Here in its first major report The China Sex Worker Organization Network Forum trained its members to document the effects of the crackdown.
This is the English version of the Note for Record of the September 2011 UNAIDS Advisory Group on HIV and Sex Work
This summary, written under the aegis of the Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM), presents the preliminary results of the first pan-India survey on sex workers. These preliminary findings have been developed for an event in Mumbai on 30 April 2011. The authors appreciate the opportunity to discuss their research with an audience of critical stakeholders. A report which provides their final analysis and data relating to male, trans sex workers, sexuality, stigma and discrimination as well as the 0.5% of 15-17 year olds in this sample will be published later in the year. For the final report please contact info@sangram.org.
This report reflects the voices and opinions of 140 participants, including resource persons and sex workers, at the first Asia and the Pacific Regional Consultation on HIV and Sex Work, held on October 2010 in Pattaya, Thailand. It covers critical components of the HIV and sex work responses, and four key areas – namely, creating an enabling legal and policy environment, ensuring sexual and reproductive health and rights, eliminating violence against sex workers, and addressing migration and mobility in the context of HIV and sex work.
This report summarises the deliberations of a one day event entitled “Labour of Love” held on 17th December 2010, hosted by Women’s Organization Network for Human Rights Advocacy (WONETHA) in partnership with Uganda Harmonized Rights Alliance (UHRA). The event primarily sought to put a human face to the lives of sex workers as well as challenge the public silence on violence against them. The forum was attended by 55 participants, including sex workers, brothel owners and human rights activists. The event was organised against the background that sex workers have continuously suffered from abuse, discrimination and violence which often goes unreported and unacknowledged. In particular, the event illuminated the achievements, coping mechanisms, challenges and recommendations regarding sex work.
100% Condom Use Policy (CUP) programmes that aim to reduce HIV among female sex workers are being implemented or planned in several countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. As a result of claims made about the role of 100% CUP in reducing national HIV epidemics, UNAIDS and other key agencies promote the programmes as a "best practice". The NSWP has a different view of the theory and practice of 100% CUP. Our view is based on ethical analysis and on real evidence from the field.
Social justice activists internationally have hailed as progressive and humane the 1998 report The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia. Edited by Lin Lean Lim of the International Labour Office in Geneva, the book recommends that the sex industry be included in official government accountings, first, because of its enormous contributions to regional economies, and second, as the only way to improve the situation of those employed as sex workers. With a recognised sex sector, governments would be required to extend labour rights and protections to people who work in it. At the same time, the report unequivocally demands the eradication of child prostitution as a serious human rights violation and an intolerable form of child labour.
A Prostitutes of New York (PONY) member reports on a visit from Subhash Thottiparambil, a sex worker rights advocate from Kerala, India.
Mon, 5 May 2003 23:51:09 -0300 (ART)
From: "Paulo Longo" phlongo2003@yahoo.com.br
To: letters@nationalreview.com, nronline@nationalreview.com
Subject: Letter to the editor
Dear Editor:
Donna Hughes (May 1, 2003, Accommodation or Abolition? Solutions to the problem of sexual trafficking and slavery) grossly misrepresents the international Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP). Her assertions are risible. The NSWP actively works against trafficking in persons, especially children, and lobbied for the passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in 2001. The NSWP also works against the violation of civil liberties in the so-called 100% Condom Use Policy programmes, which are dangerously coercive and include forced physical examinations in unsterile and disease-promoting conditions.
MEDIA RELEASE
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Transgendered sex workers deserve dignity and rights
WASHINGTON, DC — The Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) would like express its condolences to the families and friends of two transgendered women, Bella Evangelista and Emonie Spaulding, who were murdered in separate incidents in Washington DC during the past week. Furthermore, the NSWP sends out our hope for the recovery of Ms Punana Walker who was critically injured on August 20, 2003.
The RighT Guide is a tool to assess the human rights impacts of anti-trafficking policies. The tool was created by both sex worker-led organisations and allies. The aim of the toolkit is to provide NGOs and other organisations with a tool they can use to assess the consequences of anti-trafficking policies on the human rights of the people most affect by these policies, such as sex workers. The tool provides the step-by-step process to study the impact of anti-trafficking policies, which then provides evidence-based research for advocacy against these policies.
This document includes 15 factsheets that answer questions and define terms used in the RighT Guide: A Tool to Assess the Human Rights Impact of Anti-trafficking Policies. The tool was created by both sex worker-led organisations and allies. The aim of the toolkit is to provide NGOs and other organisations with a tool they can use to assess the consequences of anti-trafficking policies on the human rights of the people most affect by these policies, such as sex workers. These factsheets should be used with the RighT Guide to answer questions that readers may have.
The RighT guide helps NGOs to assess the human rights impact of anti-trafficking measures. This strengthens their advocacy for more effective, rights-based policies against trafficking. This brochure outlines specific ways that NGOs can benefit from the guide, and gives information on its use. This document includes sections discussing:
This report examines the impact of law enforcement approaches to street-based sex work in New York City and proposes a series of policy and practice recommendations for reform based on the researchers’ analyses of the data collected. This report also seeks to promote reasoned, fact-based, and informed debate regarding street-based prostitution in New York City. Public discussion of this issue usually occurs in flashy headlines that are meant to titillate rather than to explore the consequences of policy decisions in depth. This is a special effort to give voice to the problems faced by street-based sex workers, using their own words, since this is a voice that is almost always left out of policy debates.
Em 1998, no Departamento de Metodologia de Ensino da Universidade Federal de São Carlos, um projeto com o título genérico de “Prevenção e Saúde” retomava um trabalho realizado em 1991 junto à profissionais do sexo de uma casa noturna de São Carlos. Comemoramos, neste ano de 2003, 5 anos de atividades. Como coordenadora do projeto e do grupo, retomo aqui, de forma bastante resumida, a história desse grupo, os resultados alcançados e os desafios que a ele se colocam.
You can downlaod this 3 page resource above. This resource is in Portuguese.
Innocence and Purity Vs. Deviance and Immorality: The Spaces of Prostitution in Nepal and Canada
This paper adopts a critical feminist analysis in examining the way in which social and physical spaces operate to maintain race, class, and gender hierarchies in relation to prostitution. Critiquing the dominant anti-trafficking discourse that essentialises all 'third world" women as victims, the author problematises the construction of Badi women in Western Nepal as 'traditional prostitutes' and Aboriginal women in Canada as 'easy squaws'. This analysis demonstrates how in reproducing false divisions between 'virgins' and 'whores', and between the 'first' and 'third' worlds, material, symbolic, and discursive processes work to normalise unequal relations of power.