Regional updates: Asia and the Pacific

Our members are listed on the left or you can click the red umbrellas on the map.

Regional Board Members

Sherry Sherqueshaa (Project X), Singapore

Yukiko Kaname (SWASH), Japan

Regional Network

The Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) is a sex worker-led network whose members include national sex worker-led networks, sex worker-led organisations and community-based sex work projects representing female, male and transgender sex workers. APNSW was founded in 1994 at the International AIDS Conference in Japan and is based in Bangkok, Thailand.

News articles from Asia and the Pacific region are listed below.

Regional updates

27th مايو 2011 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Article by Elena Jeffreys of Scarlet Alliance in the Canberra Times.

27th مايو 2011 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

A sex worker representing DMSC was the first sex worker to be invited to attend such an event.  Read the full article in the Times of India here

1st مايو 2011 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

DMSC has been helping sex workers negotiate the voting process in the election in Kolkata.  Read news coverage in The Times of India.

29th أبريل 2011 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Chinese police detained a sex workers’ rights activist in October 2010, a few days after she publicly called for prostitution to be legalised. Ye Haiyan was taken from the offices of APNSW member organisation the China Women’s Rights Workshops.  

Only days earlier and other activists had called for officials in the central Chinese city of Wuhan to sign a petition calling for sex work to be legalised.  For the full story see the Womensphere website.

24th أكتوبر 2010 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

From October 12-16, 2010 in Pattaya, Thailand, the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW), UNAIDS, and UNFPA collaborated on a consultation on HIV/AIDS and sex work in Asia. The meeting brought together UN and Global Fund for HIV Malaria and TB representatives with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government officials from eight countries. Sex worker activists from Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Fiji, Papua, New Guinea, Cambodia, and China attended to discuss approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic throughout Asia.