PROSTITUTION
AND THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
(italiano)
Probably the total ban of
paying sex in every kind of Sovereign, Federated or Confederated State would
not be legal with the dictates of The
European Convention on Human Rights
of The Council of Europe (this one is not European Union). In fact, if we read articles 8, 11, 14, 17 and 18 of the same international law, we can
understand that the relative Convention protects: the privacy of everybody,
forbidding any interference in this one by every state jurisdiction, the
freedom to get assembly for all citizens, the prohibition of people social
discrimination, the inability to interpret the dictates of the same
International law to limit other rights of this one and a single purpose
addressed to various restrictions of freedoms said by the same document.
The following are the
texts of the above Articles.
Art. 8 - Right to respect for private and family life.
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his
private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public
authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with
the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national
security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the
prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for
the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Art. 11 - Freedom
of assembly and association.
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful
assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form
and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
2. No restrictions shall be placed on the
exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are
necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or
public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of
health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
This Article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the
exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces, of the police or of
the administration of the State.
Art. 14 - Prohibition
of discrimination.
The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set
forth in this Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground
such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion,
national or social origin, association with a national minority, property,
birth or other status.
Art. 17 - Prohibition
of abuse of rights.
Nothing in this Convention may be interpreted as
implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or
perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set
forth herein or at their limitation to a greater extent than is provided for in
the Convention.
Art. 18 - Limitation
on use of restrictions on rights.
The restrictions permitted under this Convention
to the said rights and freedoms shall not be applied for any purpose other than
those for which they have been prescribed.
It is necessary to say
that prostitution may fall into the category of privacy, it is an action that
it may be carried out by the assembly of people on kindly ways, also in not
public places and it is a kind of sexual choice, since this is identified with
a particular form of relationship among different subjects.
Moreover, it is evident
that The European Court of Human Rights,
which is the unit considering States’ laws and actions conform to the connected
Convention or not, with Judgment October 18th
2011, Application n. 16188/07 has established that the action
making the protection of public, health and/or moral safety must be carried out
with special circumstances and reasons
of the field supported by convincing ways to justify the limitation of
the said International law rights for people and consequently, the recording of
prostitutes is not in a position to stay inside the kind of ways to reduce
relative freedom.
So, without having doubt,
even the prohibition of simple and
generic related activity, both by buying and/or selling so as to get impossible
to take the legal way for prostitution made among adult and consentient people
into private places not damaging to public morals, would be sentenced on the
same way.
For these reasons, the
total prohibition of prostitution made on the above-mentioned ways would not
comply with the declared dictates of The
European Convention on Human Rights.
Furthermore, it should be
noted that the said International Judges with the Judgement September 11th 2007, Application n. 37194/02,
told that prostitution could be considered as inhuman, degrading and really
forced, to get articles 3 and 4
paragraph 2 of the above mentioned Convention violated, exclusively if this
kind of activity is carried out by another person on forcing ways and not by necessity
conditions of the same prostitute, which moreover can be resolved by other
legal sources.
With all that, any law of
a European State which forbids totally the related selling and/or buying could
be reported to the above-mentioned European Court in Strasbourg.
Written on January 24th
2012 and update on November 22nd 2013
