Nordic Model Now!
Movement for the Abolition of Prostitution
This open letter, signed by 27 UK organisations, 24 international organisations, and 794 individuals, calls on the UK Law Commissioners to scrap the biased consultation on their flawed proposals to open up commercial-style surrogacy in the UK and to go back to the drawing board, this time centring women’s and children’s welfare and human rights. Read More
Nordic Model Now! is proud to have signed up as an official supporter of the Stop Surrogacy Now campaign.
Although our main focus is campaigning for the Nordic Model approach to prostitution, we have always considered surrogacy to be closely related to prostitution. In both, the woman’s very body and being are instrumentalised for someone else’s benefit, while a whole feeding chain of third parties benefit economically from the arrangement. Read More
Earlier this year, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Congress voted overwhelmingly for a motion that requires the RCN Council to lobby Governments across the UK for the “decriminalisation of prostitution.” We believe this was a terrible mistake and that the debate was biased and those promoting the motion behaved improperly.
We therefore wrote a letter, jointly with Stand Against Sexual Exploitation (SASE), to the members of the RCN Council setting out why they might want to revisit the matter. We offered to meet with them to discuss the issues in more depth and we asked for a response by the end of August. We have not had a single reply and so we are publishing the letter here. Read More
The UK Law Commission is running a consultation on proposals that would open up surrogacy in the UK, including provisions for paying birth mothers and allowing the advertising of surrogacy-enabling services. This article provides an overview of these proposals, and explains why we profoundly disagree with them, and how they are an assault on both women’s and children’s human rights. We show that the consultation is confusing, misleading, one-sided, and fails to ask clear questions about the high-level ethical issues. Read More
Under a headline that accuses supporters of the Nordic Model of ‘co-signing the imprisonment of women,’ Molly Smith reports in The Independent that two migrant women were given nine-month prison sentences in the Republic of Ireland for selling sex from an apartment they shared. This article explains that the headline is both misleading and unfair, because we have always made it clear that we are opposed to women being criminalised for their own prostitution. Read More
There has been considerable coverage in the media recently of benefit sanctions, and delays and shortfalls in Universal Credit, driving women into what is being called ‘survival sex,’ but which is in fact prostitution. We do not accept that prostitution becomes something different depending on what caused your engagement in it. This statement briefly explains our position. Read More
This is our statement on the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Congress voting yesterday to lobby for the full decriminalisation of the sex trade. Read More
50 groups and organisations, and more than 400 individuals, have added their name to an open letter calling on the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to reject the motion calling for the ‘decriminalisation of prostitution’ at its upcoming 2019 Congress. We are concerned that many people will incorrectly assume the motion means the decriminalisation only of those directly engaged in prostitution and not of the entire sex trade, including pimps, brothel keepers and sex buyers (punters). Read More
Motion 108 “Decriminalisation for safety” at the Unison Delegate Conference 2019 seeks to overturn Unison’s longstanding support for the Nordic Model approach to prostitution and replace it with support for full decriminalisation of the sex trade, including profiteers (pimps, brothel keepers, and procurers) and punters (sex buyers), on the basis that this is safer for “sex workers.” This article goes through the motion, showing that it relies on partial facts, poor-quality research, and distortion of the bigger picture. Read More
This is an open letter to Brighton University in response to the presence of a Freshers’ Week stall run by the Sex Workers’ Outreach Project (SWOP), explaining our dismay, why it was a terrible idea, and requesting that they never allow something similar to happen again. It was sent this morning, 24 October 2018. Read More
Nordic Model Now! was honoured to take part in a series of events in Ukraine to raise awareness of the Nordic Model as a method of ending demand for sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. The events were well received and generated considerable interest from the Ukrainian participants and there was significant coverage in the Ukrainian press. Read More
Hundreds of women’s human rights organizations from 18 countries have released an international statement to request a global ban on womb rental (‘surrogacy’). In an unparalleled global call for action, these feminist organizations ask heads of Government and State to deliver public statements calling for a global ban on surrogacy during the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly. They also exhort governments to consider withdrawing funding support to the United Nations agencies that are supporting the legalization of surrogacy. Read More
We are proud to announce that we have signed the VictimFocus charter pledge. Set up by Jessica Eaton, the charter is “the first set of standards for professionals, organisations and individuals to combat victim blaming in abuse and trauma.” As a campaigning group, some aspects of the charter are not applicable to our work – we don’t do case work, for example. However, as a whole it is directly relevant, because trauma, abuse and crime are rife in the sex trade. Read More
A motion to the Unison Delegate Conference 2018, seeks to overturn Unison’s longstanding support for the Nordic Model approach to prostitution and replace it with support for full decriminalisation of the sex trade, including profiteers and sex buyers, on the basis that this is safer for “sex workers.” This article goes through the motion showing that it relies on partial facts, poor-quality research, and distortion of the bigger picture. We hope that this will help delegates and Unison members understand what is at stake and why we recommend you vote against the motion. Read More
There is a long history of women who speak out on behalf of vulnerable girls and women being harassed and silenced. We are disappointed that the Women’s Equality Party has seen fit to censure Heather Brunskell-Evans for expressing concern that adolescent girls are being fast-tracked into life-changing treatments and surgery that cause sterility and which some are likely to grow up to regret. Read More
The agenda for the 2017 TUC Congress has been published. It includes a motion from ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, calling for the full decriminalisation of “sex work.” This approach implicitly decriminalises pimping, profiteering and related activities that are currently considered to be exploitation. The motion is worded in such a way that on a superficial level it appears to be in the interests of the women and children who are involved in prostitution. However, that simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Read More
A report on efforts to bring some balance into the British Medical Association (BMA) debate on decriminalising the sex trade. Read More
Dr Anna Cleaves has proposed a motion to Amnesty International UK (AIUK) asking the International Secretariat to re-evaluate its policy on prostitution. The resolution has been accepted and it will be debated at the AIUK Conference in Nottingham on 8 and 9 April 2017. Read More
On 6 September 2016, Nordic Model Now! had a protest in Westminster to demand that the inquiry presided over by Keith Vaz into prostitution be scrapped and restarted under an ethically constituted committee in which at least 50% of its members are female and all make a declaration of their sex buying history. Read More
Nordic Model Now! wrote a letter to London (UK) mayor, Sadiq Khan, after women in the Leyton area told us about the alarming levels of street harassment in their area and how this had coincided with a proliferation of advertising of prostitution in the area. There are stickers advertising brothels on more or less every lamp post. On Wednesday 29 June 2016, four members of Nordic Model Now! went to City Hall to deliver the letter. Read More
