law

This thematic discussion paper for the October 2010 Consultation on Sex Work and HIV in Asia and the Pacific captures many of the complex issues around sex work and law. Among its recommendations are: 

Enabling Environment discussion paper.pdf

Unfavourable laws, stigma, violence, and discrimination cause sex workers’ vulnerability to ill health, social exclusion and human rights violations. Sex workers face these to varying degrees in all cultures from Switzerland to Swaziland, Canada to Cambodia.

This guide, published by the International Network of Sex Work Projects, outlines their understanding of HIV and sex work and sets out their global agenda for change.

This news interview features members of the Network of Sex Work Projects. They describe the challenges that they face in Uganda and the way that they are subject to stigma and discrimination and excluded from development policy and plans.

A blog by Aziza Ahmed on the Open Democracy website in which the author reflects on Meena Seshu's plenary presentation at the International AIDS Conference and human rights, sex work and HIV more broadly.

On Monday August 2, 2010, police in Beijing detained Ye Haiyan, an activist with community based organisation the China Women's Rights Workshop, after she joined other sex workers in publicly petitioning for the Chinese government to decriminalise prost

NSWP Statement on Criminalisation and Abuse of Chinese Sex Workers.doc

This is a report of a meeting to discuss a research tool specifically designed to  assess this issue by measuring the impact of Human Rights & Trafficking  programmes and policies.

Over the last few years the need for a human rights approach to trafficking in human beings has been increasingly recognised. Underlying this need are two concerns:

1.The lack of protection and assistance that current policies offer to trafficked persons, despite the fact that trafficking is generally recognised as a serious violation of human rights

assessing impact of anti-trafficking.pdf

A list of sessions on law and human rights compiled by Mathew Weait.

human rights vienna timetable.doc

Sex work law reform is being discussed in several countries and at UN level which rightly gives the sex workers rights movement great cause for optimism. Unfortunately years of neglect and poor scholarship, especially by anti sex work campaigners that flourished under the Bush administration, means that the starting point for those conversations is a confused mishmash of terms and concepts.

Examples of different frameworks.doc