Conflicting Rights: How the Prohibition of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Infringes the Right to Health of Female Sex Workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

While repressive laws and policies in relation to sex work have the potential to undermine HIV prevention efforts, empirical research on their interface has been lacking. In 2008, Cambodia introduced antitrafficking legislation ostensibly designed to suppress human trafficking and sexual exploitation. 

Based on empirical research with female sex workers, this article examines the impact of the new law on vulnerability to HIV and other adversehealth outcomes. Following the introduction of the law, sex workers reported being displaced to streets and guesthouses, impacting their ability to negotiate safe sex and increasing exposure to violence. Disruption of peer networks and associated mobility also reduced access to outreach, condoms, and health care. 

Our results are consistent with a growing body of research which associates the violation of sex workers' human rightswith adverse public health outcomes. Despite the successes of the last decade, Cambodia's AIDS epidemic remains volatile and the current legal environment has the potential to undermine prevention efforts by promoting stigma and discrimination, impeding prevention uptake and coverage, and increasing infections. Legal and policy responses which seek to protect the rights of the sexually exploited should not infringe the right to healthof sex workers.

Full article at: http://goo.gl/QS0P3s

By: Maher L1, Dixon T2, Phlong P3, Mooney-Somers J4, Stein E5, Page K6.

• 1Professor, Program Head and NHMRC Senior Research Fellow at the Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity in the Faculty of Medicine at UNSW Australia in Sydney, Australia.
• 2Student in the Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia.
• 3Anthropologist at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
• 4Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia.
• 5Academic Coordinator in Global Health Sciences at the University of California San Francisco, USA. Kimberly Page is Professor and Chief of Epidemiology in the Division of Biostatistics and Preventive Medicine at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences and Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
• 6Professor and Chief of Epidemiology in the Division of Biostatistics and Preventive Medicine at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences and Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. 

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