Regional updates: Europe

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

Regional Board Members

Nataliia Isaieva (Legalife-Ukraine), Ukraine.

Luca Stevenson (ESWA), The Netherlands.

Regional Networks

European Sex Workers Rights Alliance - ESWA (formerly ICRSE) is a European network of sex workers and allies across Europe and Central Asia. It was formed in 2004 to organise the 2005 European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration and is based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network for Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (SWAN) is a network of sex workers' groups and civil society. SWAN started in 2006 as a project within Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU/TASZ) and became an independent organisation in 2012 and is based in Budapest, Hungary.

News articles from Europe region are listed below.

Regional updates

15th mai 2012 | Region: Europe

12th mai 2012 | Region: Europe

Raids on flats in London and increased activity by the Metropolitan Police in targeting street-based sex workers have forced women to work underground, begin working outdoors and to move away from areas they know well.  All of which has put them at greater risk of violence and driven them further away from the support services they use and trust, reports the Independent today.

2nd mai 2012 | Region: Europe

In a deplorable move, Athens police have published photographs of 12 sex workers who have tested HIV positive in the last few days, with more disgraceful abuses being promised in the future.

You can sign the petition to the Greek Prime Minister to stop the forced testing and outing of HIV+ sex workers here.  (Read it in English, Spanish & French) 

9th avril 2012 | Region: Europe

X:Talk have launched a campaign for a moratorium on sex worker arrests during the Olympics.

They are seeking a moratorium – a suspension of legal powers – on arrests of sex workers before and up to the end of the London Olympics. 

'Governments and NGOs draw a link between sporting events and increase in trafficking, but there is no proven link.  We ask for a moratorium because the usual response by governments to those assumptions is to crack down on sex workers. Up to now, anti-trafficking measures have mainly been about making criminal law interventions. But raids on brothels, for example, find that the number of people trafficked is nowhere near as many as thought.'

Read x:talk briefing paper here and and SIGN UP to their campaign by emailing xtalk.knowledge@gmail.com 

9th avril 2012 | Region: Europe

Press Release from: English Collective of Prostitutes

As arrests, raids and prosecutions of sex workers increase in Olympic boroughs and throughout the UK, calls for the decriminalisation of prostitution highlight the need to protect sex workers from rape and violence.

4th avril 2012 | Region: Europe

Ann Jordan's Issue Paper from Rightswork.org examines the impact of the Swedish Penal Code from 1999. 

26th mars 2012 | Region: Europe

Sex Workers in Madrid are taking direct action on the Banking industry by declaring an indefinite strike and refusing clients who work in this sector.

They say that until bankers return to providing credits to Spanish families and also small- and medium-sized businesses, there will be no sexual pleasures for their employees.

2nd mars 2012 | Region: Europe

Source (extract): Open Society Foundations

A civil court in Skopje, Macedonia, has ruled that police violated the rights of sex workers by detaining them in degrading conditions and forcing them to submit to medical tests for infectious diseases.

The police exposed the group of women to the media and public as criminals, despite the fact that they were not charged with a crime. The facts of the case are remarkable in their flagrant abuse of basic human rights and decency, and the court’s decision is momentous in its conviction that sex workers, like all humans, deserve privacy, dignity, and the protection of the state.

4th janvier 2012 | Region: Europe

Source: Press Release from the English Collective of Prostitutes 

Sheila Farmer, a sex worker who worked with other women from premises for safety had charges of brothel-keeping dismissed today in Croydon Crown Court. She worked with other women since being viciously raped and attacked whilst working alone. 

9th décembre 2011 | Region: Europe

The Sex Worker Open University has organised a candle light vigil in Soho, London on Thursday 15th December to remember friends and colleagues who were victims of violence.

SWOU have produced a number of videos to promote the event.  The first video can be seen on this page and the others can be viewed here and here.

18th novembre 2011 | Region: Europe

Research launched at a recent London seminar, as reported on PLRI's website, showed that:

Many migrants prefer working in the sex industry rather than the "unrewarding and sometimes exploitative conditions they meet in non-sexual jobs". Many migrants working in the sex industry send money back to their country of origin, thereby "dramatically improving the living conditions of their families". Police efforts to combat organised crime is undermined by the fact that victims of exploitation cannot be guaranteed indefinite leave to remain in the UK.  The research findings presented were from the ESRC-funded ‘Migrant Workers in the UK Sex Industry’, led by Dr Nick Mai from the Institute for the Study of European Transformations at London Metropolitan University. 

You can read the full research report here.

15th novembre 2011 | Region: Europe

Gay porn star Thierry Schaffauser left some students hot under the collar in his taboo-breaking talk at Wadham last week.

The French social activist, who founded the sex workers rights charity Les Putes in 2006, spoke frankly to members of Oxford’s LGBTQ society about his ongoing work for the gay rights movement and his experience in the porn industry.

27th mai 2011 | Region: Europe

London’s first ever Sex Worker Film Festival will take place Saturday 12 June 2011 at the Rio Cinema from 1:15-5:30pm in East London, featuring short films and documentaries by and about sex workers and their fight for their human and labour rights. 

12th février 2011 | Region: Europe

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