The 2017 Report from The South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC), in which, after thorough and wide-ranging research and public consultation, spanning over thirteen years, concluded that Adult Prostitution in South Africa should not be Fully Decriminalised.

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"4.288 From the entire foregoing discussion, it is apparent that the non-criminalisation of prostitution and the legitimising of brothels and third parties would not protect the human rights of persons who practise prostitution; nor necessarily promote the health and safety of persons engaged in prostitution; nor automatically recognise the services of prostitutes as legitimate labour, or their right to freedom of economic activity within the sex industry; nor empower prostitutes to choose to remain or to exit the sex industry; and would not achieve a balance between, on the one hand, the rights and needs of prostitutes and the sex industry and, on the other, the rights and interests of the community. Proponents who favour the non-criminalising of prostitution venues make suggestions on how to keep women in prostitution but few on how to help women get out.Prostitutes seeking alternatives to prostitution require tangible social and economic assistance from government, within the broader range of anti-poverty measures. In the Commission‘s view, if legal barriers were to disappear so too would all social and ethical barriers to treating women as sexual commodities."

By Melissa Farley, Inge Kleine, Kerstin Neuhaus, Yoanna McDowell, Silas Schulz, Saskia Nitschmann

New report on 763 sex buyers in 6 countries released November 8, 2022 in Berlin
PRE (Prostitution Research & Education) and partners report the results of research that investigates the attitudes and behavior of sex buyers/punters/Freier/puteros in Germany, USA, India, UK, Scotland, Cambodia.

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LASER PULSE
June 2, 2022

The overarching aim of this report was to explore available data and/or lived experiences related to incidents of TIP in South Africa that overlapped, connected with, and/or were reported to any aspect of South Africa’s Criminal Justice System. Given the lack of a centralized database on South African TIP data, this mosaic of evidence was deemed necessary for relevant insights into the nature and prevalence of TIP in South Africa. The report begins by exploring the prevailing 'evidence' dissonance regarding TIP in South Africa, particularly as it relates to persistent claims of 'little evidence' and the framing of child trafficking and sex trafficking as 'myth' in some research. The framework of the Palermo Trafficking Protocol and the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act (PACOTIP) Act 7 of 2013 was employed as the yardstick to understand the basis of this skepticism towards South Africa's TIP phenomenon, and the arguments to support these claims are questioned.

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