New Zealand and CEDAW - Humanitas Fellowship (Europe)

Market forces in the sex and pornography trade generate business revenue by exploiting any desire that can be bought and most clients of prostitutes are married males or men with partners.

The pornographic and commercial sexual trend is invariably for unusual sex and for younger subjects. Humanitas do not agree that the issues of potentially harmful sexual paraphilia such as asphyxiophilia and child theming are best left to market forces, nor do we accept that the dangers are as fictional as Mr. Tim Barnett MP has been reported as stating to the local media over the last few days.

The Prostitution Reform Bill is focused purely on the commercial requirements of pimping and in the dilution of the ratified CEDAW instrument. The CEDAW Committee would like internet prostitution given serious attention and would prefer measures included in prospective legislation to address the problem of sex tourism. Tim Barnett's bill avoids those important aspects altogether. Humanitas have worked against the phenomena of trafficking in the Nordic and Baltic area for two years and we resolutely reject Tim Barnett's criticism of the Swedish legislation.

The pornography and sex trade develop along strictly congruent themes and if Tim Barnett had properly researched the Australian experience he would probably not have left it to the last very minute to try to counter the child theming and pimping deficiencies of his struggling 'reform' legislation. The pro-prostitution lobby in New Zealand were not prepared to negotiate or compromise on the pimping and paedophile theming loop-holes in the legislation and the only lesson learned from Thailand or NSW was seemingly just how profitable both might be.

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