‘Rights not Rescue’ Mama Cash meeting in Amsterdam, November 10
Recent laws and policies put in place to protect sex workers have in fact resulted in widespread abuses of their rights. Programmes aimed at sex workers often attempt to ‘rescue’ them, without addressing their human rights. Despite enormous challenges, sex workers are calling for legal reform and programmes to end violence and discrimination. They advocate for safer working conditions and access to health care. They want rights not rescue. On November 10 Mama Cash will give the floor to sex workers and activists from around the world for a discussion about sex work and human rights.
The panel discussion features Ruth Morgan Thomas (Scottish Prostitutes Education Project), Pye Jakobsson (Rose Alliance, Sweden), Marianne Jonker (Soa Aids Netherlands) and Macklean Kyomya (WONETHA, Uganda).
Moderator: Marjan Sax.
Mama Cash is organising the event in cooperation with the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP). Date: Tuesday, November 10
Location: De Balie, Amsterdam Grote Zaal
Time: 20.00 – 21.30
Language: English
Add comment 03/11/2009
CALL FOR PAPERS: “Demystifying Sex Work and Sex Workers”
Special Issue for Wagadu, Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies
Edited by Susan Dewey, Ph.D.
University Studies, DePauw University
Sex workers throughout the world share a uniquely maligned mystique that simultaneously positions them as sexually desirable and socially repulsive. In order to better understand how these processes function cross-culturally, this special issue of Wagadu invites papers focusing upon the everyday lives of sex workers, broadly defined as those who exchange sexual services for something of value. While recent years have witnessed a dramatic outpouring of feminist scholarship on sex work (Bernstein 2007; Day 2007; Doezema 2001; Kempadoo 2005, Kuo 2002; Munro and Della Giusta 2008), much of this literature unintentionally reinforces the social stigmatization of sex workers by depicting them solely through their income-earning activities. This burgeoning research has convincingly demonstrated that sex work is embedded in a complex social matrix that often centres upon sex workers’ perceptions of their individual choices and responsibilities (Agustín 2007; Bott 2006; Dewey 2008; Weitzer 2009). A limited amount of academic work has presented sex workers as complete social beings by depicting the full picture of their daily lives and economic struggles with appropriate complexity (Barton 2002; Brennan 2004; Kelly 2008; Raphael 2004; Wesely 2003, 2002; Zheng 2009). Accordingly, this special issue will fill a significant gap in the literature by examining how individual biography intersects with structural position to condition certain categories of individuals to believe that their self-esteem, material worth and possibilities for life improvement are invested in their bodies and sexual labour. Such beliefs inevitably combine with sex workers’ knowledge of their marginal, conflicted social status to inform many of their decision-making strategies. Papers in this issue will thus illustrate the processes by which sex workers are able to see themselves as agents and entrepreneurs despite pervasive social messages to the contrary. (more…)
Add comment 03/11/2009
Sex workers and new HIV prevention technologies
Reacting to a peripheries post on microbicides, Cheryl Overs commented “These [definition of microbicides] are a hint of the skewed propaganda about microbicides and an insight into the absence of consideration of how they will affect the millions of sex workers worldwide. Sex workers will lose any hope of using a 99% effective product against STIs, HIV and unwanted pregnancies, condoms” adding that, “The idea that sex workers will buy and use a combination of different products for different orifices/sex acts is absurd. Especially when one of those products will still have to be a condom.” Cheryl is summing up various concerns expressed in the “Sex work and the new era of HIV prevention and care” report she produced for the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW).
Add comment 06/10/2009
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). (more…)
Add comment 11/09/2009
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.’
Add comment 10/09/2009
Untying Development’s Straightjacket: Masculinities, Sexualities and Social Change
If development really did justice to the diversity of people’s social and sexual identities, livelihoods and living arrangements, how would it be different to the approaches we see today? What would be done differently? How can practitioners, activists, academics and policy actors concerned with challenging and changing oppressing gender and sexual norms work together to loosen development’s “straightjacket”? What is needed – in terms of knowledge, skills, practices, alliances – to enable those who seek to bring about positive social change to address the violence and oppression that development policies and practice may implicitly sustain because of a failure to recognise or engage with those who do not conform to taken-for-granted norms, and work together to make the world a fairer place?
PLRI members are attending a four-day symposium in Cape Town from the 18-22 September, which will bring together theorists, researchers, activists, policy actors and practitioners working on gender and development, men and masculinities, HIV prevention, gender violence and sexual rights. It will be convened as a collaborative initiative involving a number of programmes co-ordinated by the Institute of Development Studies in the UK – Participation and Development Relations, Sexuality and Development, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment, HIV and Development – in partnership with Sexuality Studies at York University in Canada, the Dissident Men Programme, UNDP and UNAIDS. (more…)
Add comment 10/09/2009
International conference on “Realising the rights to health and development for all”
PLRI will be represented at the upcoming International Conference on ‘Realising the Rights to Health and Development for All’, hosted by the University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) Initiative for Health and Human Rights and the Central Commission for Popularization and Education of the Communist Party of Vietnam in Hanoi, Vietnam from 26-29 October 2009.
This Conference aims to further the understanding of the complex and powerful relationships between health, development and human rights and to propose practical ways that policies, strategies and research can optimally respond to these challenges.
The themes of the conference include: HIV/AIDS and other current and emerging public health threats; maternal and child health; climate change; and economic globalisation.
Download a press release from the conference organisers or visit their website to find out more.
Add comment 10/09/2009
New report on female, male and trans sex workers’ human rights in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa
Jayne Arnott and Anna-Louise Crago are the authors of a new Open Society Institute report that looks at female, male and trans sex workers’ human rights in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.
“The study is based on interviews and focus groups with 89 adults who have chosen sex work as their primary occupation. They work throughout the region on streets and highways, at truck stops, in brothels and agencies, or near mines and migrant settlements. Interviews were also conducted with 11 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the region that work with sex workers. In addition to documenting widespread human rights abuses against sex workers, the report describes innovative organizing tactics among sex workers to redress these rights violations. The report highlights opportunities for NGOs, governments, donors, and UN agencies to expand rights-based approaches to sex work that will ultimately improve the health and well-being of sex workers.”
Download the report from the Open Society Institute website.
Add comment 10/07/2009
Research for Sex Work
Published by the Global Network of Sex Work Projects Research for Sex Work 11 is online. It’s the only journal like it, with contributions from sex workers, health workers and NGO staff. Articles from India, Mali, Spain, the UK and the US, illustrated with beautiful photographs by Mathilde Bouvard, discuss pleasure and sex work, the failures of raids to help trafficked persons, violence against sex workers and more. This edition is available in French and English.
Add comment 07/07/2009
