Today our guest is Commission for Gender Equality Spokesperson Javu Baloyi.

• The Commission for Gender Equality believes recent developments regarding the future of sex work in South Africa mark significant progress towards legalising the practice, and the status of sex workers.
• This comes after the decision by the Deputy Justice and Constitutional Development Minister John Jeffrey to hold consultative meetings to consider the decriminalisation of sex work.
• The Witness reported that the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development had begun engagements with representatives of the pro-decriminalisation sector on Wednesday.
• The CGE believes that the continued criminalisation, and prohibitionist legal framework which has treated sex work as a criminal act, goes against the human rights of sex workers in South Africa.
• In a study done by the Institute for Security Studies, sex work was found to be a decision driven primarily by financial insecurity rather than coercion and exploitation.