Dr. Kathryn McGarry:

Basically my argument is that we do not conflate trafficking and sex work. As I mentioned in my presentation, there are a variety of experiences of sex workers involved in the sex industry. Not every person involved in the sex industry is exploited. Not every person has the same entry route or pathway into prostitution. People engage in prostitution for a range of reasons. As I said in response to a previous question, by failing to make a qualitative distinction between the violence of a society that forces somebody into the sex trade and however we might describe that, and violence as perpetrated against individuals in the sex trade - those who are enslaved in the sex trade, exploited in the sex trade, trafficked into the sex trade and so on - we limit the opportunity to intervene in those cases because if everything is regarded as exploitation, how do we identify real exploitation? While we do not have the numbers to quantify that, if a number of women argue they are involved voluntarily and engage in sex work independently without coercion or exploitation, and we paint it all with the same brush, then we are denying the supports and services that should be targeted at real victims of exploitation and enslavement. For that purpose and given the range of evidence internationally which supports the notion, we should separate sex work from trafficking in terms of our responses because, otherwise, the issue gets completely blurred and we cannot intervene for those who are really at risk.