Rosie Campbell provides SWAN News with a review of sex worker presentation at International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA (www.ihra.net) conference which took place in Liverpool this spring.

Marija Tosheva of HOPS, SWAN representative in Macedonia, shares her opinion about the IHRA and sex work-related issues.

What is new this year?
The theme or this year’s conference is ‘Rights here, Right now’ and it aims to address the need for human rights to be at the centre of HIV/AIDS strategies concerning treatment and prevention. Now more than ever, it is absolutely clear that stigma, discrimination and human rights violations – against people living with HIV or against women, girls, young people, men who have sex with men, people who use drugs or trade/sell sex - as well as badly constructed laws and policies that have an adverse effect on key populations most affected by HIV, are major obstacles to an effective response to HIV.

SWAN and SWAN members will have a presence at all of the major parts of the IAC this year. SWAN will have a booth set up to distribute for free, display and sell items, videos, and SWAN community report “Arrest the Violence”. In addition, SWAN will be launching a fist part of a video game highlighting struggles and injustices that sex workers face on a regular basis and presenting a visualization of the “Arrest the Violence” report.

There has never been a time, when fundraising for sex work projects was easy. Nonetheless, at Odyseus, we always had a few donors, who accepted (and even preferred) to support proposals that included services for sex workers. Since Slovakia joined the European Union, and even more specifically the Euro Zone, the situation started to change rapidly. As a result of the financial crises, funding diminished and with it, so did support for projects for sex workers and even more so, for advocacy for sex workers’ rights. Nowadays, we have very few, if any, options for funding to even apply for.

In January 2010 the government of Macedonia proposed a new draft of the long-awaited anti-discrimination law. Though previous drafts included "sexual direction" as ground protected against discrimination, it has been eliminated from the present draft. Boris O. Dittrich, the advocacy director in the program for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Macedonia.

A steering committee has been set up with a mandate to push for reforms with the police commissioner and legislature before the world soccer showcase in June 2010. Sex workers and activist organizations say the World Cup is an opportunity to decriminalize their trade.
"I have seen my colleagues harassed by the police and I have also experienced that," said Anna Sibisi, a sex worker for the past eight years in Cape Town. "I would like to see this end before the World Cup."

The 3rd of March is International Sex Worker Rights Day. The day’s history goes back to 2001 when over 25,000 SWs gathered in India for a SW festival. The organizers, Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a Calcutta based group that has over 50,000 sex worker members and members of their communities. Sex worker groups across the world have subsequently celebrated 3 March as International Sex Workers’ Rights Day.

The commemoration dates back to 2003, when it was first organized, originally to remember the victims of an American serial killer who singled out sex workers and teenage runaway girls and killed them. It has since become an international event, with more activists and organizations joining every year, as sex workers face similar, institutionalized abuse, violence and discrimination globally.

2009 marks the 61st anniversary of the acceptance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly. The aim of Human Rights Day is to raise awareness of the need to end all forms of discrimination.