CEDAW/C/64/D/67/2014
Annex
Decision of the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women under the Optional Protocol
to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (sixty-fourth session)
concerning
Communication No. 67/2014
Submitted by:
X. (not represented by counsel)
Alleged victim:
The author
State party:
Austria
Date of communication:
15 November 2013
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women ,
established under article 17 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women,
Meeting on 11 July 2016
Adopts the following:
Decision on inadmissibility
1.
The author of the communication is X., a national of Austria, born in 1959, a
medical doctor and married since 1989. She claimed that she is a victim of
violations by the State party of articles 1 and 6, read together with articles 2 (e), (f)
and (g), 3, 12 and 13 (c), of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women. The Convention and the Optional Protocol thereto
entered into force for the State party on 30 April 1982 and 22 December 2000,
respectively. The author is not represented by counsel.
Facts as submitted by the author
2.1 The author submitted that, in Austria, voluntary commercial sex work
(referring to sexual behaviour of consenting adults that involves physical contact in
exchange for monetary gain) is legal, but regulated at three administrative levels:
national (AIDS Act, Venereal Diseases Act), provincial (in the present case,
Prostitution Law of Lower Austria) and communal (ordinances). Commercial sex
workers are required to register as prostitutes with the local authorities and undergo
weekly mandatory vaginal inspections and quarterly mandatory HIV tests. The
author maintained that one may distinguish between legal sex work (voluntary
commercial sex work of women registered as prostitutes, who obey the regulations
of prostitution), illegal prostitution (voluntary commercial sex work of women
earning their living by providing direct, formal and open sexual services to their
clients, but who, for example, have not registered as prostitutes) and indirect sex
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