Individuals and groups from the CEE/CA, as well as other regions,were invited to submit testimony about the impact of different laws and HIV. SWAN submitted a submission that tried to include experiences from all across the region. Many other SWAN groups individually submitted such as HOPS (Macedonia), Lega-Life (Ukraine) and HESED (Bulgaria).

In the end, Odyseus (Slovakia), SZEXE (Hungary), TAIS PLUS (Kyrgyzstan), Association for Assistance (Russia) and SWAN were accepted to present in front of the commissioners at a regional meeting in Moldova in May, 2011.

With the generous help of the Open Society Foundation, presenters from the various groups including Katerina Jiresova, Irina Maslova, Gulnara Kurmanova, Mariann Bodzsar, Stasa Plecas from Serbia who was representing SWAN and Aliya and Anna-Louise from the SWAN network met in Chisinau, Moldova to strategize.

The group decided that the strongest strategy was to brainstorm 4 key issues as they affected groups across the region and to present as a block. One person per issue and one person to summarize and spell out the recommended actions groups were calling on the Commission to endorse.

Read the statement in English

Read the statement in Russian

By Anna-Louisa Crago
What is the Global Commission on HIV and the Law (GCHL)?
It is a commission put in place by the UN to study the impact of different laws on HIV-prevention, treatment and care. It also studies the impact of laws on discrimination and violence against people living with HIV or at high-risk of HIV.

The commissioners are a group of highly respected individuals and experts from around the world and include former heads of state, judges and policy experts. They are advised by a committee of technical experts with extensive knowledge about HIV and the law.

The commission is particular because it is independent of the UN. That means that the commissioners can come to their own conclusions, even if coutries within the UN or UN workers disagree with these.

What does the GCHL have to do with SWAN?

Individuals and groups from the CEE/CA, as well as other regions,were invited to submit testimony about the impact of different laws and HIV. SWAN submitted a submission that tried to include experiences from all across the region. Many other SWAN groups individually submitted such as HOPS (Macedonia), Lega-Life (Ukraine) and HESED (Bulgaria).

Interview with Žaneta, 47 years-old Bratislava

How long have you been working in the sex industry?
Z: Four years.

How did you start?
Z: I was involved with guys, the classic relationship, but everyone wanted me only after I had sex with them. And because every woman also has her needs, a few time, I have. But when it’s the next day and they didn’t call or anything. I felt stupid, a low sense of self. For two years I had a lover, only for sex. It was not out in the open. There was no courtship, no invitations on trips, to the lake, or to the cinema. It was simply about sex but I still had to love him. It was always just the night, and then I had to head back home to my house in Bratislava.

Translated from INTOXI, Slovak magazine for sex workers and drug users
Not long time ago I received an invitation from Eva from Odyseus, to attend a meeting of sex workers, which was to be held in Vienna. It was a pre-meeting of huge one-week long AIDS conference, about which you read in the previous issue of Intoxi. There was also an invitation for all of us, sex workers to attend the meeting together with our outreach workers. The greater was my disappointment, when in the morning, at the train station, I in vain waited for some of my colleagues, which, together with me and Katarina, the director of Odyseus, were supposed to represent Slovakia.

By Aliya Rakhmetova
July 16, Vienna, Austria - The International AIDS Conference (IAC) was preceded by a number of events to provide space for journalists, communities representatives, networks and researchers to make their participation in the IAC as meaningful as possible. In the framework of the IAC, SWAN was invited to hold a training with the National Press Foundation (http://www.nationalpress.org), whose primary mission is to increase journalists’ knowledge of complex issues in order to improve public knowledge.

By Marija Tosheva, HOPS, Macedonia

On July 20, 2010, the second day of Vienna conference, SWAN organized an oral session on Sex work, mobility, migration and human rights in Europe and Central Asia. 6 experienced activists from the region, members of SWAN and TAMPEP networks, had a chance in front of an excellent audience to challenge and start a discussion on vulnerabilities and structural barriers faced by mobile and migrant sex workers to better health and human rights.

July 18-23, Vienna, Austria – This year sex workers and allies from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia had a chance to talk about barriers and issues that sex workers face in their countries, to show what groups and organizations have achieved in addressing the pandemics and violations in their region. The Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN) was represented by 11 activists from Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia and Montenegro, a team of young and energetic volunteers from Odyseus, Slovakia and a performance group from Bliss without Risk, Czech Republic.

By Lubica Tornosziova, Odyseus, Slovakia

During the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, SWAN ran a marketplace booth in the Global Village. Global Village was a space where everybody could go in, without needing special permission or badges. This meant that our booth was accessible not only to conference participants but also to the general public.

17 December, 2010, Bratislava - Odyseus, SWAN representative in Slovakia, uses International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers in a more positive way. The sex workers are invited to a small party. There will be nice food, typical for this period of the year and small presents for each guest!

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.