Stefano Gennarini
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / Nueva York, 11.03.2024).- Governments must decriminalize drug use, prostitution, abortion, and HIV non-disclosure to sexual partners, according to a UN report on the human right to health. But when it comes to alcohol, tobacco, and unhealthy food, governments must adopt strict regulations.
The claims were made by Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Rapporteur on the Right to Health, in her latest report on a “human rights based approach to harm reduction.” The South African abortion doctor and prostitution advocate who hosts a sex therapy talk show, presented her report to the General Assembly this week.
“Harm can present itself in numerous ways. Sometimes, it stems from certain behaviors or substances, other times, it stems not from the behaviors or substances themselves, but rather from how States address them (or not),” Mofokeng claims.
Mofokeng argues that abortion, prostitution, and non-disclosure of HIV status to sexual partners may pose “no actual or potential harm” and that laws criminalizing such conduct are part of the legacy of “harmful norms and policies” spread by colonialism. That legacy, she says, is still at work in “global dominance of corporations, largely headquartered in the global North while operating in the global South” that manufacture and sell alcohol, tobacco, unhealthy foods, and harm the environment.
Mofokeng argues above all against criminalization. “Law and policy can themselves become a conduit to harm, by either enhancing or generating it” she argued. “A legal framework that is over reliant on criminal law has fueled stigmatization and marginalization against individuals engaged in sex work and in the context of abortion, and same-sex relations, as well as in cases of HIV transmission, exposure and non-disclosure.” Criminal laws, in particular, have “a profoundly negative impact on minorities, women and girls, LGBTIQA+ persons, sex workers, migrants and people living with HIV/AIDS, among other population groups,” her report states.
Governments have an obligation to mitigate harm as part of a “human rights approach,” including by decriminalizing conducts like drug use, prostitution, abortion. She argues that in the case of prostitution, governments must also consider “reducing policing” in order to respect the rights of prostitutes to ply their trade freely without government interference.
In regard to abortion restrictions and laws against prostitution, Mofokeng says that they pose “a severe and unjustified form of State control, generating stigma and discrimination, and constituting a human rights violation.”
Mofokeng claims also that “HIV-specific criminal laws, which criminalize HIV exposure, transmission and non-disclosure, infringe on the right to health and related rights, including the rights to privacy. Especially in the absence of factual transmission, the harms of HIV non-disclosure and exposure do not warrant criminalization.”
The opinions of UN human rights experts like Mofokeng are neither binding nor authoritative and are expected to generate controversy in the General Assembly. The report is one of over thirty reports prepared by UN human rights experts and presented to the General Assembly this Fall. The reports are prepared and reviewed annually in the third committee of the global body.
The opinions expressed about prostitution contradict the opinions expressed by other UN experts. The UN special rapporteur on violence against women, recently expressed the view that prostitution is inherently exploitative and a form of violence against women.
Thank you for reading our content. If you would like to receive ZENIT’s daily e-mail news, you can subscribe for free through this link.
