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.

Fuckförbundet launched a new report - "20 Years Of Failing Sex Workers" - as part of their 2019 conference "Sex Work, Human Rights And Health: Assessing 20 Years Of Swedish Model". It brings together available evidence from sex workers on the impact of the law. Contents include:

Human Rights Watch and the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) have released a new report recommending the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa, in order to protect the safety and wellbeing of women, and respond to the HIV pandemic.

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.

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. 

To mark International Sex Workers' Day on 2nd June, SWAN published a new briefing paper on Sex Work Legal Frameworks in Central-Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA).

The Global Alliance Against the Trafficking in Women's anthology 'Collateral Damage' reviews the experience of eight specific countries (Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Brazil, India, Nigeria, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The report attempts to assess what the impact  of anti-trafficking measures have been for a variety of people living and working there, or migrating into or out of these

Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center - Shadow CEDAW report submitted to the 39th Session of CEDAW in 2007.

You can download this 13 page PDF report above.

This resource is in English.

Date: June 25

UNAIDS PCB met in Geneva on June 25, 2007 and the APNSW spearheaded efforts with NGOs to demonstrate the ways that the proposed UNAIDS Guidance on Sex Work violated UN human rights documents.

Bar girls are being evicted by Shiv Sena with the support of the State

Date: June 07, 2007

Varsha Kale (President - WPI) writes:

Labour standards and occupational health and safety have been the rights of Canadian Workers for over 100 years. The sex industry and its workers have however never enjoyed the privileges of being acknowledged for providing a safe work space or been able to complain about dangerous conditions. This has forced the system at large to impose what it believes is right for sex industry workers with disastrous results for decades in the BC/Yukon region. The need for a community based process through which the sex industry can govern itself and have input to its future and stability has never been more urgent.

The BC Coalition of Experiential Women was funded to explore working conditions of off street municipally licensed massage parlors and escort agencies. A series of three focus groups were conducted with individuals employed in these venues as well as those who work primarily on street. This report presents the findings of these interviews.

“The Challenge of Change,” the December 2006 report of the House of Commons Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws, was aptly named — the Subcommittee failed to meet the challenge of recommending legislative changes that are urgently needed to protect and fulfil the health, safety and human rights of adult sex workers in Canada.This paper critiques the Subcommittee’s report in detail. It also summarises the Legal Network’s analysis of the criminal law’s impact on sex workers and calls on federal politicians to show real leadership by standing up for the human rights of sex workers in Canada.

This resource looks at Raymond's 'ten reasons' and discusses why each reason is poorly thought out, or missing crucial information.

You can download this seven page PDF resource above.

This resource is in English.

This letter was sent to Peter Piot to raise concerns about the language and focus of the 2007 UNAIDS Guidance Note: HIV and Sex Work. In particular, it raises concerns about the emphasis on reducing commercial sex rather than HIV, and:

This Guidance Note addresses the urgent need to provide and increase access to HIV programming for sex workers of all genders, HIV positive or negative. The Millennium Development Goals such as girls education, gender equality and poverty reduction, form the background contextual setting for this document. This Guidance Note will assist UN agencies and UNAIDS country programmes to develop sex work and HIV policy and services that are in line with governments commitments to improve their response to HIV/ AIDS, and with the ultimate objective of moving towards Universal Access to comprehensive prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010.

This Guidance Note has been developed to provide a unified approach by the UNAIDS Cosponsoring agencies to the reduction of HIV vulnerabilities in the context of sex work, where sex workers are defined as adults, 18 years and over. Its specific focus is the urgent need to provide access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support for all sex workers, and to provide life choices and occupational alternatives to sex work, including for sex workers living with HIV.