Resources

This systematic review and meta-analysis, led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), has found that sex workers who have experienced 'regressive policing' (including arrest, extortion and violence from police), are three times more likely to experience sexual or physical violence. The study examines the impacts of criminalisation on sex workers’ safety, health, and access to services, using data from 33 countries. Sex workers' health and safety was found to be at risk not only in countries where sex work was criminalised, but also in Canada, which has introduced the “Nordic model”, where purchasing sex is specifically criminalised.

This resource was developed by PROUD, the Dutch union for and by sex workers, and Aidsfonds - Soa Aids Nederland, to explore the extent to which sex workers in the Netherlands experience stigma and violence. A total of 308 sex workers participated through questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions from across the country, engaged in various types of sex work.

In recent years a growing number of international organisations have released policies, guidance and recommendations that promote the rights of sex workers and advocate for the full decriminalisation of sex work. It can be difficult for sex workers and sex workers’ rights activists to maintain an awareness of the many policies and recommendations that now exist.

Yale Global Health Justice Partnership (GHJP) has released two complementary analyses on prostitution “diversion” programs (PDPs) in the USA: Diversion from Justice: 'A Rights-Based Analysis of Local ‘Prostitution Diversion Programs’ and their Impacts on People in the Sex Sector in the United States'; and 'Un-Meetable Promises: Rhetoric and Reality in New York City’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts'. One is national in scope and the other focused specifically on New York City programming.

This Smart Guide aims to provide NSWP members with increased understanding of CEDAW and its potential for use in advocacy work. The Guide is the result of collaboration between NSWP and the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW-AP). 

This ‘Smart Sex Workers’ Guide’ provides an overview of the advocacy tools and interventions used by sex worker-led organisations globally to combat violence against sex workers. It builds on the guidance provided in ‘Addressing Violence Against Sex Workers’, chapter 2 of the Sex Worker Implementation Tool (SWIT). This resource may be useful with designing programmes, tools and other approaches to addressing violence.

In the spring issue of Soundings the author compares lived experience to the representations of trafficking presented by major media and government agencies. The evidence presented is a deconstruction the way that the discourse on sex work and trafficking is shaped.

An amendment to H.R. 1298, the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDs, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, seeks to deny U.S. funding to organisations that do not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution. The amendment, which was offered by representative Chris Smith of New Jersey and passed 24 to 22, reads:

This study reviewed the condom utilization rates among female sex workers in Thailand, and determined that the rates of use fall far below the 100% Condom Usage rates advocated by the Thailand Ministry of Public Health.

This document describes the ethical and scientific requirements for their grantees and other studies requesting acknowledgement and funding that require the use of studies involving human beings. The document goes into detail in the following areas: Context of an ethics framework; Ethics Review; Free and informed consent; Privacy and confidentiality, Conflict of interest; Inclusion in research; Research involving Aboriginal peoples, Clinical Trials; Human Genetic Research; Research involving human gametes, embryos, or foetuses; and Human tissue research.

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.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 has been presented as an important tool in combatting the exploitation and abuse of undocumented workers, especially those forced into prostitution. Through a close reading of the legislation and the debates surrounding its passage, this article argues that the law makes strategic use of anxieties over sexuality, gender, and immigration to further curtail migration.

This article explores the implications of an amendment to H.R. 1298, the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDs, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, seeks to deny U.S. funding to organizations that do not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution.

You can download this 20 page PDF resource above. This resource is in English.

You can download this 9 page PDF resource above. This resource is in English.