In their work and lives, sex workers experience disproportionate levels of violence including police abuse, sexual assault, rape, harassment, extortion, and abuse from clients, agents (pimps), sex establishment owners, intimate partners, local residents, and public authorities. Violence against sex workers is a violation of their human rights, and increases sex workers’ vulnerability to HIV. Violence against sex workers must be understood beyond the individual incidents and in a wider context of gender and stigma.
(extract from paper)
The sex workers rights movement argues that laws that criminalise
A news story by Chokkapan S on Express Buzz, 23 May 2011.
BANGALORE: Raids on prostitution rackets that are being run in the name of massage parlours and otherwise have time and again been in the news. So, the latest ones in the string of inspections and subsequent arrests in Bangalore didn’t really come as a surprise.
What really is surprising is the fact that despite the repeated incidences, not much thought is being spared on the measures to curb the menace. So, what should ideally be done to tackle the issue?
The following is a draft declaration on sex workers rights and introductory article. Thank you very much to those who made inputs.
The process used to develop this was to copy the ICRSE declaration format and cut and paste material from all documents together into the sections then edit them down to about 20% of the length. This means that the document attached comprises sentences and bits of sentences from various documents by sex workers and allies.
Kigali — The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo, said yesterday, that Parliament could revisit a law banning prostitution which is currently before the Senate, days after the UNAIDS Regional Director – Eastern and Southern Africa, Prof Sheila Tlou, appealed to legislators to do so.
Article in in Cult Health Sex. 2010 Oct 19:1.
Objective: In order to assess whether the law has an impact on the delivery of health promotion services to sex workers, we compared health promotion programs in three Australian cities with different prostitution laws. The cities were Melbourne (brothels legalised if licensed, unlicensed brothels criminalised), Perth (criminalisation of all forms of sex work) and Sydney (sex work largely decriminalised, without licensing).
The minister for Community Development, Dame Carol Kidu, has asked the Law Review Commission to review the sex laws, with a possibility of prostitution and homosexuality being legalised.
The director of the Aids Council Secretariat, Wep Kanawi, says the current laws are archaic and stop sex workers from getting help.
Cambodia is internationally recognized for having successfully reduced its HIV prevalence among the general population from about 3% in 1997 to 0.7% in 2009. Sex work played a significant role in the spread of the HIV epidemic during the nineties. Since 1999, HIV prevalence has declined among direct and indirect sex workers, although levels remain high. The 100% condom use promotion strategy has been credited for having played a major role in the decline of HIV.
An examination of regulatory systems is often confused by imperfect terminology that means different things in different contexts and locations. Common terms include abolition, prohibition, criminalisation, decriminalisation, legalisation and regulation.
