UN-Backed Panel: Legalize Prostitution Worldwide

Even though I don't consider myself being a liberal, I strongly support this idea:

July, 2012

A report issued by a United Nations-backed panel and partly funded by liberal financier George Soros calls for the repeal of all laws banning “consensual adult sex work."

It also recommends the decriminalization of injected illegal drugs to help combat the HIV epidemic.

The report, “HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Help,” cites a recommendation by the International Labour Organization that “sex work” should be recognized as an occupation “in a way that protects workers and customers.”

The panel, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, is made up of 15 former heads of state, legal scholars and HIV/AIDS activists and is backed by the United Nations Development Programme and UNAIDS — the Joint U.N. Programme on AIDS/HIV.
The panel’s report states that countries must “repeal laws that prohibit consenting adults to buy or sell sex, as well as laws that otherwise prohibit commercial sex, such as laws against ‘immoral’ earnings, ‘living off the earnings’ of prostitution, and brothel-keeping.”

It also notes: “Criminal sanctions against human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of minors are essential — but the laws must clearly differentiate these activities from consensual adult sex work.”

The report terms laws against prostitution “bad laws,” and asserts that criminalizing injected drug use and prostitution stands in the way of “effective HIV responses.”
As for drug use, the panel calls on nations to “reform approaches towards drug use. Rather than punishing people who use drugs but do no harm to others, governments must offer them access to elective HIV and health services, including harm reduction programmes and voluntary, evidence-based treatment for drug dependence.”

The commission specifically recommends that the United States should repeal the federal ban on the funding of needle and syringe exchange services, saying the ban inhibits access to HIV services for people who inject drugs.

The commission’s study received funding from the governments of Canada, Norway, Australia, the United States (through USAID), and from billionaire George Soros through his Open Society Foundations, according to CNS News.

Dr. Janice Crouse, the director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America in Washington, D.C., told CNS that liberals “like to legitimize the whole [prostitution] industry that way so that it can be regulated and so that it can be considered a ‘legitimate option’ for women and give it more respectability.