In Lisbon, the City Council is set to implement a „regulatory“ model for „sex work“. If this goes ahead, other municipalities in Portugal may well follow.
Please sign and spread this petition (Google Translate version, the petitition is in Portuguese):
Petição: prostituição não é trabalho!
http://peticaopublica.com/pview.aspx?pi=PT89760
Prostitution is a form of violence against prostituted persons, particularly against women and children. It is a serious social problem, a form of exploitation that subverts the social status and rights of all women.
Our country is governed by the principle of respect for human dignity defined by the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, which obliges to counter the normalization of prostitution and to activate all mechanisms to eliminate the exploitation of prostitution.
Therefore, the Portuguese legal system does not criminalize the person who prostitutes but criminalizes those who exploit prostitution, pimping. According to the Constitutional Court „Such a perspective does not arise from moral prejudices but from the recognition that a legal order guided by values of justice and based on the dignity of the human person should not be mobilized to guarantee, as an expression of freedom of action, situations and activities whose „principle“ is that a person, in any dimension (intellectual, physical or sexual), can be used as a pure instrument or means to the service of others. To this, we are urged, firstly, Article 1 of the Constitution, in substantiating the Portuguese State in the equal dignity of the human person. And it is along this line that Portugal ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Law no. 23/80, DR, Series I of July 26, 1980), as well as 1991, the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (DR, Series I of 10 October 1991). „(Judgment No. 421/16 of 13 July 2017).
The Lisbon City Council violates all national and international human rights principles and obligations when it wants to adopt the term „sex work“, referring to prostitution – either by creating a „local platform for intervention in the area of sex work in the city of Lisbon „, a brothel in Mouraria, or in any other way.
The undersigned consider that the Lisbon City Council can not institutionalize violence, especially against women, can not legitimize prostitution as work, transforming the crime of pimping into a legal business and authorizing the behavior of prostitutes.
These reasons require the intervention of the Lisbon Municipal Assembly, in the scope of its competencies:
– Reject the creation of the ‚local platform for intervention in the area of sex work in the city of Lisbon‘, proposing instead the creation of a municipal intervention platform in the area of prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation and combating trafficking in persons.
– Eliminate the use of the term „sex work“ by municipal bodies, municipal services and enterprises.
– Promote and implement self-regulatory policies for the rejection of exploitation in prostitution and trafficking in persons, committed to the support and protection of their victims, by investing in exit programs, social reintegration, access to housing, education and vocational training, health and social protection.
Well said, dear friends, and best of success!
Banishea 