Resources

NSWP collects resources about sex work and makes them available on our website. You can search NSWP’s online resource library via themes, resource types, language, region and year. The resource types include NSWP publications, member publications, international guidelines, research papers and other publications.

NSWP publications include a range of resources:

  • Briefing Papers and Community Guides examine issues affecting sex workers globally and provide recommendations for policy and practices. They are developed through sex worker-led policy analysis and an in-depth consultation process with NSWP members.
  • Policy Briefs and Community Guides examine issues affecting sex workers globally and provide recommendations for policy and practices. They are developed through sex worker-led policy analysis and e-consultation with NSWP members.
  • Global and Regional Reports document the lived experiences of sex workers on particular issues and make recommendations for future policy and good practices.
  • Research for Sex Work is a peer-reviewed journal, which explores a different theme in each issue.
  • The Sex Work Digest provides a quarterly round up of news stories, events and other information relating to sex work issues.
  • Smart Guides provide basic information on key issues that affect sex workers globally.
  • Case Studies reflect on the results and lessons learnt of activities and policies affecting the lives of sex workers.
  • Statements provide responses from NSWP and our members to emerging global issues that undermine sex workers’ human rights.
  • NSWP documents include organisational documents such as NSWP Strategic Plans and Monitoring and Evaluation Framework and NSWP Consensus Statement.

NSWP publications that are available in Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish are featured on the language-specific sections of this website.

  • 865 results found

Remembering Bedford is a summary of Arlene Jane Pitt’s research with 6 street-based sex workers in Toronto, Canada. She shows how street-based sex workers demonstrate resistance and resilience in the face of oppressive laws in Canada. She shows the impacts of criminalisation and how sex workers who use drugs sometimes need to rely on their drug dealers for safety. This article was published as a part of Research for Sex Work 15: Resistance and Resilience.

Download this resource: Remembering Bedford, Pitts - 2016.pdf

In this article, Sharmus Outlaw, Jill McCracken, and Penelope Saunders provide an overview of the report Nothing About Us, Without Us: Sex Work, HIV, Policy, and Organizing. It focuses on the experiences of transgender people who are also sex workers or are profiled as sex workers and reveals how current 
HIV policies impact groups of people who are often silenced and excluded from policy debates. It is a joint project with Best Practices Policy Project and Desiree Alliance. This article was published as a part of Research for Sex Work 15: Resistance and Resilience.

Jorge Flores-Aranda, Jonathan Bacon, and Claude Poisson provide an overview of the Sex Work Programme at Rézo, an organisation for men who have sex with men in Montréal, Canada. They argue male sex workers demonstrate resilience and resistence through the publication of the magazine the “Cowboy Urbain”. This article was published as a part of Research for Sex Work 15: Resistance and Resilience.

Ishtar Lakhani from SWEAT and Duduzile Dlamini from SISONKE provide an overview of the programming at Mothers for the Future in South Africa. Mothers for the Future is a sex worker-led organisation run by mothers who do sex work. They show how mothers resist oppression and make tangible differences in the lives of mothers. This article was published as a part of Research for Sex Work 15: Resistance and Resilience.

In Kampala, Uganda, there is a large network of sex worker-led organisations that unite under the umbrella organisation Uganda Harmonized Rights Alliance (UHRA). Paula Pönkänen and Hanna Jörneus argue that sex work organising in Uganda is a great example of how sex workers develop and implement their own programming. They provide an overview of sex worker-led programming in Kampala.

In this article, founding member of Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Network, Elene Lam, argues that migrant sex workers are excluded from the North American sex workers’ rights movement. Abolitionist feminists argue against sex workers’ rights by using the missing voices of migrant sex workers. Lam provides arguments for the inclusion of migrant sex workers in the movement to prevent this from happening.

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NSWP’s editorial in Research for Sex Work 15: Resistance and Resilience, provides an overview of sex workers’ resistance and resilience in Lyon, France from 1972 to 1975. In 1975 sex workers occupied the Saint Nizier Church in Lyon to demand their rights be respected. Their goal was to end the legal oppression of sex work and ensure sex workers’ rights are protected.

Download this resource: Editorial, NSWP - 2016.pdf

Research for Sex Work 15: Resistance and Resilience is a peer-reviewed publication for sex workers, activists, health workers, researchers, NGO staff and policy makers. It is available in English and French. All issues of Research for Sex Work can be found here

This Statement on the Occasion of the if the UN General Assembly 2016 High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS by the UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV & Human Rights contributes to the ongoing negotiations around the political declaration that will be adopted by the UN General Assembly on the 8-10 of June, 2016. The UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights offers a number of recommendations to Member States for the 2016 Political Declaration.

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Theme: Health

“If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?” – Dr. Paul Farmer

We often say that words hold power, and as such they have to be carefully considered. On some occasions, this is truer than on others, and this is one of those occasions. World leaders, government representatives, HIV programme implementers and civil society organizations are currently preparing for the 2016 United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS. They should be focusing on the future of the AIDS response. Instead, there have been intense negotiations on which words should be used to describe the global agenda during the next 5-year period.

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Theme: Health

NSWP welcomes Amnesty International’s Policy on State Obligations to Respect, Protect, and Fulfill the Human Rights of Sex Workers. Amnesty International calls for the decriminalisation of all aspects of adult consensual sex work including all laws which criminalise sex workers, clients, and third parties. Amnesty International also calls for the end of the discriminatory enforcement of other laws against sex workers, such as vagrancy, loitering, and immigration requirements.

NSWP wishes to clarify a number of issues in the light of some recent media coverage on the subject of the decriminalisation of sex work. Several articles have appeared recently that have made some alarmist and extremely misleading statements in response to an original article in the New York Times Magazine (published 5th May 2016).

As a sex worker-led global network with 262 member organisations across 77 countries from Africa, Asia Pacific, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America and North America, representing tens of thousands of sex workers from diverse cultures and experiences, NSWP has a fundamental right to be involved in consultations around international and national policies that impact on sex workers’ lives and work. Attempting to silence sex workers by denying our agency and calling us pimps, traffickers and industry lobbyists is unacceptable.

The sex workers’ rights movement is committed to the full decriminalisation of sex work in the belief that it will help sex workers organise to eliminate exploitation, oppression and violence and address unfair and abusive working conditions instituted by state and non-state actors. Branding the decriminalisation of third parties as an attempt to ‘legalise pimps and brothel keeping’ undermines sex workers in their struggle for labour rights and justice.

This policy brief on the Decriminalisation of Sex Work in Kenya was written in collaborartion with the University of Amsterdam and NSWP member HOYMAS and KESWA. This policy brief argues that sex workers have the same rights as other citizens in Kenya as outlined in the Kenyan Constitution. The brief describes key instances in which the rights of sex workers as defined by the Constitution are violated in Kenya.

The EMPOWER Foundation Thailand report Moving Toward Decent Sex Work and its summary explores the protections offered to Thai sex workers under civil law and the application of other labour mechanisms to sex work. It provides an overview of the Thai sex industry and argues that to develop a reform process, people must hear how exploitation is defined and experienced by Thai sex workers. Decent Sex Work provides recommendations which are appropriate to prevent and address exploitation in sex work.

The ICRSE Community Report Exploitation: Unfair Labour Arrangements and Precarious Working Conditions in the Sex Industry discusses exploitation in the sex industry, while simultaneously challenging anti-sex work advocates' understanding of sex work as 'sexual exploitation'. Through case studies in Europe and Central Asia, it argues that both sex work, as a form of work and income-generating activity, and exploitation, as labour arrangements that enable one person to take unfair advantage of the work of another, belong to the realm of work and should be viewed and analysed through the lens of labour. 

Theme: Labour

Kenyan sex workers continue to suffer human rights violations. Sex workers also bear a  disproportionately large burden of HIV. This could be significantly reduced by a rights-based approach to their health needs. This research by GNP+ focuses on the human rights violations that female sex workers living with HIV face when they access healthcare services. It also highlights violations by law enforcement officers that impact on sex workers’ vulnerability to and ability to manage HIV.

The briefing paper Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for People Who Inject Drugs: Community Voices on Pros, Cons, and Concerns outlines the results of a global consultation by the International Network of People who Use Drugs on PrEP. Approximately 75 people from 33 different countrires participated in the consultation.

Theme: Health

This ICRSE briefing paper explores the diverse experiences and realities of LGBT sex workers and the intersection of LGBT rights and sex workers’ rights. It also calls upon the LGBT movement to build an alliance with sex workers and their organisations and actively support sex workers’ rights and the decriminalisation of sex work.

In New Zealand, the Prostitution Reform Act was passed in 2003. Its purpose is to decriminalise prostitution. Following the Act, the Department of Labour, in cooperation with the New Zealand Prostitues Collective (NZPC), developed the Occupational Health & Safety guidelines for the sex industry. This article looks at the development and effects of the New Zealand approach. It was written by members of the NZPC and was published as part of Research for Sex Work 14: Sex Work is Work.

This large, Canadian research explores the perceived control and power within interactions between sex workers and their clients. Sex workers and clients report that most of their interactions are free of conflict and are characterised by relatively symmetrical dynamics of control and power. The ability to negotiate over the terms and conditions of the commercial sexual services offered and sought before meeting in person is linked to workers feeling more control over condom use and feeling more empowered compared to those whose first encounter with clients is face-to-face. This ability to clearly advertise services allows workers to more explicitly state what is and is not being offered so that there is less confusion over expectations, something  that most clients appear to appreciate  and desire for themselves.