Amnesty does not support porn plans

Amnesty International UK supported Liz Longhurst's campaign through our affiliation to the End Violence Against Women campaign.

Our involvement was not in any way related to the pornogrpahic content of the crime but purely to the violent murder of the victim.

The case was one of several cases that were highlighted in the campaign for an integrated strategic approach to tackle violence against women as currently there is no joined up approach and this results in fragmentary, contradictory and incomplete provision for women victims of violence.

The UN CEDAW committee recommends all states should have national action plans that address violence against women, that any action plan must be based in the context of violence against women being both a cause and a consequence of inequality and discrimination against women.

We took 4 cases and tried to show that there were lots of different forms of violence e.g. sexual violence, stalking and harassment, domestic violence as well as female genital mutilation, honour crimes, forced marriage, trafficking etc.

Currently the UK government focusses mostly on domestic violence - we wanted to show the range and extent and variety of violence against women in order to demonstrate that violence against women is a systemic pattern of abuse and discrimination whatever form it takes.

Amnesty International-UK does not take a position on pornography.

If there is reason to believe that people have been forced into performing for pornography then clearly we would take a position against that and certainly there is evidence to suggest that there is sometimes an overlap between abusive practices such as trafficking for sexual exploitation of women and children and pornorgaphy.

However, on neither pornogrpahy nor prostitution do we have a policy and we would not want our work on violence against women to be assumed to be support for areas on which we have no position as yet. It is possible that this is an area where we would develop policy.

We are certainly keen to encourage people to question the culture we live in and take an informed choice on matters that have a bearing on these issues, so for instance we do highlight some of the statistics around prostitution such as the average age to enter protsitution is 14, many prostitutes are driven to it from having had to flee domestic and sexual violence and living on the street, 80% of prostitutes in London are not British raising the spectre that they may be victims of trafficking, 92% of prostitutes say they want to get out of prostitution etc.

We feel people should have access to this information before choosing whether or not to use the services of a prostitute.

We would have similar concerns about the stories of people who are used for pornographic publications and films and we have concerns about attitudes in society that blame women for rape as our poll found in November 2005.

These issues are not unrelated and it is important to be informed about them and about factors and attitudes that can facilitate and enable violence against women.

But the factors that can enable violence against women are many and various and pornography will affect different people in different ways over different time periods and there is not research that we know of that can proove that pornography necessarily leads to violence against women.

While many individuals would hold the view that it must have a long-term, cumulative and brutalising effect both on an individual and on a societies attittudes to women and what is acceptable, the lack of proven evidence making a consistent direct link means that Amnesty International does not feel it can take a position on the issue.

What can you do ?

For more details of the legislation and opposition to it read this brief.

If you would like to contribute in any way to opposing this legislation, contact us.

If you are a journalist or a researcher and would like to cover all sides of the debate, see previous coverage in the media and contact us.

To make a donation, click here.