Miembros

ICRSE and SWAN recently hosted training on community mobilisation and activism for the first time in Poland and Albania. The training took place over two days and was then followed by a roundtable with several NGOs.

The 17th Sex Worker Academy Africa (SWAA) has begun in Nairobi with 16 participants from three countries taking part.

New Zealand must repeal its ban on migrant sex workers to ensure the benefits of its decriminalisation model are extended to all sex workers, says NSWP member organisation the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective. 

Last weekend in Halifax at their biannual national convention, the Liberal Party voted yes to a resolution for consensual sex work decriminalisation. The resolution was presented by the party’s youth caucus, the Young Liberals of Canada, and is part of several resolutions that push for a more progressive Liberal Party. The Liberal Party are currently the largest party in Canadian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Trudeau.

On Friday 20th April, 3 members of NSWP member Avenir Jeune de l'Ouest (AJO) were arrested at their offices in Dschang, Cameroon, following a raid by police. A further two members were arrested on Saturday 21st April, and have since been held at Dschang Central Police station. AJO reported that the members were not given reason for their detention and suffered violence and aggression at the hands of the police. 

Earlier this week, the Economist published an article on the status of sex workers in Senegal, which has a ‘legalised’ model. It states that: “Senegal is the only place in Africa where sex workers are regulated by the state.”

A new security application, Artemis' Umbrella, has been developed for sex workers in Finland, and can be used anywhere in the world. The app alerts a trusted contact when sex workers are in trouble, and uses location services to track the smart phone.

Efforts to resist the closing of strip clubs in the US are ongoing. Recent police raids have prompted a spotlight on New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA) in recent months, as NOLA-based sex workers speak out against “tough on crime” politics affecting their right to work safely.

On 27th February, the House of Representatives passed a new Bill affecting sex workers in the United States: H.R. 1865 [Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017], known as 'FOSTA'. This bill makes it a federal crime for online platform providers to 'facilitate sex trafficking', also criminalising the users of these sites.

Global community-led networks have expressed serious concerns over the decision to name San Francisco and Oakland as host cities to the International AIDS Conference in 2020, which was announced on 13th March.

Criminalisation of sex work is an expression of stigma against sex workers and is opposed by sex workers and sex workers’ rights organisations around the world. In South Africa, the Sisonke Sex Workers’ Movement and Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) have continued to advocate for the full decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa, by raising public awareness of the human rights violations suffered by sex workers under the current outdated legal framework.

Following the arrest of 99 migrant sex workers in “one of Hong Kong’s biggest anti vice crackdowns”, NSWP member Zi Teng has called attention to the need to protect the rights and safety of sex workers through decriminalisation and recognition of sex work as work.

Using WhatsApp groups and other virtual networks, independent sex workers in Mexico organised a workshop with two main goals: to build community and to learn things that mainstream gynaecology often hides.

After several years of intensified focus on gathering biometric data and piloting targeted surveillance methods, the Chinese government has established a large police force with the technology to enable a mass detention of sex workers, drug users and Uyghur people, a Muslim ethnic

Sex workers and sex worker rights’ organisations have strongly criticised the verdict and handling of the case of CJ Palmer, a trans woman and former sex worker who was convinced of grievous bodily harm in January 2018. CJ was convicted on the charge, after four hours of deliberation, in relation to her ex-partner testing positive for HIV, and has been remanded in a men’s prison awaiting sentencing on 16th February. She has already spent 9 months in the same men’s prison awaiting trial.