Movement for the Abolition of Prostitution

What is the Nordic Model?

The Nordic Model (sometimes known as the Sex Buyer Law, and the Swedish, Abolitionist, Survivor 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 selling sex acts

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

2. Buying sex acts 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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Jenna reflects on a recent interview with Russell Brand and the importance of telling the truth about the prostitution industry.

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Decriminalising “sex work” may sound sensible until you think more deeply about what it means in practice. This article explains why.

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Prostitution survivor, Jenna, responds to reports that Labour MP Samantha Niblett is campaigning to promote sex toys under the guise of sex education.

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Reflections on the ethical failure of telling kids to respect others while our culture soaks them in violent porn and glamorises the brutal prostitution system.

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The parallels, the failure of the authorities & how treating females as commodities that men can trade and abuse with impunity reveals connections with the wider sex trade.

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To mark our tenth anniversary, this article explains how Nordic Model Now! began and what we did in the very early days.

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Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

Prostitution Survivors’ Testimony

‘I remember I would often dream of something better, but deep down I always knew it was a dream’

By Tiarna

Trying to write this is difficult. I never really thought I would but Wahine Toa Rising and Aunty have supported me to be free of a life I never dreamed I could be free from.

Cathy

As told to Roseanne Downton. Identifying details have been changed to preserve privacy.

“I was born in the 1950s into an ordinary working class family in a city in Yorkshire. I left school with a couple of O levels, landed a pleasant job in a nice little chocolate factory. I didn’t get on with my parents, left home, and rented a little flat.  []

1. Feminism is abolitionist!

Raped, assaulted, left for dead, robbed, insulted, threatened with death, having narrowly escaped AIDS, and other serious health risks, as well as Russian, Albanian, and slaughterhouse pimping networks in Zurich, I am a survivor.

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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