Resources

In August 2019, a group of feminist activists from diverse regions and social movements gathered in Mexico City to strategise towards the 25th anniversary of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in China in 1995 and produced the Beijing Platform for Action.

In August 2019, a group of feminist activists from diverse regions and social movements gathered in Mexico City to strategise towards the 25th anniversary of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in China in 1995 and produced the Beijing Platform for Action.

This case study is the third of five case studies that will be published on a yearly basis from 2016-2020. These case studies will monitor and document the impact of international guidelines and policies on sex work that NSWP and NSWP members have helped develop. NSWP will also monitor how members use these international guidelines in local, national and regional advocacy efforts. Examples of international guidelines include the Amnesty International Policy on State Obligations to Respect, Protect, and Fulfil the Human Rights of Sex Workers, the Sex Worker Implementation Tool, and the development of the UN Women policy on sex work.

To mark World AIDS Day 2019, UNAIDS has published two resources: ‘Communities make the difference’, and ‘What is a community-led organization?’.

This paper by PICUM discusses the impact of criminalisation on the human rights and dignity of undocumented migrant sex workers in Europe. It outlines the main legal frameworks affecting sex workers, and highlights how these intersect with other frameworks criminalising migrants in Europe.

NSWP provides technical support to regional sex worker networks in line with the needs identified by each regional network. This includes face-to-face technical support around organisational development to the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW), the African Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA), and the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network for Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (SWAN), in addition to virtual technical support provided to other regional networks.

This case study focuses on the NSWP’s Global Fund capacity development programme for regional and national sex worker-led organisations, and assesses its impact. The programme supports a range of capacity building activities in 27 countries, and this case study focuses on the impact of these interventions in 2018. Specifically, the case study highlights the ability of regional networks and community experts to provide technical support relating to the Global Fund, and the capacity within sex worker-led organisations to engage with the Global Fund.

This special issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review highlights some of the current achievements of, and challenges faced by, the global sex workers' rights movement. Contributors examine the ways in which organising and collectivisation have enabled sex workers to speak up for themselves and tell their own stories, claim their human, social, and labour rights, resist stigma and punitive laws and policies, and provide mutual and peer-based support.

Amnesty International has released a new report highlighting the routine use of rape, violence and torture by police to punish women sex workers in the Dominican Republic. The report - ‘If they can have her, why can’t we?’ - uses testimony from 46 Dominican cisgender and transgender women sex workers, and reports them suffering various forms of violence at the hands of police.

On International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers 2018, the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) published a position paper on the sex work and approaches to delivering rights and health-based policies for sex workers.

Between 23rd and 27th July 2018, more than 120 sex workers from more than 25 countries attended the 22nd International AIDS Conference (AIDS2018) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The bi-annual International AIDS Conferences are the largest global gathering of HIV academics, implementers, policy makers, people living with HIV and those most affected by HIV, including sex workers.

International migration has become a ‘mega trend’ of our times, with more than 260 million migrants living outside their country of origin in 2017. Some move in search of better livelihood opportunities, others flee conflict, environmental degradation or natural disasters, and yet others are deceived or coerced into exploitative work. At the same time, the categories developed by the international community for people on the move—such as smuggled migrants, refugees, or trafficked persons—are increasingly inadequate to capture today’s complex migration flows.

This resource was developed through the LINKAGES project by representatives of global and regional key population networks, community-based organisations led by and serving key populations, United Nations agencies, international non-governmental organisations, donors, and defenders of human rights who support and implement HIV programmes. 

This document aims to provide guidance to nongovernmental organisations engaging with the CEDAW review process and providing alternative information to the CEDAW Committee on the theme of rights of sex workers. It accompanies the Framework on Rights of Sex Workers & CEDAW as a practical tool to aid documentation and analysis using the CEDAW Convention as a frame of reference.

This Framework seeks to connect human rights principles to the debates around prostitution laws and sex work. It is intended to be a tool to inform the rights discourse on sex work in the context of one such international human rights treaty— the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Amnesty International's 'Body Politics: Criminalization of Sexuality and Reproduction' series is the culmination of six years of research, analysis and engagement with key partners. See below for an overview of the resources, which you can download through the link above. 

Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) has published a new report: Sex Workers Organising for Change: Self-representation, community mobilisation, and working conditions.

This case study is the first of five case studies that will be published on a yearly basis from 2016-2020. These case studies will monitor and document the impact of international guidelines and policies on sex work that NSWP and NSWP members have helped develop. NSWP will also monitor how members use these international guidelines in local, national and regional advocacy efforts. Examples of international guidelines include the Amnesty International Policy on State Obligations to Respect, Protect, and Fulfil the Human Rights of Sex Workers, the Sex Worker Implementation Tool, and the development of the UN Women policy on sex work.

This case study is a follow-up to The Global Fund Workshops case study published in 2015. The Global Fund workshops were a series of five-day workshops which took place in 2015. In 2016, the Regional Community Experts, supported by National Community Experts, provided a series of workshops in 18 countries and helped implement country-level follow up activities through virtual technical support. NSWP’s Senior Programme Officer supported the Regional Community Experts. This case study describes the goals, strategies and impact of the national-level workshops and country-level follow-up activities.

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) submitted the following response to the UN Women consultation on "sex work, sex trade, and prostitution. They argue the conflation of sex work and trafficking trivialises trafficking and victimises, infantilises and patronises sex workers and creates a hostile atmosphere against them.