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Report

 

Title
Sex Work in Asia
Imprint
World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific, July 2001, 38 pp
Url
http://www.wpro.who.int/NR/rdonlyres/D01A4265-A142-4E19-99AE-6CC7E44F995C/0 /Sex_Work_in_Asia_July2001.pdf
Abstract

"The sex industry in Asia is changing rapidly. It is becoming increasingly complicated, with highly differentiated sub sectors. The majority of studies, together with anecdotal evidence, suggest that commercial sex is becoming more common and that it is involving a greater number of people in a greater variety of sites. Research and publications on sex work within the region fall into five main categories: reports, polemical works and newsletters produced principally by NGOs that often either seek to promote prostitution as work or to portray all sex work as exploitation; reports, particularly by international agencies, focussing on the issue of trafficking for prostitution and children in prostitution; academic books and articles that concentrate especially on Thailand; surveys and reports written with reference to HIV/AIDS; sex guides aimed primarily at visiting foreigners. These sources give us a partial view of commercial sex within the region and there are major gaps. This applies to whole sub sectors of the industry particularly the activities of indirect and part time sex workers, MSW and also to the sex industry as a whole in certain countries (e.g. Pakistan and Burma). Even the best works are sometimes one-dimensional: the most authoritative and widely quoted survey of sex work in Asia, for example, approaches the industry as if it can be explained primarily in terms of economics. There is a notable absence of detailed work on clients. And research related to HIV/AIDS, which generally provides the most sophisticated available analysis of commercial sex, is limited in large measure because it concentrates on behaviours at sex work sites rather than on the broader socio-cultural context in which the sex acts take place. This report has been compiled from an examination of these sources coupled with extensive fieldwork in sex work sites throughout Asia between 1997-2001."

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