Movement for the Abolition of Prostitution

What is the Nordic Model?

The Nordic Model (sometimes known as the Sex Buyer Law, or the Swedish, Abolitionist, or Equality Model) is an approach to prostitution that has been adopted in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Canada, France, Ireland and Israel. It has several elements:

1. Decriminalisation of those who are prostituted

Prostitution is inherently violent. Women should not be criminalised for the exploitation and abuse they endure.

2. Buying sex becomes a criminal offence

Buying human beings for sex is harmful, exploitative and can never be safe. We need to reduce the demand that drives sex trafficking.

3. Support and exit services

High quality, non-judgemental services to support those in prostitution and help them build a new life outside it, including: access to safe affordable housing; training and further education; child care; legal, debt and benefit advice; emotional and psychological support.

A holistic approach

A public information campaign; training for police and CPS; tackling the inequality and poverty that drive people into prostitution; effective laws against pimping and sex trafficking, with penalties that reflect the enormous damage they cause. Read more >>

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A first-person account of being a phone sex operator (PSO) on Niteflirt and how, far from what she’d been led to believe, it was exploitative and traumatising.

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All you need to know about our public event in Birmingham on 15 June 2024. Come along to hear women who have lived experience of the sex trade discuss its reality once all the propaganda has been stripped away.

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What changes to surrogacy law are the British Law Commission recommending and how does this compare with the current law in England and Wales?

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Open letter in response to a ‘Human Rights Comment’ entitled, ‘Protecting the human rights of sex workers’, published on 15 February 2024 by the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Dunja Mijatović.

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A call to action for people who live in Council of Europe countries to write to their PACE representatives to call for accountability.

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The recording of the NMN Rethinking Consent webinar held on Sunday 25 February 2024.

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Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Beth

My name is Beth, I was a prostitute for five years. I never thought it would happen to me, but debt and almost becoming homeless can drive people to do things they usually wouldn’t do.

“We must listen to Sex Worker’s Voices”

It is a rallying cry I have heard countless times in the last few years. It is one of the most prolific and popular phrases currently in use in relation to prostitution, so much so that it is approaching the status of the idiomatic.

A Piece of Me by Andrea Heinz

Time heals all wounds. Time does little for scars. They permanently stick to you as a vivid reminder of your vulnerability and the time you faced some form of harm. I carry over 4300 emotional scars with me every day from each man I sold my body to during seven years of prostitution.

Ella Zorra

“When I don’t eat I am slyly aiming for suicide.

When I smoke a gram of cocaine on my own I think how nice it would be to feel high when I die.

When I drink so much I hit my head and wake up with no memory, oblivion is at the back of my mind.

I am numb and my insides feel dead. []

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