Resources

This is a summary of The Needs and Rights of Trans Sex Workers briefing paper. It discusses the issues and needs identified by trans sex workers as disclosed in NSWP forums, including an online questionnaire and face-to-face focus groups.

This briefing paper discusses the issues and needs identified by trans sex workers. Attention is first given to the issue of intersectionality, aiming to give context to the community of TSW before examining the needs and rights of this group. Legal situations are then discussed, noting how legislative systems can have an impact on the lives and work of TSW worldwide. A summary of this briefing paper is also available.

This is a summary of the Needs and Rights of Male Sex Workers briefing paper. A lack of understanding about the MSW community often leads to gaps in service provision and/or inappropriate services being provided. This briefing paper explains the unique needs and rights of MSW and is intended for those who make policy, design and implement programmes, and work directly with MSW, in the hope of increasing awareness and understanding of the multiple realities and needs of this community.

This briefing paper has been developed in line with the NSWP priority to focus on and highlight the needs and rights of male sex workers. This paper presents an overview of some of the main issues faced by male sex workers (MSW) globally and highlights some of the advocacy and activism efforts by male sex worker communities that have challenged these issues. A 7 page summary is also available.

NSWP statement strongly condemning the recent report released by the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security for failing to recognise the grave violations to Norwegian sex workers’ human rights that are taking place with state impunity under the current model that bans the purchase of sex. NSWP urges the Norwegian Government to listen to the experiences of sex workers and acknowledge that the criminalisation of the purchase of sex in Norway is resulting in health and human rights violations of sex workers.

As new medical technologies are increasingly being promoted in the prevention and treatment of HIV, and heralded as interventions to be used within communities of key populations including sex workers, NSWP urges the international HIV community and donors to take the concerns of sex workers presented in this report seriously and continue meaningful engagement with key populations in this shift towards the use of biomedical interventions. For years sex workers around the world have been developing and sustaining sex worker-led HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programmes.

This briefing paper describes the different legislative frameworks used to criminalise and oppress sex work and sex workers, including oppressive regulatory frameworks. It also provides insight into the language and shared principles that NSWP members use when advocating for law reforms that respect and protect sex workers’ human and labour rights.

This is the 8th issue of NSWP's quarterly newsletter ‘Sex Work Digest’. 

This resource is in English.  You can download this 11 page PDF above.

This regional report explores economic empowerment programmes in Asia through case studies through nine case studies. It describes good practice examples of sex worker-led economic empowerment projects and the impact of forced rehabilitation programmes on the lives of sex workers. A summary of the regional reports regarding econoic empowerment is also available.

This paper discusses policies and programmes affecting sex workers that limit their economic empowerment. It aims to frame sex work in terms of labour migration, economics and empowering labour environments, rather than in terms of power, disease and immorality. A summary of this paper is also available.

In Southeast Asia, APNSW observed that sex workers frequently move to faraway lands to find more lucrative work and economic enhancement, but are greatly constrained by anti-trafficking policies framed by a belief that no woman will move willingly to work in sex work. Anti-trafficking laws are often used to limit free movement of women in sex work by raiding and ‘rescuing’ them. Though this is ostensibly done to help them escape traffickers, it is mainly used to ‘correct’ their behaviour.

The information in this report summarises the findings of five briefing papers on sex workers’ access to HIV treatment in five regions: Africa; Asia Pacific; Europe; Latin America; and North America and the Caribbean. Research was carried out by regional consultants through online surveys and meetings with sex worker-led organisations and individuals, to identify the multiple barriers to ensuring access to appropriate health care for those living with HIV.

Sex workers constitute a key population affected by HIV, with multiple factors contributing to their vulnerability. Around the world, HIV programming falls short of taking these factors into account and actively working towards their reduction. Sex workers are put at risk of exposure to HIV by criminalisation; violence; unsafe working conditions; violations of their human rights; stigma, discrimination and social marginalisation; drug and alcohol use; unequal access to appropriate health services; minimal access to HIV prevention tools (such as safe sex supplies and safer injecting equipment); barriers to negotiation of safe sex with clients; offers of higher fees for unprotected sex; and an absence of HIV-related information targeted at sex workers, due to insufficient funding for rights-based and sex worker led programming.  This Briefing Paper discusses these in detail.

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