What is the link?
Accumulating evidence is demonstrating strong links between animal cruelty and other crimes, including interpersonal, family and community violence. Researchers have learned:
• Children's witnessing or participation in animal cruelty is a significant marker for their developing aggressive and anti-social behavior and a predictor of future domestic violence.
• Batterers often kill and abuse pets to orchestrate fear, violence and retribution in homes marked by domestic violence.
• Severe animal neglect in the form of hoarding often indicates elders needing social services or mental health assistance.
This booklet was designed to provide women with strategies to increase their safety.
Whether you are living in an abusive relationship, thinking about leaving an abusive relationship, or have already left an abusive relationship, there are a number of ways in which you can increase your safety and that of your children.
Whenever the potential for violence is identified in a woman's life, it is important to develop a safety plan. Creating a safety plan involves identifying action steps to increase safety, and to prepare in advance for the possibility of further violence.
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The impact of low socio-economic status on infant and maternal health is well documented, both in the research and in anecdotal reports from service providers. Low socio-economic status is associated with low birth weight and other complications prior to and following delivery. The use of hospital days for the treat- ment of pregnancy-related complications is nearly four times greater for women in the lowest versus women in the highest income group (Mustard et al, 1995). However, the ramifications for pregnant women and their children who live in poverty extend beyond birth weight issues and include a range of health concerns, in addition to social and psychological impacts.
This thesis uses semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis to examine the experiences of nine street-based sex workers in Ottawa, paying particular attention to experiences after the introduction of the new law. Drawing on the work of Mead & Blumer's symbolic interactionism theory and Goffman's concept of stigma the thesis examines how embedded stereotypes in legislation 'play out' in the lives of sex workers.
[D]ifferent approaches on prostitution will evidently have different effects on the women involved in prostitution. Thus this research carries out a comparative analysis of two countries – Canada and the Netherlands focusing on cases with different legislations on prostitution. Through this comparison I will answer my research question of "which regulatory approach to prostitution should Canada adopt in order to fully protect sex- workers' rights". Canada and the Netherlands differ greatly on their regulatory regimes relative to prostitution and both countries have pros and cons.
The relationship between human trafficking and sex work remains one of the most contentious issues in the anti-trafficking field. There are those who view all sex work as exploitative, and therefore a root cause of trafficking, and those who view it as a livelihood strategy that, like other informal work, is sometimes performed under exploitative conditions. The former propose criminalisation and the ultimate eradication of the industry, while the latter propose decriminalisation and increased attention to labour rights and working conditions. The debate goes on and on and no resolution seems possible.
The United Nations Trafficking in Persons Protocol, adopted in 2000, makes it clear that trafficking and sex work are distinct phenomena, and that trafficking and forced labour occur in a range of economic sectors. However, in practice, trafficking into sex work has received disproportionate attention from media, NGOs, and policymakers. Despite this attention, the ways in which anti-trafficking policy has been enforced has not always been helpful: many anti-trafficking interventions, encouraged by prostitution prohibitionists based in the West, focus primarily on raiding sex industry sites and forcibly removing women from them. The harmful effects and human rights violations that occur during and after raids have been well documented by both academics and activists in all regions of the world.
Since the passage of the "Nordic model" of sex work in Sweden in 1999, an approach that criminalizes the purchase of sex, there has been increasing debate about the model's potential application in Canada, where exchanging sex for money is not illegal, but virtually every activity required to do this work is. In 2006, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws, mandated by Parliament to review the prostitution-related provisions of Canada's Criminal Code in order to improve sex workers' safety and reduce the exploitation and violence they experience, released a report which included a minority opinion seemingly endorsing the Nordic model.
February 21, 2016
To the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Pre-Inquiry Secretariat,
We write to you on behalf of the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, an alliance of sex worker rights and allied groups across Canada working towards reform of Canada's sex work laws, in order to create safer and healthier communiites.
Among our members and women that we work with are women – including Indigenous women – who sell sex on the street, in massage parlours, in-call and out-call agencies, and strip clubs. In addition to the frontline services that we provide, we advocate for an end to the disproportionate criminalization and police surveillance of targeted communities, as well as meaningful social, economic and health supports for women who sell sex.
The manner in which sex work is criminalized, regulated and enforced in Canada is a profound violation of sex workers' human rights, including a number of human rights that Canada has a legal obligation to uphold pursuant to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.