Sex Workers, No Longer Detained

INTRODUCTION

Sex workers in Vietnam are struggling to figure out their next steps after the government’s decision earlier this year to release them from compulsory detention centers that have been widely condemned for alleged human rights abuses. Until recently, women aged 16–55 caught selling sex were sent to these “rehabilitation” centers where they were detained for up to 18 months without due process, and required to take classes and receive vocational training. But detention has done little to prepare these workers for a life off the streets, they said. What was the legal change? In a move to what it calls “voluntary rehabilitation,” the National Assembly passed the Law on Administrative Sanctions in June, which requires authorities to release all women detained on sex work charges by July 2, 2013.

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In lieu of detention, any newly–arrested sex workers will be fined US$14 at first, and then $240 for a repeat offence, according to local media and sex workers who were interviewed, while experts say that these figures are speculative. The government declared sex work a “social evil” by ordinance in 2003. What’s the background to compulsory detention? In 2011, there were 113 compulsory detention centers, according to the National Committee for AIDS, Drugs and Prostitution Prevention Control. Both sex workers and drug users have been sent to the same centers, Do Thi Ninh Xuan, deputy director of the Department of Social Evil Prevention, under the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), said.

Nearly 25,000 drug users were detained in 2011, according to a presentation by the above Committee at a recent UN–convened regional consultation on voluntary treatment, along with some 900 sex workers, according to local media. Deputy Director Xuan said the government is moving away from compulsory rehabilitation for drug users, though progress is not as advanced as with sex workers. “In Ho Chi Minh City, authorities have moved staff (from some of the rehabilitation centers) to work at commune health stations or moved them into social work. The general direction will be that way,” she said, without giving a time frame or indicating what will happen with the drug users (who greatly outnumber sex workers) currently detained. www.irinnews.org

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