Resources

This report and executive summary by the Global Commission on HIV and Law, supported by UNDP, examines the role of law in effective HIV responses. The report is based on expert submissions, research on HIV, health and law, and testimony of 700 people most affected by HIV-related laws from 140 countries.

Prior to the 2010 International AIDS Conference, the Smart Person's Guide to HIV and Sex Work was released in order to clarify current policy and action items relating to HIV and the role of sex worker organisations in responding to this global epidemic.

This paper Sex Worker-Driven Research: Best Practice Ethics, was developed by sex worker-led organisation Scarlet Alliance’s director, Elena Jeffreys. Based upon the August 2009 International Sex Worker Think Tank on Research, the paper discusses best practice ways of involving sex workers in research.

In 1999, the Swedish government embarked on an experiment in social engineering1 to end men’s practice of purchasing commercial sexual services. The government enacted a new law criminalizing the purchase (but not the sale) of sex (Swedish Penal Code). It hoped that the fear of arrest and increased public stigma would convince men to change their sexual behaviour. The government also hoped that the law would force the estimated 1,850 to 3,000 women who sold sex in Sweden at that time to find another line of work.

This research is the first large scale quantitative research on sex workers in Fiji. It has enabled an understanding of the nature and extent of sex work in Fiji, rates of HIV and STI infection among sex workers and their knowledge and behaviour around safer sex practices. This research will compliment valuable insights gained from previous qualitative research. The findings from this research will assist in the appropriate targeting and provision of education, resources and health care services to a group previously defined by UNAIDS as a most-at-risk population.

The Know it, Prove it, Change it toolkit helps grassroots organisations in communities affected by HIV/AIDS to understand their basic rights, document rights abuses, and design and implement advocacy campaigns. T

This is the Report of the Committee on HIV/AIDS which documents the discussions leading up to the drafting process of ILO Recommendation No. 200 on HIV/AIDS and the world of work (you can download this document as a separate source by following this link).  

The first international labour standard on HIV and AIDS in the world of work was adopted by governments, employers’ and workers’ representatives from ILO member States at the International Labour Conference in June 2010.

Silence on Violence: Improving Safety of Women - the policing of off-street sex work and trafficking in London

This report was written in the run-up to the Olympic Games, held in London 2012 and it considers two overacrhing areas related to womens' safety within sex work: the policing of sex trafficking, and within that the policing for the Olymipics; and the general policing of sex workers. The report focusses on off-street sex work as the evidence shows that it very rarely, if at all, involves trafficked women.

The 20th bulletin of the DMSC, discussing common financial scams, police violence, and the work done by the All India Network of Sex Workers (AINSW) to tackle HIV, human rights violations by the police, and the stigma that prevents sex workers from accessing services.

This article analyzes the aspirations of michês, straight-identified Brazilian men who exchange sex for money with gay-identified male sex tourists from North America and Western Europe.

Based upon detailed life histories of 96 Ugandan sex workers, this article documents the pathways women take into sex work through marital separation and the subsequent need to support children via rural-urban migration to obtain wage work in Kampala.

The article examines how language helps the construction of fictive kinships networks (family-like structures among marginalized populations) amongst Southwestern U.S. street-level sex workers. These networks establish ties and obligations - as well as power structures - between members of the community.

The article explores the policy underpinning Sweden’s 1999 ban on the purchase of sexual services in the context of the social and health service sectors and the way that these sectors interact with sex workers. It argues that the rationale behind the sex purchase ban is difficult to reconcile with social policy outwith the 'merits' of criminal justice.

This article offers a historical account and critical assessment of the prostitution-reform debates’ considerable influence on anti-trafficking law and policy development over the last decade. The article exposes the difficulties of translating anti-prostitution ideology, borne out of closely held moral and ethical beliefs, into effective governance strategies.

This article looks at how legalisation came to the netherlands; what it was intended to do, and what the impact has been on sex workers. In order to answer these lines of enquiry, the article examines what discourses frame the major actors in this debate, starting with a historical overview of Dutch sex work policies throughout the 20th century. Having established the socio-political backdrop of the Netherlands' approach to legalised sex work, the resource discusses how legalisation (or regulationism) "did not solve a number of serious problems in the sex industry".

This concise guide to the difference between sex work and trafficking - and what a response to trafficking grounded in sex worker rights looks like - discusses the key differences between sex work and trafficking; the differences that make the habitual conflation of the two not only inaccurate but also a hinderance to tackling actual exploitation, and a threat to the human rights of sex workers.

This reference text seeks to "clarify terms and illustrate examples of alternatives to the use of criminal law as a response to sex work". It provides capsule definitions - with small case-studies or examples - of what a variety of laws and policies look like in terms of their impact on sex work, covering criminalisation, legalisation, and decriminalisation, along with a mini-discussion of other laws that are used against sex workers, such as the criminalisation of HIV transmission, or immigration enforcement.

'Criminalising Condoms' details the experiences of sex workers and outreach services across six countries (Kenya, Namibia, Russia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and the United States). It finds that where any degree of criminalisation exists (whether of sex workers themselves, or of activities relating to sex work), condoms are used as evidence of sex work. This forces sex workers to choose between carrying safer sex supplies, thus attracting the deleterious attentions of the police, or working without condoms in the hope that the police will refrain from harassment - but also without the supplies that would protect them from HIV.

This 10th Missing the Target report (MTT10) focuses on challenges to the scale-up of HIV services as required to implement the Treatment 2.0 framework. That framework refers to an initiative developed and proposed in June 2010 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) that aims to “catalyse the next phase of HIV treatment scale-up through promoting innovation and efficiency gains.”