AWID is the Association for Women’s rights in Development and the AWID Forum is the biggest regular meeting on issues for women in development.
Sex workers have been present at previous Forums and have had quite an impact. Notably, in 2006 in Bangkok, activists got sex workers onto the agenda of women’s human rights funders, and TG sex workers pushed for transgenders to be included in organisations fighting for women’s human rights and funding women’s rights.
This year in Istanbul we will have the largest organised presence of sex workers at an AWID Forum, and the theme is timely - Transforming Economic Power.
Sex workers aim to bring up sex work and issues for sex workers in all the themes and strands of the Forum and its debates with a goal of including sex workers in discussions of women’s economic rights and also challenging those feminist organisations who still see us as victims and who promote polices that further our stigma and marginalisation.