Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) has published a new report: Sex Workers Organising for Change: Self-representation, community mobilisation, and working conditions.
The report details the ways in which sex worker rights organisations are creatively responding to violence, exploitation and other abuses within the sex industry, including instances of human trafficking. The report is based on research conducted with sex worker organisations in seven countries: Canada, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, India, Thailand and New Zealand.
It highlights cases where sex workers, or sex worker organisations, resolved issue of exploitation and violence by working as a collective, providing advice to other organisations and leading negotiations with third parties. Beyond support for individual cases, this report also documents how sex worker rights organisations mobilise sex workers and their allies to resist stigma, discrimination and oppression, and to collectively voice their concerns, demand their rights, and participate in public and political life. It also covers the relationship between sex workers and sex worker rights organisations and the anti-trafficking movement.
Ultimately, the report demonstrates that sex worker rights organisations are human rights organisations whose primary mandate is to ensure that the human, economic, social, political, and labour rights of the people they work with are recognised and respected by state and non-state actors. It includes country-level and global conclusions and recommendations for policy makers.
You can download the full 306-page report in English above, and summary reports are available on the GAATW website in English, Spanish and Marathi.