In April 2020, NSWP launched a global survey to understand the impact of COVID-19 on sex workers. To date, the survey has received 156 responses from 55 different countries. 18 of these responses were from 11 countries – Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam – in the Asia-Pacific region.
Regional updates: Asia and the Pacific
Our members are listed on the left or you can click the red umbrellas on the map.
Regional Board Members
Manjula Ramaiah (ASHODAYA SAMITHI), India
Sherry Sherqueshaa (Project X), Singapore
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.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the globe, sex workers are mostly being forgotten about in government responses. This week the Guardian published a report on the experiences of sex workers in New Zealand, outlining their access to emergency wage subsidies and other state benefits.
29th April 2020 by NSWP
NSWP are conducting a survey to monitor and report on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sex workers and sex worker organisations and their communities.
We are sharing the stories and experiences of organisations from around the world, as reported to us, in order to gain an insight into what governments are doing – and not doing – to support sex workers and sex worker organisations and how the sex worker community are responding to the crisis.
15th April 2020 by NSWP
China has brought an end to the use of forced labour as punishment for those prosecuted under anti-sex work laws. Although sex work is still criminalised in the country, national media in China has reported that the detention system came to an end at the end of December 2019, and those in custody will be released.
9th January 2020 by NSWP
Australia's Northern Territory Parliament has voted to decriminalise sex work through the Sex Industry Bill 2019. The Bill decriminalises brothels, soliciting and indoor sex work, and gives sex workers access to workplace health and safety protections already extended to other workers in the state.
26th November 2019 by NSWP
Singapore's Parliament has voted to amend its Women's Charter, increasing penalties for sex work-related offences.
5th November 2019 by NSWP
Queensland has withdrawn draft laws from State parliament which would have increased police powers, shifted police and licensing authority coverage from brothels to anywhere sex work takes place, and allowed police to covertly film sex workers, following a campaign by sex workers in Australia.
22nd October 2019 by NSWP
Sex workers in Australia have praised the Government for working with sex workers to introduce a new Bill to decriminalise sex work in the state.
23rd September 2019 by NSWP
Last week India’s Supreme Court ruled that sex workers have the right to refuse services, in a landmark case overturning a 2009 ruling in which 4 people were acquitted of rape.
8th November 2018 by NSWP
A single mother has been sentenced to 6 months in prison and 6 strokes of the rotan after she was arrested for doing sex work in the Malaysian state of Terengganu.
9th October 2018 by NSWP