Planets in the Sky

UNITED NATIONS Planets in the Sky

"I'm sure I've often pitied a poor girl," said Mrs. Warren, speaking from experience, "tired out and in low spirits, having to please some man . . . [Still] it's far better than any other employment open to her . . ."

Thus, in 1894. Bernard Shaw justified Mrs. Warren's Profession by blaming it on the sweatshop wages which capitalism paid the female proletariat. Mrs. Warren was invoked as a witness last week before the U.N.'s Social and Humanitarian Committee, which was debating a Draft Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. The committee, exclaimed Mexico's Raul Noriega, must not come to share Mr. Shaw's "casuistic attitude." In a rare show of unanimity, their usually separate moral sensibilities jointly outraged, the U.S., Britain and Russia agreed.

What started the controversy was the draft convention's Article Six, which called on all parties to abolish legislation requiring prostitutes' registration, or "any measures for supervision or notification." The French delegation proposed an amendment, making medical inspection legal. But, objected Brazil's Enrico Penteado, such a measure would merely encourage prostitution by furnishing its; practitioners with "a Good Housekeeping; seal of approval."

Russia's V. M. Zonov, while pointing-out that the "progressive social legislation" in the Soviet Union had solved the problem of prostitution, nevertheless supported the unamended article, to help alleviate, in other countries, an evil "from, which the poor suffer most." In vain Haiti's Stephen Alexis argued that it was no use trying to suppress prostitution,, since, "as long as there are planets in the sky," there would also be prostitutes, and-at that, "of both sexes." France's amendment (if not Mrs. Warren's profession) was defeated 38 to 3.

Another moral matter (situated on a different plane) occupied the Legal Committee last week. Yugoslavia placed before it a Draft Declaration on the Rights, and Duties of States. A clear indictment of Russia's actions against Yugoslavia., the declaration said: "Every people has the right to self-determination . . . without any economic, political or military pressures or interferences on the part of other states . . . Every state has the duty ... to curb all activities calculated to spread hatred toward other peoples, to affront their honor or offend the dignity of and slander, other states."

It remained to be seen what U.N. could do to suppress Mr. Stalin's profession.

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