News Archive: февраля 2014

The ongoing debate on homosexuality in Kenya is likely to affect the fight against HIV, Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia has said.

In a statement, Mr Macharia said Men having Sex with Men are among key groups that contribute to new HIV infections in Kenya and called for a sober approach on the debate.

UNAIDS have drafted a briefing note on the legal status of sex work emphasising the key human rights and public health considerations.

The briefing note clarifies five issues that are often a source of contention with the anti-sex work lobby. The points that the UNAIDS briefing note clarify include:

In 2012 during the International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC, Carol Leigh from Bayswan met and interviewed Petite Jasmine with Pye Jakobbson from Rose Alliance of Sweden. Petite Jasmine was murdered one year later, a victim of the stigmatisation and legal discrimination that sex workers face.

President Museveni of Uganda today has assented to the Anti-Homosexuality bill which now becomes law. According to the president homosexuality is due to a person’s environment and not due to a person born homosexual and as such it [homosexuality] can be fought. The bill proposes a raft of measures to criminalise, stigmatise, victimise and intimidate anyone suspected of being homosexual or promoting homosexuality in any way. Prison sentences ranging from a few years to life imprisonment will be handed to those who are convicted under the new legislation.

A new resource has been uploaded on our website. The paper uses an example from Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers' Association and argues for more insider research on migrant sex work and trafficking. The paper is detailed and takes the reader through all the ethical considerations, processes and outcomes of a large scale multilingual migrant sex worker research project

La Strada International (LSI), the European NGO Network against Trafficking in Human Beings, and its partners in the LSI NGO platform – who are united against trafficking in human beings, have issued a statement strongly opposing the report by the FEMM committee that was drafted by Mary Honeyball. The report on ‘sexual exploitation and prostitution and its impact on gender equality’ calls for the so-called ‘Swedish Model’.

Human rights activists in Kyrgyzstan are concerned that a new police department tasked with combating human trafficking is forcing sex workers in the capital to undergo testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

Police in Bishkek have set up a new unit to tackle sexual exploitation and to monitor businesses suspected of running 'prostitution rings'. Numerous of these establishments have been raided since the unit was set up in November of last year.

The Global Network of Sex Work projects have released a statement in response to the decision by The European Parliament Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee's to support proposals to criminalise the clients of sex workers.

(c) John Vink / Magnum Photos

On 20 December 2013, the Canadian Supreme Court struck down the last of the laws that relating to sex work that sex workers’ rights campaigners have argued were unconstitutional. The Criminal Code of Canada included a number of provisions, such as ‘outlawing public communication for the purposes of prostitution’ which relates to bans on street soliciting, ‘operating a bawdy house’ or ‘living off of the avails of prostitution’ although being a sex worker was not illegal.

The Commision on HIV and the Law have released a summary of an E-Discussion held in June 2013 organised by UNDP’s HIV, Health and Development Group in collaboration with the Democratic Governance Group and the Gender Team.

Colectivo Hetaira released the following manifesto on the 6th of February 2014.

Madrid sex workers and Colectivo Hetaira denounce the increasingly precarious conditions in which we are carrying out our work, due to regulations and laws that punish prostitutes who get their clients in the street while favoring the owners of big clubs -forcing us to work in those places where there are no laws to protect our rights, since prostitution is not recognized as work.