Sex, sport and responsibility

World Cup fever is raging and Germany is hosting about three million football fans - mostly men - in its major cities. These cities have also been expecting "visitors" of a different kind. An estimated 40,000 women will be imported from Central and Eastern European countries into Germany to "sexually service" the men.

In 2002, Germany legalised pimping and the sex industry. In preparation for the World Cup Games 2006, the German sex industry mounted a prostitution complex for the booming business expected during the games. The red light districts were thought to be too small for the thousands of sport/sex tourists in attendance.

So a mega brothel has been constructed next to the main World Cup venue in Berlin. This will accommodate 650 male clients. Amenities provided include "sex huts", or "performing boxes", that look like toilets within fenced-in areas, condoms and showers, and parking facilities.

"Football and sex belong together," claimed one of the lawyers of the new business enterprises. But do they? Buying and selling sex is not a sport. It is exploitation. And sexual exploitation is a practice by which persons achieve sexual gratification or financial gain or advancement through the abuse of a person's sexuality by abrogating that individual's human right to dignity, equality, autonomy, and physical and mental well-being. Treating women's bodies as sexual commodities violates international standards of sport that should promote equality, mutual respect and non-discrimination. All prostitution exploits women regardless of their consent.

FIFA president Joseph S. Blatter has acknowledged "the prominent role of sport, and especially football, as a vehicle for delivering clear and firm messages to eradicate the huge blights undermining our society". How will the World Cup games help to eradicate this blight of trafficking and sexual exploitation in the light of what is happening in Germany?

The international organisation CATW (Coalition Against Trafficking in Women) is committed to oppose the enormous power and resources of the sex industry which portrays prostitution as sexual liberation, as normal work or even glamorises it while covering up the damage it causes. It seeks to expose the sex industry as an encouragement of male violence against women. It also addresses the highly controversial issue of state-sponsored/legalised prostitution and its harmful consequences.

CATW is running a campaign against sport/sex tourism in Germany during the World Cup games themed Buying Sex Is Not A Sport: No To Germany's Prostitution Of Women. Government representatives, NGOs and other organisations and individuals have been asked to sign a petition to show their support for this campaign in an effort to counteract the trend to legalise and decriminalise the sex industry and to curb male demand for prostitution which is a physical violation of women's dignity.

Swedish legislation prohibits the purchase of sexual services and recognises prostitution as sexual exploitation. As a supplement to the UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime, article three of the UN protocol was added "to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children".

The CATW petition calls on the 32 countries participating in the World Cup that have ratified UN conventions and/or protocols against prostitution and trafficking to oppose Germany's promotion of prostitution and publicly disassociate their teams from the prostitution industry. It also calls for football team members to publicly voice their opposition to the blatant sexual exploitation of women. It has also appealed to the FIFA president and committee, to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German Football Federation to fulfil their social responsibility by opposing the link between football and the sex trade.

To sign the petition go to http://catwepetition.ouvaton.org/php

www.catwinternational.org