Chi Mgbako is clinical associate professor and founding director of the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham Law School in New York City. She and her students work with grassroots justice organizations on sexual and health rights as well as access to justice. She has conducted human rights fieldwork and advocacy in many countries, among them Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. Her publications have appeared in the global opinion pages of NYTimes.com, the International Herald Tribune, and The Huffington Post.
This year’s New York State legislative session has ended, and by failing to vote on and pass the “no condoms as evidence of prostitution” bill, lawmakers missed an opportunity to be national and global leaders in ensuring that counterproductive policing and prosecuting practice does not compromise disease prevention and public health.
Rights-based public health measures should seek to protect all people from HIV infection, and provide those who are HIV-positive with the tools to live healthier lives.
![Sex workers organized by Kthi Win. [img src]](http://rhrealitycheck.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/../../files/teaser-images/2012-05-22-mgbako_0-187x125.jpg)
To label and disregard sex workers as “victims” who cannot comprehend their true “enslavement” is condescending, disempowering, and untrue.
Sex workers deserve the basic respect and protection from violence that each nation owes its citizens. But in many settings, police abuse of sex workers receives scant public attention despite its entrenched global reality.
Our staunch moral judgment of individuals who by choice or circumstance participate in the sex industry results in the shattering silence around incidents of rapes, assaults, and murders of sex workers.
