<%-- Page Title--%> Law Opinion <%-- End Page Title--%>

December 22, 2003 

Some problems for rehabilitation of sex workers

Syed Taposh

Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries of the world. Poverty drives people in this country in many professions which are not recognised by society. Sex work is considered as one of these professions. A large number of sex workers live in our country. Most of the people have chosen this profession as there is no alternative of livelihood for them. Once someone get inlovle in this profession, it becomes very difficult for her to turn back to normal life. Sometimes, they never turn back and stick to this profession for generations.

There are many NGOs working for the welfare of the sex workers and their children. They have different activities on health, HIV/AIDS, human rights, education etc. with the objective to empower the sex workers. The word 'Rehabilitation' has widely been used by the development workers in our country. There is a debate among NGOs community on whether the sex workers should be rehabilitated or not. The NGO's working for the welfare of sex workers are mainly divided into two groups based on their stand on the issue of rehabilitation. One group works for rehabilitation of sex workers and their children while the other group does not want rehabilitation. The later group consist the majority of the NGOs working in the field while only a few work for the rehabilitation. Even the donor's are also more interested to support the NGOs in the later group.

Rehabilitation of sex worker is in fact a difficult task. It should be through motivation, not by force. In the past our government made several attempts to rehabilitate the sex workers which failed to achieve the success due to many reasons. One of the reasons behind this was lack of interest from the sex workers for rehabilitation. Interests grow through motivation which results in behavioural change in different ways. There are many techniques for motivation. Appropriate motivation technique is needed for rehabilitation of sex workers. If motivation techniques are not appropriate, the behaviour may not be changed even if tried for long time.

Besides the absence of appropriate techniques for motivation, there were also problems of management and co-ordination in the efforts made by the governments in the past. There was also lack of co-ordination between the activities of NGOs and the Government. After the eviction of Sex Workers from the brothels at Narayanganj the government tried to rehabilitate them in the government's vagrant homes. The government's initiative for rehabilitation of sex workers was very good indeed but the effort went in vein because of lack of co-ordination and management problems. Government's failure to rehabilitate those sex workers created problems for others interested in rehabilitation.

Recently the government has initiated another step for rehabilitation of sex workers through centres for socially disabled women situated at different places of Bangladesh. While talking to some of the officials of these centres, it was found that the people involved in this process do not have adequate knowledge or expertise on the motivation techniques. They don't have knowledge on the current status and nature of sex workers and their children at brothel areas. The Sex Work business is related with different psycho-social aspects. Without knowing much about the psycho-social aspects of sex workers, their attitude, behavioural pattern, problems, financial aspects etc., it is impossible for anyone to succeed in the process of motivation for rehabilitation of sex workers.

Syed Taposh is Site Coordinator of an UNDP assisted project of Department of Social Services (DSS), Jessore.