Resources

A number of people are excluded from the process and benefits of development because of their sexuality. Policies designed to lift people out of poverty, to provide employment and access to crucial services, all too often exclude those who do not conform to ‘normal’ sexual or gender identities. In many countries, this exclusion is also enforced through law.

HIV prevention efforts are being scaled up globally, to target sex workers as a key population in the HIV response. The voices and experiences of sex workers living with HIV are too often rendered invisible. This means that the additional needs and rights of sex workers living with HIV are often overlooked in forums that support the rights of general populations of people living with HIV. This paper sets out the demands of positive sex workers articulated by sex workers themselves. NSWP committed to address this invisibility as an annual priority in 2012. Accordingly, initial consultation was carried out during the Sex Worker Freedom Festival (SWFF). The SWFF was a Alternative IAC2012 event for sex workers and allies in Kolkata, India, and was sustained throughout the year through face-to-face meetings, Skype conversations, and continued communication through setting up and maintaining a global advisory group of sex workers living with HIV, eventually launching the NSWP+ platform. 

One of the initial advocacy priorities identified by NSWP+ (a platform for positive sex workers and others committed to equal rights for sex workers living with HIV) was treatment access and joining the campaign against trade related restrictions and patents used by large pharmaceutical companies to make huge profits from essential medicines. Sex workers identified the need for accessible information on the trade frameworks that impact upon access to medicines for people living with HIV.

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

This document summarises the experience of sex workers through examples of best practices that serve to share the development of politically influential tools; to strengthen sex workers’ group efforts to become effectively involved in the development of policies and programmes that help to amplify their voices both at regional and international levels.

• 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

This resource is a note by NSWP members Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP) and SANGRAM. It summarizes the Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in India with regards to her observations made in relation to sex worker rights in India. It highlights that the Special Rapporteur called on the Indian Government to review the problematic ITPA (Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act) legislation which criminalizes women in sex work and to take measures to protect the human rights of sex workers.

The present Report has been issued by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences as a result of her official visit to India from 22 April to 1 May 2013. Violence against women in India is systematic and occurs in the public and private spheres. It is underpinned by the persistence of patriarchal social norms and inter- and intragender hierarchies.

The present paper has been produced by a Member of NSWP (Persist Health Project) and is a useful read for service providers seeking to shape their services to the needs of sex workers.

The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) have released a statement strongly condemning the recent EU Parliament vote on the flawed report prepared by MEP Mary Honeyball.

NSWP has released a statement in relation to the arrest of Alejandra Gil.

From our understanding of the situation, the charges in question emanate from new legislation, which in our view conflates sex work with human trafficking. 

The International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) has spearheaded a campaign to critically review the draft report by MEP Mary Honeyball which proposes the criminalisation of clients based on factually incorrect and misleading information. Ninety-four academics have signed this letter of critique.

The summary discussion looks at highlights and activities that have advanced The Commission’s recommendations. The report has been widely disseminated at the national level to key policy makers with a view to persuade decision makers to promote a favourable legal framework to respond to HIV. Concrete changes in legal framework changes (in relation to sex workers and other key populations) as recommended by The Commission are however, not reported.

NSWP statement in response to the decision by The European Parliament Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee's to support proposals to criminalise the clients of sex workers.

World Report 2014 is Human Rights Watch’s 24th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It summarises key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events through November 2013.

The report touches on sex work and reiterates Human Rights Watch's support for the decriminalisation of sex work.