This resource is a Community Guide to the Policy Brief: COVID-19 and Sex Workers/ Sex Worker-led Organisations. It provides an overview of the full Policy Brief, and provides key recommendations based on important lessons learned throughout the pandemic.
You can download this 5-page resource above. This resource is available in English, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.
As a criminalised population, sex workers have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, often living in precarious economic situations and excluded from social protection systems. This policy brief includes feedback directly from sex worker-led organisations and sex workers on their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, including its impact upon access to services, supplies of HIV treatment, and prevention commodities.
The Global Fund has established Codes of Conduct which employees, resource recipients, suppliers, Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) members, and governance officials must uphold while carrying out their work. One of the requirements, which applies to all parties under these codes, is to prohibit ‘sexual exploitation.’ Due to widespread conflations of sex work with ‘sexual exploitation,’ however, there is concern that this provision may be misinterpreted to exclude sex workers.
This is a summary of NSWP's Consensus Statement on Sex Work, Human Rights, and the Law. The Consensus Statement is issued on behalf of NSWP members and the sex workers they represent including sex workers of all genders, class, race, ethnicity, health status, age, nationality, citizenship, language, education levels, disabilities, and many other factors.
NSWP member organisation the English Collective of Prostitutes and Dr Laura Connelly from the University of Salford have published new research that looks at EU Migrant Sex Work in the UK Post-Referendum.
The research, conducted in 2019, shows that violence, xenophobia and threats of deportation against migrant sex workers from the European Union have risen since the EU Referendum.
Key findings from the research include:
The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) strongly supports efforts to decriminalise sex work that have been put forward by the Government of Malta. We reiterate the need for a human rights-based approach to sex work and encourage the Maltese government to continue with the law reform towards the full decriminalisation of sex work.
The right to participation in public and political life is enshrined in international human rights law. Broadly, ‘public life’ refers to the realm in which political processes and activities occur. Participation in public life can be formal or informal, taking place from the grassroots to global levels. Through diverse forms of engagement in public life, sex workers have successfully influenced policies, programmes, practices, and discussions which affect their lives.
This animation describes the different legislative frameworks used to criminalise and oppress sex work and sex workers, including oppressive regulatory frameworks.
The Sex Work and the Law animation is a new tool for sex workers' advocacy worldwide. It was designed and created by Smo Sienkiewicz.
The Consensus Statement details eight fundamental rights that sex worker-led groups from around the world identify as crucial targets for their activism and advocacy. Following a global consultation with members, the NSWP Consensus Statement reaffirms NSWP ’s global advocacy platform for sex work, human rights and the law.
The Consensus Statement animation is a new tool for sex workers' advocacy worldwide. It was designed and created by Smo Sienkiewicz.
This infographic provides a short summary of the key points in The Smart Sex Worker’s Guide to SWIT. The Sex Worker Implementation Tool (SWIT) offers practical guidance on effective HIV and STI programming for sex workers.
This infographic describes the different legislative frameworks used to criminalise and oppress sex work and sex workers, including oppressive regulatory frameworks.
The Sex Work and the Law infographic is a new tool for sex workers' advocacy worldwide. It was designed and created by Smo Sienkiewicz.
This infographic summarises the research on the decriminalisation of third parties. It sets out why NSWP and its members call for the decriminalisation of third parties and explores some of the key harms that are caused to sex workers as a result of the criminalisation of third parties.
The Decriminalisation of Third Parties infographic is a new tool for sex workers' advocacy worldwide. It was designed and created by Smo Sienkiewicz.
The Consensus Statement details eight fundamental rights that sex worker-led groups from around the world identify as crucial targets for their activism and advocacy. Following a global consultation with members, the NSWP Consensus Statement reaffirms NSWP ’s global advocacy platform for sex work, human rights and the law.
The Consensus Statement infographic is a new tool for sex workers' advocacy worldwide. It was designed and created by Smo Sienkiewicz.
This case study is the fourth and final instalment in a series produced by NSWP over a five-year period. Spanning the years 2015 to 2019, three previous case studies documented the role of NSWP and its member organisations in the development, implementation, and monitoring of rights-affirming international guidelines and policies on sex work. These case studies also examined the usage and impact of international guidelines and policies in local, national, and regional sex worker advocacy.
Contents include:
In most countries, sex workers are subject to exploitative and often unsafe working conditions, and do not benefit from the same labour regulations and protections as other workers.
Community Guides are the result of desk research and a global e-consultation, and aim to provide simple summaries of NSWP’s Smart Guides, further detail and references can be found in the accompanying Smart Guides.
In most countries, sex workers are subject to exploitative and often unsafe working conditions, and don’t benefit from the same labour regulations and protections as other workers. This smart guide sets out how sex work fits within international labour standards, and in particular the Decent Work Agenda. It is intended as a tool for sex workers’ rights organisations to use when campaigning for labour rights as fundamental to sex workers’ rights in their respective countries.
Contents include:
New Zealand is the only country to have decriminalised sex work at a national level, alongside statelevel legislation in New South Wales (NSW) and the Northern Territory (NT) in Australia. This Guide provides an overview those three systems, and the key advocacy actions that were pivotal to achieving law reform, as a tool that sex workers and allies can use to advocate for a rights-affirming approach to sex work.
This Smart Guide provides an overview of existing sex work legal models and details the processes that have been used to develop legislative models that respect and protect sex workers’ human and labour rights. It aims to provide sex workers’ rights organisations with ideas and strategies that they can adapt to their own legal framework and context, to use in their advocacy and campaigning in their own countries.
Produced by NSWP and International Women’s Right Actions Watch Asia Pacific, this series of infographics, compiled in PDF format, aims to raise public awareness about the deeply negative impact of ‘End Demand’ laws on the human rights of sex workers, and to encourage collective action to demand State accountability for violations of sex workers’ rights.
This resource is available in English.