Creator: Sonke Gender Justice

Description:People all over the world are coming together to talk about sex work and how we could change the law to improve the lives of people involved in sex work. This is good news for sex workers and others in South Africa who have been advocating for years for our government to remove the outdated criminal laws we have on sex work and to develop new policies and laws to protect sex worker rights. In recent years, lawmakers in Europe and other parts of the world have been talking a lot about The Swedish Model, a policy model first introduced in Sweden in 1999. This allows sex workers to sell sex without facing prosecution from the police, but their clients would be arrested and prosecuted for buying. This model is sometimes referred to as The Swedish or Nordic Model, partial criminalization of sex work, and partial decriminalization of sex work. The names might be different but the result is the same. People who buy sex are arrested and those who sell sex are encouraged into exit or rehabilitation programs. While this model is a bit better than the full criminalization of sex work in that it recognizes that sex workers are not criminals who need to be punished.