerous conflation of sex work and trafficking which many feminists have long established is counter-productive and harmful to both sex workers and trafficked persons³.

We therefore dispute the position put forward by the Special Rapporteur that adopts a narrative of victimisation which assumes every single person engaged in sex work has been forced into it through trafficking or coercion. This approach frames women in the sex work sector as being entirely without agency. Harm and abuse can occur in any line of work, and claiming that sex work is uniquely damaging and requires paternalistic intervention from the State increases sex workers’ vulnerability by denying them decision-making power over their own lives⁴.

Part of ‘questioning the broader legal and policy debates surrounding prostitution’ is challenging how treating trafficking and sex work as always inextricably linked effectively and legally invisibilises the everyday violence enacted onto sex workers—including rape, assault, theft, unsafe working conditions, low wages, and threats to physical and mental health—by diminishing and dismissin their ‘victimised’ lives as ‘inherently’ violent (i.e. not remediable through law and policy). When their exploitation as workers is denied as such in favour of narrativising them as victims needing rescue and rehabilitation, this disregards the principles of all persons’ rights to self-determination, regardless of gender.

In demanding that sex work is recognised as work, the sex worker rights movement calls for full legal and social recognition of sex work as a form of labour. Sex workers are not passive victims: they are workers who have the right to make choices and negotiate the terms of their labour. They must therefore be included in labour movements and guaranteed the same protections as all workers: safe conditions, fair pay, and the right to organise and unionise. Acknowledging the broader inequalities that shape who has meaningful access to choice and security does not mean rejecting women’s autonomy as a whole.

Labour rights are essential for all workers, regardless of how they feel about their work. Addressing labour exploitation across all sectors, including sex work, is key to advancing human rights and rightfully remains a focus of the CEDAW Committee. Sex workers are rights holders. We ask that the Special Rapporteur recognise that it is critical to challenge the laws, policies, and institutions that deny them their rights, and to ensure they have a direct voice in decisions that affect their lives.

In conclusion, we are deeply concerned by the framing and characterisation of the CEDAW Committee’s conclusions as overstating a State’s legal certainty, and the questioning of it being aligned with international human rights’ normative standards.

The position taken by the Special Rapporteur in this instance is one which is, unfortunately, reflective of the reversals of rights demanded by the anti-rights lobby. It is also an attack on the feminist human rights movements that have given their energy and commitment to building the CEDAW Convention and its Committee over the last 45 years, as well as the mandate of the UNSRVAW since 1994—both mandates which have been crucial to the upholding normative standards of human rights for women in all their diversities.

It is with much regret that we are noting the undermining of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur violence against women and girls. This in turn has undermined the work of the CEDAW Committee, as well as the rights of sex workers: their decisions have been cast aside and their identities have been limited to that of victims of trafficking, which also disables an understanding of the experience of people who are victims and survivors of trafficking.

We reject this overreach by the present Special Rapporteur, in challenging the Committee as it moves forward in implementing its mandates rooted in rights, and seek the rejuvenation of the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls which is grounded in the normative framework of human rights, regardless of arbitrary perspectives of ways in which women should, could or must act.

IWRAW Asia Pacific

9 April 2026

Footnotes

1
A/HRC/56/48: Prostitution and violence against women and girls – Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem, section 3, para 6
2
Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, on trafficking in women, women’s migration and violence against women, submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 1997/44
3
IWRAW Asia Pacific’s Manifesto on Feminist Approaches to Counter Trafficking
4
As noted in IWRAW Asia Pacific’s 2018 document ‘Framework on Rights of Sex Workers and CEDAW’