“Prostitution is about men doing things they want to women’s bodies, not women doing what they want to their bodies, women don’t choose to be in prostitution, it chooses them.” Mickey Meji

Sigma Huda is a senior lawyer of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, appearing before the Appellate Division Bench for the last 49 years. Sigma has founded/ co-founded as many as 28 organisations; she is a former UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in persons especially women and children for the term 2004 to 2008; Former twice elected to Bangladesh Bar Council. In this episode she is in conversation with Mickey Meji, a feminist, abolitionist, and human rights and gender activist. She has significant professional and personal experience in issues surrounding the sex trade as well as the system of prostitution and its harms. Mickey is the lead survivor activist and advocate in South Africa advocating for anti-sex trade laws that benefit the women who are bought, sold, and exploited in the system of prostitution. She is the founder of Kwanele, the first survivor movement in Africa, former advocacy manager at Embrace Dignity, a feminist human rights organization, and has founded the SESP Survivor Empowerment & Support Programme.

Huda and Meji outline the main legal approaches to prostitution that different countries have taken, and the consequences associated with them. They focus on where prostitution is legalised and the role the state plays in such countries, where states act effectively as pimps, complicit in violence against women, and profiting from such violence.

Survivor Empowerment & Support Programme - SESP