Resources

This is the 27th issue of NSWP's quarterly newsletter ‘Sex Work Digest’, covering the period September - December 2019. 

This case study is the third of five case studies that will be published on a yearly basis from 2016-2020. These case studies will monitor and document the impact of international guidelines and policies on sex work that NSWP and NSWP members have helped develop. NSWP will also monitor how members use these international guidelines in local, national and regional advocacy efforts. Examples of international guidelines include the Amnesty International Policy on State Obligations to Respect, Protect, and Fulfil the Human Rights of Sex Workers, the Sex Worker Implementation Tool, and the development of the UN Women policy on sex work.

Legislation around sex work can be extremely complex; different legal models exist in different countries and sometimes even within countries. NSWP published a mapping of national legislation used to regulate and criminalise sex work in 208 countries and dependencies, with sub-national legislation included for some countries.

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.

This resource is a Community Guide to the Policy Brief on Sex Workers and Travel Restrictions. It provides an overview of the full Policy Brief, and provides key recommendations for policy makers and health service providers. 

Sex workers face many barriers to migration and travel, and are often subjected to arbitrary questioning, biased visa refusals and surveillance and discriminatory immigration checks after entering a country. Sex workers’ movement can also be restricted under measures purporting to be ‘anti-trafficking’. Travel restrictions can create a great deal of stress for sex workers, and some sex workers avoid travel altogether because they are afraid of being denied entry, deported or of being identified as a sex worker.

To mark World AIDS Day 2019, UNAIDS has published two resources: ‘Communities make the difference’, and ‘What is a community-led organization?’.

The 42^nd Global Fund Board Meeting took place 14^th-15^th November, and included some important items for sex workers to consider.

This quarterly update covers the period July – September 2019 and will look at the Global Fund replenishment, Universal Health Coverage, key populations, changes to the modular framework and HIV2020.

This is the 26th issue of NSWP's quarterly newsletter ‘Sex Work Digest’, covering the period July - September 2019. 

On 23rd of September, 2019 the United Nations General Assembly held a High-Level Meeting (HLM) on Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The theme of this meeting was “Universal Health Coverage: Moving Together to Build a Healthier World” and ostensibly aimed to accelerate progress towards UHC.

NSWP provides technical support to regional sex worker networks in line with the needs identified by each regional network. This includes face-to-face technical support around organisational development to the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW), the African Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA), and the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network for Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (SWAN), in addition to virtual technical support provided to other regional networks.

This Briefing Note outlines Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the challenges it presents for sex workers and other criminalised populations. 

STOPAIDS has published a new position paper supporting the decriminalisation of sex work, designed to support STOPAIDS members to advocate for decriminalisation within their own advocacy and programmes, and support the global sex worker rights movement.

The Global Fund continues to prepare for the 6^th Replenishment meeting that will be hosted by the French Government in Lyon on the 10^th October 2019.

This case study focuses on the NSWP’s Global Fund capacity development programme for regional and national sex worker-led organisations, and assesses its impact. The programme supports a range of capacity building activities in 27 countries, and this case study focuses on the impact of these interventions in 2018. Specifically, the case study highlights the ability of regional networks and community experts to provide technical support relating to the Global Fund, and the capacity within sex worker-led organisations to engage with the Global Fund.

This is the 25th issue of NSWP's quarterly newsletter ‘Sex Work Digest’, covering the period April - June 2019. 

The Annual Report highlights the activities and achievements of NSWP in 2018. These activities include capacity building, providing technical support to regional networks and the development of advocacy tools that bring the human rights of sex workers into focus. It also highlights partnership working with the women's rights movement, key populations networks and UN agencies. 

This Briefing Note outlines the problems with the conflation of the term 'sexual exploitation' with sex work, and how this exacerbates harms to sex workers. 

This special issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review highlights some of the current achievements of, and challenges faced by, the global sex workers' rights movement. Contributors examine the ways in which organising and collectivisation have enabled sex workers to speak up for themselves and tell their own stories, claim their human, social, and labour rights, resist stigma and punitive laws and policies, and provide mutual and peer-based support.