Sebastian Kohn is acting unit manager for community health and criminal justice with the Public Health Program. His work focuses primarily on advancing sex workers’ health and human rights. Kohn joined the Open Society Foundations in 2007, initially concentrating on nondiscrimination and statelessness for the Open Society Justice Initiative. Prior to joining Open Society, he worked on issues related to minority rights and mental health in Egypt, Norway, and Sweden.
Kohn holds a master’s degree in conflict, security, and development from King’s College London and has a bachelor’s degree in international relations and history from the London School of Economics.
Rights, not rescue
That’s been the demand from sex workers around the world for decades—and yet a growing movement to abolish sex work is not listening.
Countries like Sweden, Norway, Canada, Northern Ireland, and France have made it a crime to purchase, but not sell, sexual services. This “partial” criminalization, which posits sex workers as victims and their clients as exploiters, still leads to complete harms. It forces sex work to take place underground, away from safety and services.
After just six months of partial criminalization in France, sex workers report having to work longer hours for less pay and accept clients they previously would have rejected. Now, Ireland is considering adopting a similar approach.
Thankfully, advocates like Kate McGrew, the coordinator at Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, are making sure sex workers are heard. She and her allies advocate for labor rights and health services, which cannot be fully realized under criminalization.
As she describes in the video https://youtu.be/C3DVEYIrIjY, McGrew sees a future in which sex workers “live and work with dignity, free from stigma and violence.” (This video may be worth your time to watch)
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