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.

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 study examines the prevalence of STIs (especially Gonorrhoea & Chlamydia) in female sex workers in Soc Trang, Vietnam. It found that the prevalence of GC/CT is high amongst female social workers in Soc Trang. Therefore, periodic presumptive treatment (PPT) for cervicitis, together with World Health Organisation recommended periodic syndromic sexually transmitted disease management, for FSWs and further interventions should be considered, and a 100% condom use programme should be promptly implemented. The existing STI health education program for FSWs should be strengthened.