OpenForum – a blog by the Health and Human Rights community

A recent article on China’s “one country, two systems” policy reports on its sociopolitical implications for Hong Kong’s female migrant sex workers. The authors argue that current legislation is only increasing their vulnerability to human rights abuses, and that their situation can best be understood and improved using the concept of “structural violence.”

The policy allows regions like Hong Kong to operate on different economic and political systems from mainland China, with a large degree of autonomy. One of its unintended consequences, however, is the perpetuation of migrant sex workers’ disadvantaged status through the systematic denial of their right to social and economic progression and the failure to provide adequate health services or protection from exploitation and abuse. While prostitution is technically legal in Hong Kong, related activities such as soliciting, as well as traditional brothels, are not. Operating alone and without protection, prostitutes are vulnerable to abuse and lately, to a disturbing string of murders. Migrant sex workers are far more vulnerable given their illegal status, and feel they cannot report crimes committed against them or seek health services for fear of legal repercussions. Read more