The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and Embrace Dignity Stand with Survivors, Call for the Enactment of the Sankara Equality Model

New York and Cape Town, October 21, 2025 – In the latest U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report), published in September 2025, South Africa fell to the Tier 2 Watchlist. This third tier – out of four – is a warning to the country that its efforts to combat human trafficking does not meet the minimum standards established under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

Among the indicators that led to this special scrutiny of South Africa, the TIP Report found that in the last year there was a steep decline in victim identification and case investigations, fewer prosecutions, and a failure to provide evidence of efforts to address trafficking in persons.

The Report also underlines that South Africa did not take measures to prevent the criminalization of probable victims and provided no necessary police training to effectively refer trafficking survivors to appropriate services.

Equally troubling, the Report indicates that government corruption and complicity raise significant concerns, especially by the police and immigration officials who facilitate traffickers’ operations. Some brothels, known to the South African Police Service as sex trafficking locations, are said to operate with officers’ tacit approval.

The TIP Report is a timely reminder to the South African Government to enact laws that protect women and all vulnerable persons, prevent new entry into the system of prostitution, and address the demand by criminalizing the purchase of sex acts. A case before the Western Cape High Court to be heard  in May 2026  – S.H. and Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) vs. the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, et. al., – is challenging the constitutional validity of “of the criminalization under South Africa’s current law, of the sale, offer for sale and the buying of sexual services.” Inexplicably, the South African government decided not to oppose the relief sought by SWEAT. South Africa today criminalizes all aspects of prostitution, with acute discriminatory impact on women bought in the sex trade, a law that must be amended. However, decriminalizing the purchase of sexual acts in South Africa is not the answer to tackling both the alarming findings in the TIP Report and the multi-billion-rand exploitative sex trade.

While it is critical for the South African Government to end the arrests, harassment and incarceration of people engaged in prostitution, who are overwhelmingly Black and disenfranchised women, girls, and LGBTQ+ individuals, when a state legitimizes the purchase of sexual acts, and consequentially the sex trade, sex trafficking not only increases, but law enforcement agencies struggle to investigate sex trafficking cases and identify victims.

As is evident in other countries that have decriminalized sex buyers in particular, sex trafficking, sex tourism and organized crime grow exponentially in response to the state-sanctioned demand for prostitution. These links between prostitution, patronizing, and sex trafficking are based on a simple economic model: no buyer, no business, no profits.

With over 70% of prostituted women in South Africa facing violence, including sexual assault, at the hands of male sex buyers, sex trade profiteers, and in many cases, the police, South Africa must seek solutions to stop these human rights violations.

A legal framework known as the Sankara Equality Model protects those bought and sold in prostitution by ending their arrests and imprisonment, and offers them comprehensive, trauma-informed health and other services they are now often denied.

At the same time, the law holds patronizers and exploiters accountable for the pervasive harm they cause and crimes they commit against the people they purchase and sell for sexual acts. Enacted in nine jurisdictions around the world, this legal model also functions as a strong tool to prevent sex trafficking.

Should South Africa not put in place measures to prevent and combat human trafficking, it could risk falling into Tier 3, whose severe consequences include restrictions of myriad forms of foreign assistance.

We stand with prostitution survivors, women’s and human rights advocates in South Africa who call on their government to adopt the Sankara Equality Model, which enshrines the fundamental principles of the South African Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and international covenants ratified by South Africa.

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