Resources

In April 2020, NSWP launched a global survey to understand the impact of COVID-19 on sex workers. The survey received 156 responses in total from 55 different countries, out of which 18 responses were from 11 countries – Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam – in the Asia and the Pacific region

NSWP facilitated a delegation from member organisations to attend the 64th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The 64^th CSW session was cut from almost two weeks to one day following the outbreak of COVID-19, and was attended by government delegations only. This meant that all side and parallel events were cancelled and the expected robust discussions between community organisations and governments, and the essential input from civil society to hold governments accountable, was entirely absent.

NSWP facilitated a delegation from member organisations to attend the 63rd Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). This delegation aimed to amplify the voices of sex workers’ rights advocates in a space where fundamental feminists and abolitionist groups often dominate discussions about sex work, which do not reflect the diversity of sex workers’ lived experiences and realities. In this context, the conflation of trafficking and sex work is used to promote policies that undermine the rights of sex workers.

The Community, Rights, and Gender (CRG) Department of the Global Fund Secretariat has published this document which shares findings and recommendations for increasing the meaningful engagement of communities in all phases of Global Fund grants. The review summarises lessons learned and good practices for how communities engage meaningfully, and identifies key principles and strategic actions the Global Fund can take to ensure greater accountability between communities, Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs), other key stakeholders, and the Global Fund itself.

This is a summary of the Asia and the Pacific regional report on economic and social empowerment and the Africa regional report on economic empowerment programmes for sex workers. In this summary, NSWP reflects on best practices for the economic empowerment of sex workers, focusing on elements of successful economic empowerment programmes and describing lessons learnt from programmes that fail.

As new medical technologies are increasingly being promoted in the prevention and treatment of HIV, and heralded as interventions to be used within communities of key populations including sex workers, NSWP urges the international HIV community and donors to take the concerns of sex workers presented in this report seriously and continue meaningful engagement with key populations in this shift towards the use of biomedical interventions. For years sex workers around the world have been developing and sustaining sex worker-led HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programmes.

This regional report explores economic empowerment programmes in Asia through case studies through nine case studies. It describes good practice examples of sex worker-led economic empowerment projects and the impact of forced rehabilitation programmes on the lives of sex workers. A summary of the regional reports regarding econoic empowerment is also available.

This global report pulls together the regional reports documenting good practice in sex worker-led HIV programming to provide a global overview.

In July 2010, sex workers and allies from nearly 40 countries, gathered at the 18th International AIDS Conference. "We carried red umbrellas everywhere we went, and demanded that funders, policy makers, researchers, and other organisations recognise and support the human rights of sex workers." This report gives an overview of the sex work-related activities during the conference.