Resources

This resource is a Community Guide to the Briefing Paper: Universal Health Coverage: Putting the Last Mile First. It provides an overview of the full Briefing Paper and provides key recommendations for international human rights and health bodies, national governments, and sex worker-led organisations.

You can download this 4-page Community Guide above. It is now available in English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese.

Theme: Health

Universal Health Coverage speaks to the global goal of providing all people with the health care they need without creating undue financial burdens on the individual. In many parts of the world, health provision and access to health services remains extremely poor, particularly for criminalised and marginalised populations such as sex workers and other key populations.

Theme: Health

This resource is a Community Guide to the Briefing Paper: Economic Empowerment for Sex Workers. It provides an overview of the full Briefing Paper, and identifies good practice and key recommendations. 

You can download this 5-page Community Guide above. It is now available in English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese.

The criminalisation of sex work creates a range of barriers for sex workers when it comes to accessing their economic rights. Sex workers face overlapping and mutually reinforcing risks, such as social marginalisation, violence and poor health, which restrict the ability of sex workers to improve their living and working conditions and to achieve economic security. Furthermore, sex workers commonly report a lack of access to bank accounts, saving schemes, loans and legal forms of credit, insurance, pensions, and other basic employment benefits.

This resource is a Community Guide to the Briefing Paper: Sex Workers’ Lack of Access to Justice. It provides an overview of the full Briefing Paper, and provides key recommendations for policy makers and service providers. 

You can download this 5-page Community Guide above. It is now available in English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese.

Sex workers around the world face a wide range of barriers to accessing justice, both as victims of crime and when charged with crimes. Since sex work is widely criminalised, most sex workers are denied access to the benefits and rights afforded to other workers under labour laws and face the risk of criminalisation, detention, deportation and legal sanction.

This resource is a Community Guide to the Briefing Paper: Shrinking Spaces and Silencing Voices. It provides an overview of the full Briefing Paper, and provides key recommendations for policy makers and service providers. 

You can download this 5-page Community Guide above. It is now available in English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese.

Funding for sex worker-led organisations is shrinking, as has the space for the voices of sex workers, resulting in sex workers having less influence in programmes, policies and other decisions that affect their lives. Civil society organisations and other stakeholders now feel they have the right to funding and advocacy platforms, either because they work with sex workers and are therefore ‘experts’ who can speak for sex workers, or they wish to exclude sex workers’ voices entirely because they refuse to recognise sex workers’ rights as human rights.

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.

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 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.

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

Theme: Health