The federation experienced opposition from the authorities in Europe and the colonies, who were unwilling to relinquish control, and from reformers who wanted to suppress traffic of women but were less concerned with their welfare.

[1] The English feminist Josephine Butler (1828–1906), who came from a family involved in the abolition of slavery, believed that forced vaginal examination of women suspected of prostitution violated their basic legal rights.

She argued that women lacked sexual autonomy because they were excluded from higher education, professional training, and paid employment and therefore had to choose between marriage or prostitution.

[4] Butler and the pastors and friends who joined her at first campaigned for the "freedom and purity of our English Commonwealth", with which they alluded to the liberty of women and to morality and the family.

[6] The abolitionists pointed out the double standard of contemporary sexual morality due to which women's bodies were policed and controlled but their male customers were not regulated.

"[8] The IAF felt that treating prostitution as a legal or tolerated institution was "a hygienic mistake, a social injustice, a moral outrage, and a judicial crime".

The movement struggled to maintain coherence despite the different priorities and beliefs of its members and despite the continued expansion of the colonial and imperial system.

[1] The federation often looked to socialists for support, stressing the economic causes of prostitution among women unable to find other employment.

[14] The resolutions stressed the importance of self-control, denied that debauchery was inevitable, decried impurity in both men and women, and called for the police to ensure that decency be respected in the street.

[13] The second congress of the federation, held in Genoa from 27 September to 4 October 1880, was attended by Yves Guyot and Emilie and Auguste de Morsier.

There was no mention of repression of illicit sexuality, only demands for guarantees of individual liberty, the rule of law, and the abolition of the regulation of prostitution.

[16] The British, Continental, and General Federation for the Abolition of Regulated Prostitution held its fifth conference in Geneva in 1889, where it solemnly denounced the international white slave trade.

The Contagious Diseases Acts had extended British regulations of women in prostitution in military areas to cover the whole country.

British reformers also worked in Australia, Ceylon, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, India, Malta, Singapore and South Africa.

He met Butler at the 1877 congress in Geneva and was persuaded to join the IAF despite his misgivings about the secular nature of the organization and the influence of socialist feminists.

[5] In January 1877 Butler traveled to Paris with the main IAF representatives to launch a campaign against the actions of the vice squad, and spoke at various meetings.

"[24] In an ordinance of 16 June 1879 the police authorized establishment of a French section of the British and Continental Federation, called the Association pour l'abolition de la prostitution réglementée, with Victor Schœlcher (1804–1893) as president.

Some of the members left the British and Continental Federation and formed a new Ligue pour le relèvement de la moralité publique.

The new league called for abolition of the vice squad and the regulations that dishonored the police, compromised the magistrates and established inequality between men and women.

[25] In 1897 Butler visited France, and a group led by Auguste de Morsier initiated re-foundation of a French branch of the IAF.

The Berlin chapter of the IAF, later called the League for Protection of Women and Youth (Bund für Frauen- und Jugendschutz), was dissolved in 1933.

The IAF significantly affected Australian policy and policing, although the country would resist signing the United Nations abolitionist conventions until the 1970s.

[35] However, although the IAF would not object to measures against men involved in trafficking, their position on excluding or repatriating foreign women in prostitution was less clear cut.

The effect of forced repatriation was to cause considerable economic loss to the women, who arguably would have to work longer in prostitution as a result.

"[38] After World War II (1939–45) anti-slavery organizations such as the IAF continued to document the traffic in women and girls for the purpose of prostitution or marriage, but operated at the "bottom of the UN human rights hierarchy".

[43] The working group discussed female genital mutilation, which the IAF argued fitted the definition of slavery since the women affected had lost control of their bodies.

[44] In 1985, the IAF provided information to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

A compromise had to be made with anti-abolitionist NGOs and supporters of sex workers' rights, and the agreed formula therefore restricted the definition to cases involving coercion or deception.

It was extended to cover trafficking for other purposes, marking a shift from women's sexuality and morality to a focus on crime and working conditions.

Thus Lady Henry Somerset, first vice-president of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, advocated reforming regulations in India rather than abolishing them.