Ugandan sex workers petition Parliament over HIV bill

Monday, 13th December, 2010

By Madinah Tebajjukira

SEX workers have petitioned Parliament over the HIV prevention and control bill which they say promotes discrimination among some people and that it violates human rights. Through their umbrella organization:Womens Organization Network for Human Rights Advocacy (WONETHA), the sexual workers petitioned the Speaker of Parliament demanding an urgent action on some clauses of the bill which seeks to control the spread of HIV in Uganda.

Led by WONETHA executive director Macklean Kyomya, the sex workers want Parliament to review clauses which call for mandatory testing of HIV, mandatory disclosure of a persons HIV status and the criminalization of intentional spread of HIV. We know that a large majority of the Ugandan public have moral objections to the work we do. However, is that a good enough reason to shut us out, ignore us and push us away when we are an integral and undeniable part of society that cannot be wished away, reads the petition.

The HIV Prevention and Control Bill 2010, which is under scrutiny by the Parliamentary committee on HIV/AIDs, if enacted, it requires mandatory disclosure of ones HIV status to sex partners. The bill states that a medical practitioner who carries out an HIV test will give an HIV-positive person reasonable time to disclose his or her status to the partner. However, if the person fails to do so, the doctor on behalf of the client, will disclose to the partner. It also gives powers to a medical doctor to disclose to people who are in close and continuous contact with an HIV-positive person if there could be a risk of them getting HIV through this person. In addition any person, who transmits HIV to another person knowingly, commits an offence and upon conviction is liable to five years in prison.

Many non government organizations have persistently opposed the above clauses, saying the bill if not reviewed is a threat to the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, especially women and children. Human rights NGOs urge that the mandatory disclosure of ones HIV status threatened women with increased domestic violence and abuse. The Speaker, Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, promised to forward the petition, to the relevant committee of Parliament- HIV/AIDS committee to review it. The sex workers emphasized that if the bill is enacted in its current form, it will discriminate the sexual workers from the HIV prevention and care.

Around the AIDS 2010 Sessions

The opening of AIDS 2010 was a gloomy liturgy of the declining funding base but I found it difficult to sympathise. Although I fully understand the importance of taking prevention and care to scale there is too much waste and too many poor programmes.  I couldn’t help but wonder if more effective programming could come from less money.   I think as what I am – a sex worker activist. “We never got much of it anyway”, “It could mean more resources to targetted programmes and less money squandered on people who don’t use drugs and have few sex partners”, “I hope it means fewer overpaid project managers and  experts.’ Points about the need for the Global Fund for Aids TB and Malaria to change in ways that enable money to flow to sexual minority and IDU communities were well made.

A session offered an opportunity to explore efforts by and on behalf of sex workers to promote human rights in the context of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in diverse contexts. Speakers from Peru, India, Ukraine, and Canada offered their perspectives on the global effort to protect the rights of sex workers, followed by a lively exchange with audience participants. Key topics of discussion included community mobilisation around sex workers’ rights, opportunities for policy reform, and the prospects for the decriminalisation of sex work where it is considered to be illegal. One issue that has emerged in several discussions is the fact that while sex workers have strongly supported the efforts of other vulnerable groups, such as men who have sex with men or people who inject drugs, in their effort to secure legal protections and to promote anti-discrimination legislation, some groups advocating for sex workers’ rights feel they have not enjoyed reciprocal support.

Carmen Murguía, of the Universidad Católica in Peru, described the efforts of a multi-sectoral group including representatives of academic institutions, the government of Peru, and international organisations, to identify the barriers to addressing the needs of female and transgender commercial sex workers regarding HIV/AIDS and human rights and to develop solutions to the challenges facing commercial sex workers in Peru. Murguía noted that sex work is neither legal nor illegal in Peru; as a consequence, most of the population views sex work as illegal, resulting in considerable discrimination and prejudice against women and transgender people who exercise sexual commerce. She stated that in Peru the security forces – the police and the military – receive no training with respect to sexual diversity or homophobia and frequently engage in abusive practices that violate sex workers’ rights.  Consulting and collaborating with sex workers themselves, the multi-sectoral group developed in a strategy for improving the prospects for ensuring respect for women and transgender people engaged in commercial sex in. According to Murguía, they mapped zones of sex work in four Peruvian cities, trained over 100 sex workers as leaders in advocacy issues, created a model for educating security agents regarding human rights, HIV/AIDS and sex work, and proposed national level legislation to protect sex workers’ rights.

Website launched on International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Today is International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers. The Paulo Longo Research Initiative (PLRI) marks this important day with the launch of its new website, www.plri.org.

The PLRI website is a substantial library of resources about sex work in the context of economics, law, health, gender and sexuality, and migration. As it grows the site will increasingly showcase important research findings, host discussions among academics and sex workers and provide text and video news about relevant events and publications. The site will provide health service providers, policy makers, social workers, human rights advocates and students invaluable opportunities to learn about issues that affect sex workers.

December 17 provides an opportunity to reflect on why research is needed to provide evidence to guide measures to protect sex workers from violence and exploitation.  Sex workers from all over the world have long argued that criminal laws against sex work render them vulnerable to abuses, including unprotected sex and lack of access to services and justice. But many countries continue to criminalise sex workers and sex worker organisations everywhere receive frequent reports of violence.

Sex workers all over the world are subject to violence, exploitation and abuse.  For example:

• USAID research conducted in 2006 in Cambodia found that of the female and transgender sex workers surveyed approximately half were beaten by police; about a third gang-raped by police and about three-quarters were gang-raped by other men during the past year.

• In Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa Jane Arnott and Anna Louise Crago found that repeated violence, extortion and detention by law enforcement officers leave sex workers feeling constantly under threat in a climate of impunity that fosters further violence and discrimination against sex workers from the community-at-large. Migrants and transgender sex workers are particularly affected.

• In Pakistan research into sexually transmitted infections by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that HIV services need to be tied in with efforts to reduce discrimination, exploitation and violence against sex workers if they are going to be effective. This includes support programmes designed to increase sex workers’ abilities to defend their own human rights.

The World Health Organisation has recognised clear links between violence and sex workers’ vulnerability to HIV and recently both Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary-General, and Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS Executive Director, have recommended that laws that punish sex workers be repealed in the light of evidence that they increase HIV vulnerability.

On December 17 sex worker organisations in dozens of countries demand an end to violence. Browse the PLRI website to read about the nature and causes of violence against male, female and transgender sex workers and the successes and failures of efforts to reduce it. Help to promote the site by circulating the press release to your contacts.

Latin American Dialogue on Sexuality and Geopolitics

Between August 24th and 26th, 2009, the Latin American Dialogue on Sexuality and Geopolitics took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Organized by Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW) in partnership with the Latin-American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM), the meeting gathered close to 50 participants from nine countries — academics, researchers and activists — who debated the conditions of sexual politics in the region.

The session Sexuality and Economics: visibilities and invisibilities featured:

• Lucila Esquivel, coordinator of the Paraguayan Association of Sex Workers 
• Ofélia Becerril, professor at the Colégio de Michoacán, in México;
• Adriana Piscitelli, professor and researcher at the Núcleo de Estudos de gênero PAGU in UNICAMP (Brazil);
• Maria Elvira Benítez, Anthropology PHD student at the Museu Nacional and program assistant at  the Centro Latino Americano em Sexualidade e Direitos Humanos (CLAM), in Rio de Janeiro; and
• Bruno Zilli, anthropologist and also researcher at CLAM. 

 Many of the papers presented in this session focussed on sex work and the online overview of this session is an interesting read. The overview paper for the session, Prostitution as economic activity in urban Brazil, was written by Ana Paula Silva, professor at the Centro Universitário Augusto Motta (UNISUAM), in Rio de Janeiro, and Thaddeus Blanchette, professor at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) e also at UNISUAM. You can read a summary of their presentation and the comments that followed from it on the Sexuality Policy Watch website.

New version of Making Sex Work Safe

The Global Network of Sex Work Projects, the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers and the Paulo Longo Research Initiative will produce a new version of Making Sex Work Safe.

Making Sex Work Safe was developed by sex workers from the early International Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP). It was written by Paulo Longo and Cheryl Overs. It provides global perspectives on information about sex workers, analysis of law and policy and guidance about how to ensure that programmes on sex work are rights based and grounded in communities.

History

The book was first published in 1996 in partnership with Appropriate Health Resources Technologies Action Group (now called HealthLink) and it quickly became a key resource for new sex work projects despite initially being distributed only in print through conferences and mail.

Later it was posted on the internet and it was translated, adapted and updated by sex work networks in Latin America (1998), Francophone Africa (2003) and Ukraine (2006).

Can sex workers be scholars? Nikat Ethiopia says yes!

Graduation celebrations at Nikat

Nikat is a sex worker organisation in Ethiopia. It has developed from a small income generation project to an NGO that provides education, social support and health services in the capital and mentors 30 newly established sex workers co-operatives throughout the country

Recently 15 Nikat members graduated in basic computer applications at their Drop in Centre in Addis Abbaba.

Hennock Alemayehu (pictured) director of Timret Le Howit a local NGO that provides support and resources to Nikat said,

“This is a kind of day which helps to continue to work on our ambitious Mission… This is a best example of sex workers’ empowerment”

Cheryl Overs of PLRI said, “This is exactly this kind of work needed to enable sex workers from developing countries to participate in research, programming and policy advocacy meaningfully and effectively. I applaud and congratulate the women of Nikat as well as their supporters such as Timret and condom marketers DKT. Your visionary work and principled commitment is turning high ideals into sustainable reality on the ground.’

New book on trafficking and associated review

A new book by Siddharth Kara, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, seeks to provide a business analysis of sex trafficking, focusing on the local drivers and global macroeconomic trends that gave rise to the industry after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Foreign Policy in Focus carried a review of the book by Ann Jordan, of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, American University Washington College of Law. In the article Jordan argues that Kara’s economic model is built on several unexamined assumptions, ‘The most seriously flawed assumption he makes is to equate human beings — trafficked persons and sex workers — with commodities. His economic model treats women as passive objects that are pushed and pulled by exploiters using forced labor to lower costs to meet demand, and ignores the poverty, discrimination, and violence that compel women to make risky decisions.’

(Read more…)

Economics and development

Although it is well accepted that sex work and poverty, stigma and inequality are linked, too often simplistic assumptions about these factors lead to ineffective, and even harmful, programmes and policies. The PLRI will work to establish broader understandings of the economics of the sex sector, the drivers of demand for, and supply of, commercial sex; the factors that determine prices and behaviours within sex industries, the economic re-distributional effects of commercial sex and the impact of broader economic trends on people that buy, sell or trade sexual services. To achieve this we will analyse sex work economies as they relate to the processes of development, human rights, social protection, livelihoods strengthening and equitable development policy and programming.