LW supports ICI photo exhibition highlighting fight against human trafficking
14 July 2011
Labour Women and Labour Intercultural welcome the launch today of the ‘Not Natasha’ photo exhibition by the Forum on Migration and Communications (FOMACs) and the Immigrant Council of Ireland and join them in asking people to support the ‘Turn off the Red Light’ campaign against sex trafficking and prostitution.
‘With the support of many members of the new Government for this campaign, Ireland has a real opportunity to combat sex trafficking. While human trafficking is a crime, buying sex in private places is not. Therefore a market exists which has to be maintained by bringing in foreign women, many of whom come here in the hope of a better life’, says Katherine Dunne, Labour Women Chair.
‘We call for the criminalisation of the purchase of sex in order to reduce sex trafficking and to protect the girls and women whose lives are being damaged.’
Labour Intercultural Co-chair Karen McCormack says, ‘Legalising prostitution is not the answer. This would only pull more criminal elements into Ireland, create a need for more and more poverty-stricken women to be brought here and make Ireland complicit in the misery that is sex trafficking. We support the decriminalisation and protection of those who are prostituted.
‘Girls and women who end up in prostitution have the same hopes and dreams for their lives as we and our children do. We can do our bit to protect them from the damage and devastation of prostitution by ensuring they cannot be bought.’
