Regional updates: 亚洲和太平洋地区

Our members are listed on the left or you can click the red umbrellas on the map.

Regional Board Members

Sherry Sherqueshaa (Project X), Singapore

Yukiko Kaname (SWASH), Japan

Regional Network

The Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) is a sex worker-led network whose members include national sex worker-led networks, sex worker-led organisations and community-based sex work projects representing female, male and transgender sex workers. APNSW was founded in 1994 at the International AIDS Conference in Japan and is based in Bangkok, Thailand.

News articles from Asia and the Pacific region are listed below.

Regional updates

27th 十月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Cambodia’s Council of Ministry Government spokesperson, Phay Siphan, stated on 20 October, 2014, that his comments that condemning internationally recognised anti-trafficker, Somaly Mam, should be reiterated.

21st 十月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Somaly Mam, former executive director of the Somaly Mam Foundation (SMF), who was forced to resign from her position within the organisation in May 2014, due to allegations that she had deliberately fabricated key aspects of both her personal history, and those of the children being cared for by her organisation for explicit financial gain; has been officially banned by the Khmer Government from running another anti-trafficking NGO.

21st 十月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Indian HIV advocate groups, including sex workers, are concerned that government supplies of critical antiretroviral (ARV) medications (tenofovir/lamivudine) which are supplied free of charge, are under threat. The National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), Director General, Gen. A.S.

22nd 九月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

18th 九月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Municipal policy makers in Ho Chi Minh City submitted a report to the Ministry of Social Affairs on Monday 15 September 2014, claiming that the local sex industry has dramatically expanded in size over the past 10 years despite the criminalisation of sex work and active policing of sex work venues.

18th 九月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

North Korean women suspected of, and/or engaging in, sex work in Chinese towns along the North Korean border are being systemically deported to North Korea, according to a source in the Chinese province of Liaoning.

In a recent case, a group of six North Korean women who had special concession from the Chinese government to work legitimately in the Chinese border town, Donggang City, Liaoning Province, were deported after authorities became aware that the women were working as sex workers.

8th 九月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Sydney sex workers are extremely pleased at the reception they received from the wider community following their protest action at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) over the weekend. The annual FODI was held at Sydney’s iconic Opera House over 30-31 August, and featured a number of speakers with firmly established abolitionist perspectives of sex work.

29th 八月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas slammed by activists for promoting anti-sex work themes and excluding a sex worker perspective

29th 八月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

Sex workers in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are hopeful that following the recent International AIDS Conference (IAC), held in July 2014, Melbourne, Australia, Papua New Guinea’s Health Minister, Honourable. Michael Malaba, will keep his public commitment to introduce legislation that decriminalises sex work and same sex relationships.

19th 八月 2014 | Region: Global, Asia and the Pacific

 

Photo: Li Jun, Pioneer of the Sex Workers’ Movement 

NSWP joins the sex worker rights movement in mourning the passing of a pioneer in the Taiwanese sex worker rights movement. Below is a obituary honouring the life and work of Li Jun published by COSWAS.

19th 八月 2014 | Region: Global, Asia and the Pacific

 

Photo: Li Jun, Pioneer of the Sex Workers’ Movement 

NSWP joins the sex worker rights movement in mourning the passing of a pioneer in the Taiwanese sex worker rights movement. Below is a obituary honouring the life and work of Li Jun published by COSWAS.

25th 七月 2014 | Region: Asia and the Pacific

The 12th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) is to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2015. A boycott of this event is imminent due to eviction of 1000 sex workers and their families, totalling 2000 people, from a 200 year old brothel district in Bangladesh. Ironically the theme of the conference is women, and Key Affected Populations, which includes sex workers.

23rd 七月 2014 | Region: Global, Asia and the Pacific

Across the globe, HIV rates are climbing among sex workers and people who use drugs. One of the main reasons is that they are criminalised. Too often sex workers and drug users are forced to choose between protecting their health and staying safe from police harassment or arrest.