A 90-minutes-long seminar on sex work issues was a part of a four-day journalist training which was organized by a USA-based non-profit journalist education organization National Press Foundation in collaboration with the International AIDS Foundation. This training involved 49 journalists from 40 countries. The aim of this training was to provide background information on issues around HIV/AIDS, human rights and their relevance to the rights of different groups of population.

A 90-minutes-long seminar on sex work issues was a part of a four-day journalist training which was organized by a USA-based non-profit journalist education organization National Press Foundation in collaboration with the International AIDS Foundation. This training involved 49 journalists from 40 countries. The aim of this training was to provide background information on issues around HIV/AIDS, human rights and their relevance to the rights of different groups of population.

SWAN was represented by its coordinator, Aliya Rakhmetova, Lubica Tornoczyova, a former contact person for Odyseus, Slovakia; Marian and Madina, sex workers’ human rights activists from Hungary and Kyrgyzstan. The biggest impression about the training was the high level of the participants’ professionalism and willingness to learn. The participants asked interesting and insightful questions and touched such disputable topics as morals, religion and rights.

The discussions and short interviews continued long after the end of the seminar and both the trainers and the participants seemed to be satisfied with how the training went.
We thank the National Press Foundation for inviting SWAN to meet their journalists and to contribute to better understanding between sex workers and media.