News Archive: June 2013

Statement

US Supreme Court strikes down Anti-Prostitution pledge

Vindication for VAMP / SANGRAM

22 July 2013 Sangli, Maharashtra

In a victory for sex worker rights across the world, the United States Supreme Court on 20^th June 2013, struck down as unconstitutional the legal requirement that organisations receiving US assistance for HIV programs must have an explicit policy opposing `prostitution’. Popularly known as the anti-prostitution pledge, the provision effectively denied financial support to sex work programming in HIV despite widespread scientific and UN consensus that such programming is essential for a successful HIV response.

ACCRA, GHANA - USING INNOVATIVE outreach and targeted counselling, peer educators have helped bring about a nearly 30 percent drop in HIV infection rates among Ghana’s sex workers over the past six years.

Thanks to effective campaigns by groups like The West Africa Program to Combat AIDS and STI (WAPCAS), HIV prevalence among female sex workers in Ghana fell from 37.8% in 2006 to 25% in 2009, then further to 11.2%, two years later, according to the National AIDS Commission.

Because sex work is illegal in Ghana, females engaged in the trade are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse which they cannot report because they have little legal recourse.

TANZANIAN POLICE torture, rape and assault sex workers, sexual minorities and drug users, while medical staff deny them healthcare, undermining efforts to reduce HIV infection, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report on Tuesday.

The Brazilian Network of Prostitutes released a statement on June 7, 2013, in response to the government's recent censorship of a rights based HIV prevention campaign developed by sex workers in partnership with the STD/AIDS Department/Ministry of Health earlier this year. The campaign was launched for International Prostitutes Day (June 2nd), and, just two days later, ordered to be taken offline by the Minister of Health. A sanitised and adulterated campaign was relaunched several days later. Sex worker NGOs quickly mobilised and released statements criticising the government's actions. As the Brazilian Network of Prostitutes noted, "With the government’s decision to first veto and then drastically alter the AIDS campaign supposedly constructed in partnership with prostitutes, we see that they are using this social group to affirm what they desire, thereby ignoring the achievements of the social movement and violating diverse democratic principles".

The full statement from the Brazilian Network of Prostitutes is available here. The following blog post from Laura Murray, sex worker rights advocate, filmmaker, and student based in Brazil, provides more background information about the events that have unfolded in the country over the past week and a link to the entire censored campaign.

The Australian Sex Workers' Association, Scarlet Alliance, has reportedly called for the Federal government to extend the visa rights to cover foreign prostitutes and escorts to enable them to work as 'skilled workers' on 457 visas, which covers 624 different types of jobs for which Australian employers are allowed to recruit foreign workers.

Sex work activists are critical of the decision by Brazil’s Minister of Health, Alexandre Padilha, to remove all posters that read "I am Happy To Be a Prostitute" from the Health department’s STD/AIDS’s website and other public health materials.

ACTION ALERT! - deadline extended

A new report released on June 4th, 2013 by a coalition of global advocacy organisations shows that the International AIDS Conference (IAC) program continues to lack meaningful coverage of HIV-related issues concerning men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender people, people who inject drugs (PWID), and sex workers.

To mark International Sex Worker Day, we have formally launched the NSWP+ website.

NSWP+ was formed during the Sex Worker Freedom Festival in 2012, when a group of positive sex workers came together and demanded recognition that:

‘sex workers are not the problem, but part of the solution’

As a platform for all those committed to defending the rights of sex workers living with HIV, NSWP+ now also exists to share information and to communicate the demands and needs of sex workers living with HIV. These original demands are set out below. Sex workers will campaign alongside treatment activists and other key affected populations to defend the human rights of sex workers to appropriate HIV treatment, care, and support.