On 14-18 November 2014 SWAN in partnership with IWRAW (http://www.iwraw-ap.org/) organized a regional workshop on how to use CEDAW to advance the rights of female sex workers on national and regional level. The training took place in Istanbul, Turkey, and brought together activists from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia and Lithuania. 

On 14-18 November 2014 SWAN in partnership with IWRAW (http://www.iwraw-ap.org/) organized a regional workshop on how to use CEDAW to advance the rights of female sex workers on national and regional level. The training took place in Istanbul, Turkey, and brought together activists from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia and Lithuania. 

SWAN members had the chance to get a closer understanding of the UN system, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), as well as state obligations under the CEDAW and how those state commitments can be used to advocate for improvement of sex workers rights and health within the countries. Participants had the chance to discuss the language and framework of rights used in the Convention, to analyze in which ways sex workers rights fit in that framework, what recommendations they would like to see CEDAW Committee members to pose to their governments and brainstorm about advocacy priorities on national and regional level.

The workshop ended with strong commitment from participants to get engaged in using CEDAW as advocacy tool on national level, and exposing the issues of female sex workers in a more systematic way in front of CEDAW Committee members, and put on the agenda the human rights of sex workers as woman rights.

For more information about the CEDAW, please, visit the page our partners, IWRAW, have put together:

http://www.iwraw-ap.org/cedaw/what-is-cedaw/cedaw-principles/).