December 17 is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers and our featured video comes to you from Macedonia, where local NGO Healthy Options Projects Skopje (HOPS) partnered with WITNESS this year on a campaign to end violence, marginalization, and criminalization of sex workers.
In Macedonia, as throughout the world, sex workers are pushed to the margins of society by a combination of prejudice, discrimination, and violence. Yet, the fact that a person sells sexual services cannot be used as justification for the denial of their fundamental rights, to which all human beings are entitled.
To mark December 17, the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers, the Sex Workers' Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN) of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia is releasing its new report, Arrest the Violence: Human Rights Violations Against Sex Workers in 11 Countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The report is based on interviews with more than 200 male, female and transgender sex workers between 2007 and 2009 and chillingly documents widespread violence and discrimination against them, particularly by state actors.
According to Rebecca Schleifer of Human Rights Watch’s Health and Human Rights Division:
Arrest the Violence is the first piece of research done under the leadership of sex workers to document human rights violations they face across Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Sex workers throughout the region report that they face verbal and physical abuse, including beatings, kidnapping, and sexual violence, by police and private citizens. Sex workers also report that police confiscated condoms as “evidence” of sex work, and subjected them to mandatory HIV testing.
These are not isolated incidents. The physical, sexual, and verbal violations of sex workers’ rights are part of a pattern of abuse by police and in the community that is documented throughout the region.
It is my sincere hope that this report will serve as a catalyst to awaken the broader human rights community to the importance of documenting and denouncing human rights abuses against sex workers, and working with sex workers to end these abuses.
To access the report, please follow the links below.
Questions or comments may be directed to SWAN@TASZ.HU.
Sincerely,
Aliya Rakhmetova
Coordinator Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN)
A report supported by OSI and authored by Jayne Arnott and Anna-Louise Crago coveres issues of human rights violations of female, male, and trans sex workers in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa.
Despite enormous challenges, sex workers are organizing to protect their rights and demand an end to violence and discrimination. In addition to the published report, sex workers who participated in the research and related roundtable discussions describe through audio taped interviews the effects of these rights abuses and how they are organizing to respond. Read and listen in English here.
A report from the Central and Eastern European Harm Reduction Network, July 2005
Download the document in PDF format русская версия, English version.
From FOREWORD
In Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, for example, sex workers remain among the most marginalized members of society. Policymakers and authorities view them as nuisances to be ignored or immoral lawbreakers rather than as individuals who can and should be protected from violence and receive social and economic assistance and support. At the same time, the surging HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region places sex workers at increasingly greater risk of infection not only from HIV, but also from other potentially debilitating conditions related to sex work and drug use.
This report provides an overview of these and other important issues that sex workers face in the region as well as to the political, economic, and social factors that influence policies and attitudes toward sex workers. It focuses primarily on existing laws and policies and their consequences from the perspective of HIV prevention and treatment. The report also offers recommendations designed to uphold sex workers’ human rights and remove barriers that reduce their ability or willingness to obtain access to consistent and equitable health care and other social services.
The objective of the report was to find out about the attitudes and the knowledge of legislators, politicians and heads of state organisations and senior police officers to issues of trafficking and prostitution in the countries represented by the civil organisations in ENATW.
Our Lives Matter: Sex Workers Unite for Health and Rights is a new report by Anna-Louise Crago, issued in August 2008 by the Open Society Institute. It highlights the creative ways in which sex workers in eight countries have organized to defend their human rights and health. Among thosee groups are also two SWAN members. In this issue we are publishing the chapter featuring Odyseus from Slovakia. More
November 2008, OSI Sex workers in Southern Africa are subjected to widespread human rights abuses, according to Rights Not Rescue: A Report on Female, Trans, and Male Sex Workers’ Human Rights in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Released by the Open Society Institute, the report documents the experiences of sex workers and their efforts to protect their rights despite overwhelming challenges. More
Recent years have seen the creation, particularly in parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, of HIV-specific laws that criminalize HIV transmission and exposure. At the same time, particularly in Europe and North America, existing criminal laws are increasingly being used to prosecute people for transmitting HIV or exposing others to HIV infection. More
Ralf Jurgens and Jonathan Cohen, OSI, 2008 At the 2006 United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, world leaders reaffirmed that “the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all is an essential element in the global response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.” Yet, as many sad events round the globe, the latest one from only two weeks ago in Macedonia show, this “essential element” remains the missing piece in the fight against AIDS. More
November 2008, OSI Sex workers in Southern Africa are subjected to widespread human rights abuses, according to Rights Not Rescue: A Report on Female, Trans, and Male Sex Workers’ Human Rights in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Released by the Open Society Institute, the report documents the experiences of sex workers and their efforts to protect their rights despite overwhelming challenges. 
Recent years have seen the creation, particularly in parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, of HIV-specific laws that criminalize HIV transmission and exposure. At the same time, particularly in Europe and North America, existing criminal laws are increasingly being used to prosecute people for transmitting HIV or exposing others to HIV infection. 
