Macedonia: Partnership in Action - Skopje using video to protect sex workers

HOPS, which works to protect and promote the rights of sex workers, started partnership with WITNES (www.witness.org), human rights organization (based in New York but working globally), who uses and promotes video activism as an effective and supportive tool for promotion of rights of different groups within ongoing human rights campaigns. Concrete partnership between HOPS and WITNESS includes support in developing video advocacy plan about integrating video in this year’s 17th December campaign.

Video will speak about violence that sex workers are facing and its influence on their everyday life, family etc, and will have appeal to the police to recognize sex workers rights as human rights and to implement the principles of equality and non discrimination when dealing with sex workers. WITNESS staffers, Ryan Kautz and Violeta Krasnic started to make interviews with sex workers and also, with Marija Tosheva, HOPS Program Director, about the recent raids against sex workers. How the training was going, what they learnt, what techniques they decided to use for concealing identities and more about the concrete video you can see here:

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Quotes of the Month

Seeing the police members at the welcoming event together with sex workers activists and supporters, hearing the fact that 90% of reported cases between 2005 -2009 are solved and perpetrators are convicted, and that rape rate over the last year was 40%, was a real inspiration and hope that in a period of time, trough a committed work we can get there too..
--- Marija Tosheva (HOPS, Macedonia) about IHRA-2010, Liverpool.

Picture of the Month

Odyseus, Slovakia 2009





OSI Public Health Program