India’s Supreme Court has moved to protect adult women engaged in voluntary sex work, which is legal in India, from being subjected by police to automatic assumptions that they are victims of human trafficking. The court said magistrates across the country must be trained to conduct a mandatory “threshold inquiry” into the circumstances of every adult woman rescued during anti-trafficking operations. The exercise is intended to distinguish genuine trafficking victims requiring protection from adult sex workers who should not be subjected to intrusive judicial proceedings or compelled into rehabilitation merely because they were at the site of a raid. Western countries whose media and academics too often confuse all sex work with “trafficking” have much to learn from Eastern wisdom.
India Distinguishes Sex Work from Sex Trafficking
