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 43 responses were from 17 countries – Armenia, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, North Macedonia, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom – in the Europe region.

The Sex Workers' Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN), within the Regional Platform EECA, has developed a video and community guide on the community’s engagement in Global Fund supported processes on the national level. This resource and video provides a general overview of The Global Fund's structure, and key examples from within the region about how sex worker-led organisations have engaged with The Global Fund. 

Theme: Health

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) hosted its first ‘Expert Consultation Meeting STIs among Sex Workers’ meeting in October 2014 and has now released its public report of the meeting. NSWP was represented at the meeting.

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Theme: Health
The role of this report is to highlight the contribution of four sex worker-led organisations in developing and advancing an evidence-based and comprehensive response to HIV:
  • Tais Plus from Kyrgyzstan,
  • STAR STAR from Macedonia,
  • Rose Alliance from Sweden, and
  • Silver Rose from the Russian Federation. 

Undoubtedly, those community-based organisations exist in diverse social environments – respectively, Central Asia, Central, Western, and Eastern Europe – each of which constitutes a unique milieu for sex work and collecti

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Theme: Health

This NSWP Statement responds to attempts to criminalise the purchase of sex in France. We condemn these proposals which are ideologically driven rather than evidence-based, and incorrectly view sex work through the prism of ‘violence against women’ whilst also irresponsibly conflating trafficking with sex work.

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The Government is committed to enhancing the contribution of research to health and social care, and to the partnership between services and science. Research is essential to the successful promotion and protection of health and well-being and to modern and effective health and social care services. At the same time, research can involve an element of risk, both in terms of return on investment and sometimes for the safety and well-being of the research participants. Proper governance of research is therefore essential to ensure that the public can have confidence in, and benefit from, quality research in health and social care. The public has a right to expect high scientific, ethical and financial standards, transparent decision-making processes, clear allocation of responsibilities and robust monitoring arrangements.

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The consultation is to obtain views on ethics review of social care research. Comments are welcomed from those working in social care research and practice communities, from service users/carers or organisations representing them and from members of the public with an interest in research. The consultation follows the six criteria for consultation set out in Cabinet Office Code of Practice.

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An analysis on indoor sex work settings in seven European cities and a manual on examples of good practices in the work with sex workers. The manual has two objectives: To provide an analysis on local level of the indoor prostitution scene, and to present examples of good practice for service providers regarding the implementation of new outreach methodologies in order to encourage a broader development of comprehensive indoor outreach services.

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This is a leaflet on safety at work made for sex workers by sex workers and organisations from five EU countries. The leaflet is available in Bulgarian, English, French, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The leaflet targets sex workers working in hotels, apartments, brothels, clubs, bars, massage parlours, saunas, sex shops, and other indoor venues. The leaflet is the result of our local experiences. It presents advice and tips related to safety at work, and information on sex work legislation in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal.

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This is a leaflet on safety at work made for sex workers by sex workers and organisations from five EU countries. The leaflet is available in Bulgarian, English, French, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The leaflet targets sex workers working in hotels, apartments, brothels, clubs, bars, massage parlours, saunas, sex shops, and other indoor venues. The leaflet is the result of our local experiences. It presents advice and tips related to safety at work, and information on sex work legislation in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal.

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This is a leaflet on safety at work made for sex workers by sex workers and organisations from five EU countries. The leaflet is available in Bulgarian, English, French, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The leaflet targets sex workers working in hotels, apartments, brothels, clubs, bars, massage parlours, saunas, sex shops, and other indoor venues. The leaflet is the result of our local experiences. It presents advice and tips related to safety at work, and information on sex work legislation in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal.

Download this resource:

This is a leaflet on safety at work made for sex workers by sex workers and organisations from five EU countries. The leaflet is available in Bulgarian, English, French, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The leaflet targets sex workers working in hotels, apartments, brothels, clubs, bars, massage parlours, saunas, sex shops, and other indoor venues. The leaflet is the result of our local experiences. It presents advice and tips related to safety at work, and information on sex work legislation in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal.

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The aim of this European report is to provide transparency about the legislation on sex work throughout Europe and its impact on the human rights of sex workers, including their access to public health services. The report assesses legislation and policy developments on sex work, migration and health policies on a national and European level and includes a critical evaluation of the various approaches relating to the interrelated issues of sex work, migration and health.

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This manual has three main objectives: to present examples of good practice for health and social service providers offering care for migrant and mobile sex workers working in both indoor and outdoor settings, to present examples of different experiences of HIV/STI prevention strategies, as well as introducing and facilitating implementation of innovative tools for specific outreach methodology, peer education, campaigns for clients and advocacy campaigns, to increase and expand good practice actions targeting sex worker and their clients.

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This report aims to identify trends and tendencies in relation to the changing patterns of sex work and the living and working conditions of female and transgender sex workers within Europe, with a specific focus on HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and programming. The report also focuses on work migration patterns within the European Union (EU), and how the expansion of the EU is affecting sex workers. The various annexes provide additional information that may be relevant to sex workers interested in learning about the structure of TAMPEP, the questionnaire they used to asses each country, their recommendations, and the individual national reports.

This article examines the public discourses invoked in United Kingdom debates about prostitution and the trafficking of women. It takes two particular debates as its focus: the kerbcrawling debates from the late 1970s to the present and the more recent trafficking debate. The authors suggest that there are three striking features about the UK discourses on prostitution: i) the absence of the sex work discourse, ii) the dominance of the public nuisance discourse in relation to kerb-crawling, and iii) the dominance of a traditional moral discourse in relation to trafficking.

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This article examines national news reports on prostitution of Russian women in northern Norway between 1990 and 2001. Applying critical discourse analysis, the author shows how this particular type of cross-border, rural prostitution is represented as sexual transaction, as a sociopolitical problem (of public order, public health, social/moral breakdown and stigma), and as a symbolic issue used to legitimize stricter border controls. Images of prostitutes, pimps and customers are also discussed.

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This report provides an overview of important issues that sex workers face in the region as well as to the political, economic, and social factors that influence policies and attitudes toward sex workers. It focuses primarily on existing laws and policies and their consequences from the perspective of HIV prevention and treatment. The report also offers recommendations designed to uphold sex workers’ human rights and remove barriers that reduce their ability or willingness to obtain access to consistent and equitable health care and other social services.

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