The Special Rapporteur’s report treats prostitution not as ordinary labour but as a system of gendered violence and exploitation driven by male demand, poverty and structural discrimination. It recommends the abolition/Nordic approach — criminalizing buyers and profiteers while decriminalizing and supporting victims — combined with strong measures against digital facilitation and AI-enabled pornography.
How the Special Rapporteur defines “prostitution”
The report notes that “prostitution” is not defined in international law, and that terminology is contested. Rather than adopt terms like “sex work,” the Special Rapporteur frames prostitution as a “prostitution system” — that is, a systemic phenomenon of exploitation and violence that reduces women and girls to commodities. This framing highlights sex-buyers, prostituted women and girls, and third parties (pimps, traffickers, platforms) as key actors in a system of inequality.
Because of the report’s human-rights approach and emphasis on harms, the Special Rapporteur uses the terms “prostituted women and girls” and “victims” rather than “sex worker,” arguing the latter minimizes the severity of the harms and is not defined in international law. Pornography is explicitly treated as filmed prostitution and included in the report’s scope.
Root causes of prostitution identified in the report
The Special Rapporteur identifies a wide set of structural drivers — economic, cultural, political and technological — that create vulnerability and fuel prostitution systems:
- Patriarchal norms and male sexual demand: Prostitution is rooted in gendered power imbalances and men’s ability to commodify female bodies.
- Economic inequality, poverty and lack of opportunities: Poverty, homelessness, low education and lack of livelihoods push women/girls into prostitution or trap them there.
- Conflict, displacement and militarization: War, occupation and humanitarian crises increase vulnerability and trafficking.
- Legacies of colonialism and extractive economies that destabilize communities and widen marginalization.
- Intersecting discrimination: Disability, age, race/ethnicity, migration/irregular status, and sexual orientation/gender identity increase risk and reduce access to help.
- Deception and coercion: False job offers, debt-bondage from brokers, family or intimate-partner selling, religious/ritual coercion, and grooming tactics.
How prostitution affects women and girls — harms and repercussions
The report documents severe and multiple harms across physical, psychological, social and economic domains:
- Extreme physical violence: rape, gang rape, beatings, mutilation, forced unprotected sex, and in some contexts torture-like practices — often normalized by the transactional framing of the act.
- Psychological trauma: very high rates of PTSD, depression, dissociation, suicidality, substance abuse and complex trauma comparable to torture survivors. A cited multi-country study found high PTSD rates among prostituted persons.
- Health impacts: STIs/HIV, reproductive health harms, infertility risks, pelvic floor injuries, and long-term morbidity.
- Economic exploitation: little or no pay, extortion, debt bondage, confiscation of earnings by pimps, fines/“taxes”, and structural poverty that persists even after exiting prostitution.
- Loss of rights and freedoms: restricted movement, identity documents withheld, surveillance, detention, and stigmatization that blocks access to housing, services and justice.
Consequences for children (especially children of prostituted women and prostituted children)
- Children of prostituted women: the report highlights developmental harms — neurodevelopmental delays, learning disorders, attachment problems, neglect, instability, abuse, and increased risk of being recruited or trafficked. Children may be born from violent acts, stolen, sold, or used in trafficking networks.
- Prostituted children: the report stresses that international law treats child prostitution as sexual exploitation and trafficking; children cannot consent. Girls are increasingly overrepresented among detected trafficked persons.
How prostitution increases poverty and exploitation
- The Special Rapporteur explains that prostitution both arises from and deepens poverty: women trapped by debt, low education and lack of alternatives are coerced into prostitution; the economic gains flow to buyers, pimps and intermediaries, not the women; even when women try to leave, poverty, criminal records, and trauma impede reintegration.
- Legal frameworks that criminalize prostituted persons or treat prostitution as a form of labour can also worsen exploitation by exposing women to police abuse, fines, deportation and barriers to services while leaving demand and third-party profiteering untouched. The report highlights evidence that legalization or decriminalization often increases trafficking and demand.
Legal frameworks surveyed in the report — four broad approaches
The report summarises four principal legal models and their effects:
- Prohibition (full criminalisation) — criminalises all actors; tends to punish prostituted women and produce police abuse, low victim identification, and poor exit supports. (Examples: many states in Asia/Middle East and parts of the U.S.).
- Regulation / Legalisation — State-regulated prostitution (Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Uruguay). Regulation often benefits third parties and the State financially, fails to protect many vulnerable women, and may increase trafficking and demand. Registration levels are low in practice and marginalized women remain unprotected.
- Decriminalization — (e.g., New Zealand, aspects of Belgium) removes criminal penalties for most actors. The report argues decriminalization closely resembles regulation in effect and can expand the market and trafficking while placing burdens on victims to pursue labour claims.
- Abolition / Nordic / Equality Model — criminalizes buyers and third parties (pimps) while decriminalizing prostituted persons; pairs criminal law against demand with robust exit supports and victim-centred services. The report presents this as an effective approach with documented positive outcomes in Sweden, France, Canada and Ireland (fines for buyers, increased prosecutions of pimps, expanded victim services, lower murders in some contexts). The Special Rapporteur recommends this model.
Report’s treatment of abolition and recommendations
- The Special Rapporteur strongly advocates the abolitionist/legal approach (Nordic model) as the most rights-centred option: criminalize buyers and profiteers, decriminalize prostituted persons, and provide exit pathways, housing, healthcare, vocational training and compensation. She calls for public-awareness campaigns to reduce demand and for law enforcement training that is victim-centred.
- The report explicitly rejects normalizing prostitution as “work” or integrating it into labour rights frameworks, arguing that legalization/regulation has not achieved promised protections and may institutionalize exploitation.
Cyber abuse, pornography and technology-facilitated prostitution
- Digital platforms are now central facilitators of trafficking and prostitution: advertising sites, social media and content-hosting platforms enable recruitment, anonymity, and cross-border exploitation. A large share of trafficking victims are now advertised online.
UN Report On Prostitution - Pornography is treated as filmed prostitution and a driver of harmful sexual scripts. High prevalence of violent acts in mainstream porn normalizes abuse; AI/deepfakes massively multiply non-consensual images and re-traumatize victims; virtual-reality porn and AI porn pose new risks including child sexual abuse material proliferation. The report calls for regulation, stricter age-verification, moderation and, in stronger language, eventual abolition of pornography.
How the Nordic model is described and its reported benefits
- The Nordic model (also called the Equality Model) criminalizes purchase and third-party profiteering while treating prostituted persons as victims and providing exit support. The report cites specific positive results: reductions in demand, increased prosecutions of buyers/pimps, more resources for victim support, and indicators of improved exit outcomes (Sweden, France, Ireland, Canada). Examples: fines issued in France, drop in murders in Sweden, and increased victim compensation and prosecutions in France and Canada.
- The report recommends the Nordic model’s five pillars:
- decriminalize prostituted persons;
- criminalize buyers
- criminalize pimping and third-party profiteering
- provide comprehensive exit supports
- run public awareness/demand-reduction campaigns.
Key conclusions and recommendations of the Special Rapporteur
- Prostitution is a system of exploitation and aggregated male violence and must be treated as such; consent in the prostitution context is often invalid owing to coercion and structural inequality.
- States must avoid becoming “pimp States” by legalizing or profiting from prostitution; instead they must adopt laws that suppress exploitation and expand protections for victims.
- Priority recommendations include adopting abolitionist/Nordic legal frameworks; decriminalizing prostituted persons; criminalizing buyers and all forms of pimping; providing comprehensive victim support (housing, single-sex services, trauma care, legal status, income generation); undertaking demand-reduction strategies; regulating/countering online facilitation and AI-generated pornography; and ensuring civil society and survivor-led groups are funded and involved in policy-making.
- The report urges international cooperation on cybertrafficking evidence-sharing, stronger regulation of digital platforms, and a human-rights-centred re-evaluation of international law’s treatment of prostitution and pornography.