Fostering Enabling Legal and Policy Environments to Protect the Health and Human Rights of Sex Workers

Johannesburg, South Africa

June 22-24, 2006

Report of a meeting co-sponsored by the Sexual Health and Rights Project & Law and Health Initiative

Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP) Law and Health Initiative (LAHI)

June 2006

The opinions expressed in this document reflect discussions held among a diverse group of advocates from around the world and do not necessarily reflect the views of OSI.

1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 3

PREFACE...... 4

NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY...... 6

INTRODUCTION ...... 7

DISCUSSIONS, DEBATES AND INSIGHTS...... 7

A. LESSONS FROM SEX WORKER ORGANIZING...... 7

B. LAW AND LEGAL FRAMEWORKS AT THE COUNTRY LEVEL...... 8

C. MOBILIZING HUMAN RIGHTS TOOLS AND STANDARDS...... 10

D. HARM REDUCTION, HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS ...... 12

E. ISSUES IN FOCUS...... 13

F. CREATIVE, ETHICAL AND POWERFUL ADVOCACY ...... 15

CREATING THE SPACES AND GATHERING THE RESOURCE TO ACT...... 16

A. BEST PRACTICES ...... 16

B. CAPACITY BUILDING MATERIALS ...... 17

C. RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS...... 17

D. CONVENINGS AND SUPPORT FOR ALLIANCE BUILDING ...... 18

APPENDIX A: PANEL SUMMARIES...... 19

APPENDIX B: MEETING CONCEPT PAPER ...... 26

APPENDIX C: SEX WORK LAW AND POLICY CASE STUDIES...... 31

APPENDIX D: HARM REDUCTION, HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS ...... 50

APPENDIX E: SEX WORK LAW AND POLICY FRAMEWORK CHART ...... 56

APPENDIX F: SUGGESTED AREAS FOR RESEARCH...... 60

APPENDIX G: MEETING AGENDA...... 61

APPENDIX H: PANELIST BIOGRAPHIES ...... 67

APPENDIX I: PROGRAM ORGANIZERS...... 78

2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This meeting was jointly organized by the Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP) and the Law and Health Initiative (LAHI) of the Open Society Institute.

Many thanks are due to Zohra Dawood, Executive Director of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA) and her staff, as well as to Aiste Slabokaite of the Open Society Fund- Lithuania and Terry Robinson of OSF-SA whose logistical support made the meeting possible. Rachel Thomas, Project Associate for SHARP, provided overall support for the meeting.

This report was written by Alice M. Miller, Law and Health Advisor to SHARP, based on minutes taken at the meeting by Stephen Heynes, with substantial contributions from SHARP Director Sue Simon and LAHI Director Jonathan Cohen, and comments from meeting participants Joanne Csete, Catherine Healy, Katarina Jiresova, Noluthando Ntlokwana, Claire Thiboutot and Petra Timmerman. The coordinating author of the case studies (Appendix B) and the primary author of the analysis on harm reduction, health, and human rights (Appendix C) was Penelope Saunders, PhD. Substantial research support for the meeting materials was provided by Jennifer Friedman, MSW/MPH.

Most important to the content of this report is the work, ideas, voices, and passion of the more than thirty participants at the meeting, who brought their experiences and insights from around the world. These participants reflect at least four key groups: sex workers, service providers, legal and policy experts, and human rights activists. Participants contributed their experience and expertise with transgender, lesbian, gay, women’s rights, and HIV/AIDS issues from research, advocacy, and policy perspectives.

We thank them for their commitment and hope this report contributes to the work they and others do to protect and ensure the rights, health, and dignity of the millions of people working in sex work around the world.

Contact: Sexual Health and Rights Project or Law and Health Initiative Open Society Institute 400 W. 59th St. New York, NY 10036 212-548-0600 www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/sharp

Jonathan Cohen, Project Director, LAHI, [email protected] Sue Simon, Project Director, SHARP, [email protected] Rachel Thomas, Project Associate, SHARP, [email protected]

3 PREFACE

This report synthesizes 2.5 days of lively presentations and discussions at a meeting organized on 22-24 June 2006 in Johannesburg, South Africa by the Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP) and Law and Health Initiative (LAHI) of the Open Society Institute (OSI). The meeting brought together sex workers, service providers, human rights advocates, researchers, and other constituencies to discuss how legal and regulatory environments affect sex workers’ health and human rights.

The meeting was organized to address the growing backlash against approaches to sex work that focus on the dignity and human rights of sex workers. Many countries in recent years have moved to toughen anti-prostitution laws, largely in response to a supposed link between sex work and transnational trafficking in human beings. The current attack on rights and empowerment of sex workers ranges from older, failed attempts to eliminate sex work through criminal penalties, rescue and the “rehabilitation” of sex workers to the undermining of strategies that aim to empower sex workers to protect their health and human rights. Some countries have discouraged or de-funded HIV-prevention strategies that seek to empower sex workers to use condoms and otherwise protect their health and rights. But there is little evidence-based research regarding the effect of anti-prostitution laws as a means of protecting women’s rights and prevent HIV. There is even less evidence regarding the impact of non-criminal laws, such as those governing immigration, employment, taxation, public health, and child custody, on the health and human rights of sex workers, yet repressive laws and policies have been developed in all of these arenas. One of the aims of this meeting was to describe research gaps in these areas in order to guide the eventual development of a research agenda to address these issues.

The meeting was also motivated by the desire to build connections between sex worker groups and among allies to advocate on their behalf. Sex workers’ issues are often misunderstood by those who do not share their experience, and even within ‘progressive’ movements, sex workers face discrimination. While various local, regional, and international sex worker groups have been building their expertise in law, health and human rights issues, their work does not always reach other actors, often because of limited resources for distribution.

In this context, the objectives of the Johannesburg meeting were: 1. To reach a common understanding of the key laws and regulations governing prostitution and sex work globally, and to map, through sharing on-the-ground knowledge and experience, the elements of various regimes of official control and regulation of sex work and prostitution and to assess how they impact sex workers’ health and rights; 2. To formulate the core principles of various approaches to sex work such as “public health,” “human rights,” and “harm reduction” approaches, and to better understand how these approaches work in practice; 3. To foster dialogue both within and among various sex worker-related interest groups, with an eye to reducing barriers and expanding areas of common principles and goals; and 4. To develop connections from the meeting as part of building a global network of advocates with expertise on sex worker’s health and human rights that will facilitate

4 continued dialogue, better and more responsive research, and joint advocacy toward more rights-promoting policy development.

Summary highlights from each meeting presentation are attached as Appendix A.

This report is not an attempt to track all the discussions or reflect all viewpoints presented at the meeting. Instead, we highlight specific issues in the debates and areas of substantial agreement for action and advocacy. The report also seeks to make visible the complexity and diversity of viewpoints among participants. Ignoring differences can lead to ineffective and even harmful interventions and lost opportunities for policy change. A commitment to the health and human rights of sex workers requires not only good laws, policies, and programs, but also a willingness to listen to complicated stories and to acquire new knowledge of local and global forces.

5 NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

Where possible, this report uses the broad terms “sex work” and “sex worker” to refer to varied forms of sexual commerce engaged in by adults. Some forms of sex work are more informal and occasional; others are more regular and organized. At times, when describing the forms of sexual commerce that are forbidden by specific laws, this report will use the words “prostitution” or “prostitute.”1 However, many who work in sexual commerce resist the term “prostitute” because of the stigma associated with it. This is especially true for those who are engaged in forms of sex work, such as telephone sex and stripping, that are not covered by legal prohibitions against prostitution.

Transgender denotes a person whose inner gender identity differs from the physical characteristics of his or her body at birth. Female-to-male (FTM) transgender people were born with female bodies but have a predominantly male gender identity; male-to-female (MTF) transgender people were born with male bodies but have a predominantly female gender identity.

Transsexual persons are often considered to make up a sub-set of trans-gender persons, as the term is now usually used for a person who has undergone alterations of the physiological or hormonal body, by surgery or therapy, so as to assume new physical gender characteristics. Transgender and transsexual people can have any sexual orientation: there is no necessary link between gender and sexual activity.

This report uses the language of “transgender people” or “trans-people,” but with the awareness that these terms do not always capture the subtle meanings that different local terms –often in indigenous languages and dialects—carry.

LGBT is an acronym commonly used to stand for the grouping of the terms Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people.

1 For more discussion on this language, see Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, “Sex, Work, Rights: Reforming Canadian criminal laws on Prostitution, at http://www.aidslaw.ca/publications/publicationsdocEN.php?ref=199

6 INTRODUCTION

This report aims to synthesize an extraordinary range of issues, debates and concerns that emerged from a 2.5 day meeting on sex workers’ health and human rights. Though there was not consensus on all issues discussed during the course of the meeting, it produced some clear points of agreement for action, many areas for further inquiry and research, and a powerful exploration of a wealth of knowledge and experience that has yet to be utilized by law- and policy-makers at the local and international level.

The meeting opened with a keynote address on the litigation efforts to decriminalize prostitution in South Africa, by Liesl Gerntholtz of Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre in Johannesburg. Her talk focused on unsuccessful efforts to decriminalize sex work in South Africa through litigation and opened an important window to themes explored in the following days.

DISCUSSIONS, DEBATES AND INSIGHTS

A. LESSONS FROM SEX WORKER ORGANIZING

The first panel of the meeting focused on recent successes in promoting health and claiming rights through sex worker community organizing and policy reform. Speakers were Catherine Healy of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, Alessandra Chacham of the Pontificia Catholic University, Brazil, and Raven Bowen of the British Columbia Coalition of Experiential Women/Communities in Canada.2

Barriers to self representation The need for, and barriers to, sex worker self-representation was a clear theme that emerged from the morning discussions. Participants recounted examples that showed that self- representation was central not only to effective advocacy but to truly useful policy results. There are still many barriers to effective organizing in this domain. In Southern and East Africa, as well as Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union (CEE/fSU), networks of sex workers are only just becoming visible. Punitive legal environments are sometimes to blame for the difficult of organizing sex workers into an effective health and rights movement. In Central Asia, for example, migrant sex workers often lack the documentation needed under the still-in- use Soviet-style registration system to even safely appear in public to advocate for themselves.

Another challenge to effective self-organizing is the significant diversity among the types of sex work and the people in sex work. Many different types of sex work co-exist, such as brothel, apartment, or street-based; escort services; and casual or informal sex work in massage or beer parlors. Effective health and rights-based advocacy must consider the impact of law on all of these groups, and the particular circumstances of sex workers of different nationalities, races, languages and genders. Participants stressed that advocates need to be careful about claims to represent one another. It is unlikely that any one group can adequately represent the full diversity of persons within sex work, so a key rule of legitimate and effective action is to analyze clearly who is present and missing in various advocacy claims and policy reform, and act accordingly. Gaps in participation can lead to incomplete legal reform. For example, reforms of escort or

2 Summaries of panelists presentations can be found in Appendix A

7 brothel-based sex work often do not address laws controlling street-based workers or non- nationals. While incomplete reform is often better than no reform, it is not the ideal. In some cases, the groups not included can become further marginalized.

During the meeting, participants explored ways to address legal barriers to official (NGO) registration of sex worker health and rights advocacy groups. Not all sex worker groups want to formalize their organizations, but there can be good reasons to do so, such as increased funding options or opportunities for collaboration, especially if the group is participating in service delivery. While many officials claim that sex workers are ‘criminals advocating illegal acts’, it was pointed out that advocacy on behalf of unpopular groups and in favor of legal reform is a fundamental democratic right. Moreover, advocacy supporting the health and rights of marginalized groups should be acceptable in every society.

The impact of an increasingly conservative political climate Most participants felt they were facing an increasingly conservative political climate in their countries. Many noted that local politicians had become emboldened by international conservative support, often from the United States, to toughen anti-prostitution laws. Paradoxically, Brazil’s post-dictatorship political openness to sex worker rights co-existed with strong Catholicism, while the Czech Republic’s post-Communist and increasingly Catholic civil society seemed to narrow the space for sex workers’ advocacy.

Sustaining advocacy at the national level for sex worker’s health and rights in this climate is very difficult. In particular, local governments tap into repressive local politics (especially policing interests) as well as at national and international levels.

Sex Work in Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically, is not well understood Participants agreed on the need for greater understanding by service providers, policy makers and sex worker advocates of the forms and conditions of sex work across Africa. This may be especially important in areas where conservative Christian and Muslim religious leaders have growing political power. Participants debated how to analyze and respond to the many forms of sexual commerce in Africa. While everyone agreed poverty and its effects must be at the core of research, as in other parts of the world, it was acknowledged there is a difference between people who engage in sex work as an income generating activity out of economic necessity and other types of sex work. Sex work obviously has important connections to African AIDS epidemics, but numerous issues affect sex workers beyond HIV. SWEAT, which has given rise to a network of self-organized sex workers, Sisonke, in South Africa was cited as one of the few groups in Africa that has moved from a predominantly HIV/AIDS service or research approach in its work to become an advocacy organization.

B. LAW AND LEGAL FRAMEWORKS AT THE COUNTRY LEVEL

The second panel focused on law and legal frameworks at the country level. Speakers were Joanne Csete of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Eszter Csernus of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union’s Sex Worker Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN), Juhu Thukral of the Sex Worker Project at the New York-based Urban Justice Center, Cholpon Djakupova of the Adilet Public Foundation Legal Clinic in Kyrgyzstan, and Lenka Myslikova of the Ministry of the Interior in the Czech Republic.

8 Confusion over the various criminal law frameworks for sex work frustrates legal reform When advocates have different interpretations and understandings of terms and approaches for regulating sex work, it impedes them from organizing, building alliances and developing joint health and rights advocacy strategies. Participants discussed the confusing array of terms describing the legal regulation of sex work worldwide, such as “prohibitionary,” “regulatory,” “legalized,” and “de-criminalized.”3 Also, many countries have different regulatory regimes for different kinds of sex work. Some types of sex work (escort, brothel-based) might be legalized, for example, while others (street-based, sex work by non-nationals, sex work without registration) remain criminal.

Some participants felt it was misleading to say ‘prostitution is legal’ if the activities that it takes to actually carry out sex work safely, such as moving about in public or living together, are criminalized, even if the per se acts of prostitution -- selling or buying sex --are not. This issue was stressed in reference to the British colonial model of criminalization seen in countries such as Canada, India, and New Zealand.

The “Swedish Model,” in force in Sweden and promoted by the Swedish government internationally, was felt to add to the confusion. Some proponents describe the model as ‘decriminalization,’ because selling sex is not officially penalized under the model. Participants noted that the approach appealed to some The Swedish Model feminists because it appeared to provide a way to end prostitution In 1999 Sweden passed legislation that penalizes without hurting women. This interpretation presumes that, by ‘[t]he person who, for decriminalizing the selling of sex, the government protects women payment, obtains a casual (as sellers of sex) from the harms of prostitution laws. Instead, sexual relationship... with participants cited research that demonstrated that such laws result in fines or imprisonment for a continued criminal surveillance and harassment of people who sell maximum of 6 months’. Swedish legislators believed sex on the streets, and more dangerous working conditions. Sex that prostitution would be workers who can rent apartments (mostly Swedes as opposed to non- reduced if men could be nationals) appear to have moved indoors to work. This was a topic deterred from purchasing where participants lacked clarity to make conclusions and agreed sexual services. that more research and discussion is required.

Local laws—such as those regulating housing, migration, zoning and health -- affect sex workers’ health and rights A wide range of local laws work in tandem with national and local prostitution laws to affect sex workers’ health and rights. Many participants cited municipal resistance that undermined progressive reform at the federal level in addition to constituting systematic harassment even in cases where no reform has been attempted at any level. Key to this retrenchment was the use of different local laws (e.g. zoning, health, business, tax, laws against begging, loitering, residence and work permits) to harass and penalize sex workers. In some cities in Canada, the police exclusively used municipal and provincial by-laws regarding vendors, permits and jaywalking to control sex workers. Local ordinances were also cited as a limitation on successful federal law reform in New Zealand. Repressive drug policies, fueled by international campaigns to stem drug use and sales, also contribute to local abuse of sex workers.

3See Appendix D for a Provisional Framework for analyzing laws and policies around sex work.

The anti-trafficking movement impacts sex work-related laws and policies The ‘anti-trafficking’ movement is a significant contemporary challenge to sex worker health and rights. Many speakers raised concerns about the negative impacts of international (mostly US) pressure to quickly draft new national laws against trafficking, asserting that this pressure pushes legal change while closing doors to debate. Speakers noted that recent national laws on trafficking often define the practice solely as movement into sex work, thereby failing to address exploitation and violence in other labor sectors. Australia’s new sexual slavery offenses act is an example of this kind of anti-trafficking law.

Despite claims that raid and rescue operations authorized by such laws can “save” trafficked persons, participants noted that in Thailand, India, the US, and elsewhere, raids drive sex workers deeper underground and away from programs that support their health and rights. These raids not only destroy networks of support for people in sex work but also ironically have failed to help most trafficked persons. For example, girls and women ‘rescued’ in such raids have been held in detention by governments in India, Thailand, the US and elsewhere, and then deported without assistance back into rights-violating environments.

The international push for anti-trafficking legislation appears to be having affects in several national contexts. India, which had a pre-existing Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act (ITPA), is now revising it. Indian authorities claim to be strengthening work against trafficking by incorporating the ‘Swedish Model’ thus making the law ‘better for women’. However, some rights groups (e.g., women’s rights, HIV/AIDS, sex worker collectives) have pointed out the Indian law will make it harder for women to work together to protect their health and rights. South Africa, which had a long, transparent process in its Law Commission to consider reform of the prostitution law, has just recently--and rapidly--adopted amendments equating sex work with trafficking. A similar dynamic can be seen in the Czech Republic.

C. MOBILIZING HUMAN RIGHTS TOOLS AND STANDARDS

Panelists in this session presented the experience of national and international nongovernmental organizations using human rights standards and tools to advance sex workers’ health and rights. Speakers were Katarina Jiresova of the NGO Odyseus in Slovakia, Petra Timmerman of the Netherlands-based International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe, and Rebecca Schleifer of the HIV/AIDS Program of US-based Human Rights Watch.

Human rights as a framework for achieving sex worker rights Several participants in the meeting had found creative and sophisticated ways to bring the norms and procedures of national and international human rights law to bear on sex worker’s health and rights struggles. There are many ways of taking a human rights approach, in different contexts, some approaches will be more successful than others. It was suggested that in Kenya, for example, a labor rights approach to sex work is not likely to work, whereas an anti- discrimination approach may be effective. While there is a strong body of human rights research on which to build a robust framework for sex worker rights advocacy, few mainstream human rights groups, especially at the international level, have taken on this work.

10 Some speakers expressed concern over the extent to which rights claims rely on their enforcement through law. They viewed legal institutions as largely inaccessible, and often useless in reducing stigma and prejudice. Moreover, while litigation can be useful, few sex workers have the resources to sustain a long legal battle. This does not, however, foreclose other avenues through which to enforce human rights claims.

Participants also explored what they called the ‘misuse of rights language’ by abolitionist (anti- prostitution) groups. These groups invoke rights language in representing themselves as ‘saving women’ from violence, yet their practices negate basic rights. For example, these groups have supported US government policy linking US funding to censored speech on sex worker’s health and rights. Moreover, such abolitionists reinforce stigma by labeling sex workers who speak out as ‘deluded victims’ of the prostitution industry.

Steps toward implementing a human rights approach Participants discussed the various ways of framing human rights claims and their appropriateness for various contexts. In particular, participants debated the relative merits of an approach that focuses on protecting the rights of sex workers to be free from abuse versus one that focuses on protecting individuals’ rights to work as sex workers. Participants mentioned that a right to work approach would imply the need to decriminalize sex work. Participants felt that human rights norms require that the criminalization of sex work be addressed because it has serious implications for sex workers’ health and lives, but not everyone felt that their organization would be able to take this advocacy step—at least right away.

A good first step, everyone agreed, was to build the capacity of sex workers and sex worker health and rights organizations to understand the basic foundations, principles, and mechanisms of human rights. This would include, for instance, clarifying the distinction between not having rights (something sex workers may subjectively feel) and sex workers having rights that are violated (something that is a reality and indicates that sex workers require access to legal remedies for human rights violations). Suggested next steps include taking existing human rights claims (e.g. freedom of movement, association, non-discrimination, equal access to health services, right to family) and applying them to sex workers’ lives and circumstances.

Sex workers at the meeting pointed out they had very little access to rights training in either local or global human rights processes. Working groups suggested concrete steps, such as the creation of a human rights toolkit, to help build sex workers’ capacity for advocacy. Documenting the best practices of organizations (such as the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Stella, EMPOWER, and Zi Teng) that have successfully invoked human rights (encompassing equal access to health care) in the context of sex workers would also be a helpful step. Funding and support for venues in which to learn and exchange rights based strategies were deemed to be essential. If the human rights arena is to maximize its use as an advocacy platform, sex workers must be involved in the development of human rights tools and strategies to ensure that their experiences and priorities are properly represented.

Assessing rights claims for their strengths and weaknesses Sex workers have developed different frameworks, tools and trainings in which to claim rights around the world but these efforts are not widely known. In some countries, “constitutional

11 rights” or “civil rights” language had more power than the language of “international human rights”. In Brazil, rights claims built around citizenship and health worked in the moment of post-dictatorship social accountability. In Bangladesh, the right to choose one’s profession was used by sex worker advocates to get brothels re-opened. An equality and non-discrimination framework was also used in a challenge to the unequal application of loitering laws to sex workers in Canada.

Participants explored the positive and negative aspects of abuse-focused claims. Such claims can build coalitions against police brutality. These efforts also appeal to the popular media, but their very popularity suggests a danger. Until sex workers are understood to have complex human lives, abuse stories inadvertently reinforce the popular idea that all sex workers are victims in need of “rescue.”

Other speakers noted that claims to the right to health have opened up additional rights claims for sex workers (e.g. rights to information, services, freedom from violence). On the other hand, references to health have also been used to limit rights. Some noted that so-called ‘best practices’ in HIV/AIDS work have been used to harass and criminalize sex workers. For example, some Asian governments have used health to justify mandatory testing of sex workers, or implemented 100% condom-use polices as the basis for surveillance and arrest, as in China.

D. HARM REDUCTION, HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS

A plenary discussion on harm reduction, health and human rights, and sex work4 generated some of the most lively and contentious debate of the three days. Harm reduction is an approach traditionally applied to illicit drug use that stresses the reduction of drug-related harms such as overdose and HIV infection, without insisting on complete abstinence from drugs. When applied to sex work, this approach might mean distributing condoms and HIV prevention information in order to reduce disease vulnerability instead of insisting that sex workers leave sex work all together. Yet for some, a harm reduction approach to sex work has negative connotations because sex workers (themselves) are interpreted as the harm that is to be reduced. Experience with applying a harm reduction framework in the context of HIV/AIDS varied strongly across regions, with advocates from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union seeming the most experienced and welcoming to harm reduction approaches, and participants from other regions being more skeptical or directly resistant. One participant noted that OSI’s own work in enabling good evidence and rights-promoting harm reduction approaches had played a central role in its acceptance and effectiveness in CEE/fSU.

Some participants pointed out that harm reduction approaches have served as an entry point for many life-saving interventions such as needle exchange programs and substitution treatment with orally-administered methadone or buprenorphine. It was acknowledged that some sex workers inject drugs and are in need of these services. Nonetheless, the value of the harm reduction framework as applied to sex work was questioned by many participants. Very few felt that the content and principles had been fully spelled out for sex work. Many felt passionately that while the principles might be good, the term was problematic.

4 See Appendix C for the Concept Paper on “Harm reduction, health and human rights, and sex work” presented by Penelope Saunders for this discussion.

Some felt harm reduction models were being co-opted or misunderstood. In India, anti-sex work advocates had begun using the term “harm reduction” as if the harm at issue was sex work itself, as opposed to harmful (and preventable) potential consequences of sex work such as violence and HIV infection. One advocate recounted her discussion of the term with sex workers in Central Asia, “….they called out: ‘We are not for harm, we are for pleasure’; ‘We are not harmful, we are useful.’” Others participants argued that since sex work is work, applying a harm reduction approach to it would necessitate applying harm reduction to all forms of work including journalism, research and manual labor and that this did not make sense. Another participant asked why, if harm reduction is an appropriate approach for sex work, it would not eventually be applied to other marginalized sexual practices, such as homosexuality.

Many participants considered harm reduction to be a ‘double-edged sword’ for sex workers. It is useful because, among other points, it provides a set of evidence-based strategies for reducing sex work-related harms. On the negative side, it may de-emphasize the rights of sex workers, as when some public health policy makers adopt a stripped-down version of harm reduction by offering services but not empowerment, or offering harm reduction services in a coercive manner.

While skeptical, some speakers agreed that harm reduction could be useful -- if paired with progressive human rights claims and if sex workers participated in determining the harms to be reduced (e.g., harm must be defined as the violence/health impediments associated with police impunity and being socially marginalized, as opposed to sex work itself). One advocate described his group’s progressive harm reduction stance: their campaign criticized laws -- such as the criminalization of sex work -- as factors that could cause harm. They built support for harm reduction around calls for progressive law reform. Others stressed a pragmatic combination of frameworks. For example, one organization has a mission statement that includes a commitment to both rights and harm reduction, allowing it to work with a wide range of allies.

Some participants re-affirmed their desire to continue to focus on rights only. Discussion made clear that a “one size fits all approach” would never work. People need to use the tools and frames best suited to their own unique environment.

E. ISSUES IN FOCUS- POLICE ABUSE, GENDER, HIV/AIDS AND LABOR RIGHTS

Speakers on specific issues arising in sex work were Igor Vassilenko of the Pomosch (Help) Public Foundation in Kazakhstan, Meena Seshu of the NGO SANGRAM in India, Hua Boonyapisomparn of the NGO Sisters in Thailand, Smarajit Jana of CARE-India, and Noi Apisuk of the NGO EMPOWER in Thailand.

Addressing police abuse must be part of any long-term strategy Police must be made to be accountable to communities and protect and serve all individuals, including sex workers. But participants noted that police are often the primary perpetrators of abuse. In India, the police go beyond their mandate of law enforcement to impose their own conceptions of morality, such as the idea that women shouldn’t be in control of their sexual behavior. Participants discussed risks confronted by NGOs that try to work with police. Some are co-opted into informing on sex worker communities or facilitating enforcement of

13 prostitution law. Or conversely, NGO staff may be attacked or arrested for the work they carry out with and on behalf of sex workers and other marginalized groups.

Participants stressed that the strategies used to address policing tactics must vary according to local realities. For example, lawyers may be useful in some places to contest police abuse. However, laws and courts are irrelevant in many places, and collective action may be the best way to restrain police. Others stressed that pragmatic reforms work best, such as working against police corruption by advocating for higher police salaries.

The challenge of working with women’s groups Some felt that women’s groups were among the most difficult groups with whom to form coalitions. While a number of participants had good experiences collaborating with women’s groups, as when the YWCA joined with the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective on law reform, many did not. This divide has worsened with the willingness of some feminists to join conservative forces to oppose sex work. This ‘feminist-right-wing’ alliance, long present in the US, is now visible internationally. This alliance condemns prostitution as both degrading (a moral claim) and a form of violence against women (a framework that co-opts human rights language).

Double discrimination for transgender sex workers Many participants felt that conservative attitudes about gender (e.g., that there are two fixed genders that are attached to sex at birth) lead to stigma and double discrimination against transgender people in sex work. Transgender sex workers are very visible in some Asian societies, but have no legal right to their gender identity. Transgender people are often constrained by prejudice to stay in their ‘place’ in these societies, with no access to resources. They face additional barriers in sex worker advocacy efforts, as they often encounter discrimination or are excluded from groups that focus solely on women sex workers.

Promising approaches for work with allied communities Where sex workers came to understand labor, immigration laws or the globalization of markets as obstacles to their interests, they were able to build common cause with other social protest groups. In Thailand, for example, anti-corruption movements resonated with sex worker interests. Coalition-building examples demonstrated another insight: that effective policy change engages not only with prostitution law but also with labor, migration, housing, health, begging and assault laws. Many speakers stressed, however, that real coalitions take time to build, and require reciprocity of interests and action between their members. Some participants felt that a labor rights framework might be effective, while others were concerned that this approach had not yet gained the support of labor rights activists globally.

Global attention to HIV/AIDS has played a positive and negative role in sex worker health and rights protection Many presenters described HIV/AIDS projects that began by treating sex workers as vectors of disease, rather than as people with an interest in their own health and rights. However, some of these projects have evolved—as in the Sonagachi project – into powerful sex worker-led collectives responding not only to HIV/AIDS but also to other health concerns as well as to social injustice. Discussants agreed that many groups that work with sex workers, created in

14 response to HIV/AIDS funding in Africa, have failed to truly adopt a sex workers’ health, rights and empowerment perspective. The funding which permitted groups like these to organize and develop governance structures has not been flexible enough to allow these organizations to encompass appropriately holistic approaches.

F. CREATIVE, ETHICAL AND POWERFUL ADVOCACY

This panel emphasized new ways of creating ethical and effective images and stories. Speakers were Andrew Hunter of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers based in Thailand, Claire Thiboutot of Stella in Canada, Juhu Thukral from the Sex Workers’ Project of the New York-based Urban Justice Center, and Olive Cheung from the NGO Zi Teng in Hong Kong.

Many speakers commented on the difference between the ‘dramatic’ media representations of sex workers as victims, and the more challenging but ultimately more ethical process of sex workers speaking about their own lives, interests, and needs. Stories about “victims” get more media attention and often sway allies, who may not have direct access to knowledge about sex workers’ lives. Speakers affirmed that “victim stories” often pave the way for policies that neither help to stop the abuse of sex workers, nor are able to respond to other needs of the people in sex work.

A central discussion that arises in media and public advocacy work is how to represent the relationship between health, poverty, decision-making, and sex work in a way that captures the fullness of sex workers’ lives. Focus in the media and in some policy circles on the idea that ‘poverty drives women into sex work’ has obscured the fact that the working poor engage in many different kinds of formal and informal income-generating work. Sex work is treated as a ‘special case,’ and then held out to embody the racism and sexism that the poor, especially poor women, face in all aspects of their lives. This may fuel unrealistic efforts to “rescue” people from sex work rather than working respectfully with them to ensure they live dignified lives free from violence and discrimination.

Building accountable and ethical coalitions between sex workers and allies requires that allies ‘listen and learn’ The dynamic that occurs when outsiders ‘listen’ to sex workers was explored in a lively conversation. In India, one non-sex worker advocate said that when she first began working with sex workers, they would tell her stories of economic hardship or kidnapping to explain why they were involved in the industry because they had learned that those were the stories outsiders expected from them and could understand. However, now that she is trusted within the sex worker community, the same women no longer tell her of being forced into sex work. As long as stigma and discrimination are so closely linked to sex work, sex workers will be apprehensive to speak openly of their realities. Allies must approach partnerships mindful of the importance of listening to and learning from sex workers in order to clearly understand their situations and provide the appropriate support.

Sex workers and allies noted that the current climate of repression can only encompass sex workers who are willing to talk about abuse and be rescued from sex work. Participants agreed on the need to be able to address both abuse and success in their public messages about sex work, without acting as if one aspect of the “story” cancelled out all others. The overall goal was

15 to create messages that led to rights-based policies that enable people in sex work to make decisions for themselves, with the freedom and capacity to act on their decisions, including staying in or stopping sex work.

“Golden rules” for research, mobilization, service provision and alliances with sex workers can play an important role in future work It was felt that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), governments and bilateral organizations should engage with sex workers on the issues sex workers care about, not the issues that allies think they should care about. For example, HIV/AIDS may not be first on the list of sex worker concerns. Their first interests are likely to be food for their families, or housing needs or even tax issues. Drop-in centers and general health services with open agendas provide ways for NGOs to respectfully begin the process of learning about sex workers’ needs and respond to them.

While the slow process of NGOs ‘listening and learning’ was felt to be the most ethical and effective way to work with sex workers, participants were well aware of the challenge this poses for NGOs. The demands of funders for rapid interventions, products and specific outcomes can undermine real partnerships and consultation. One recent challenge has been the pressure to scale up and replicate HIV/AIDS projects quickly. Many felt that the uniqueness of each community meant there was no single checklist of activities to speed up outreach or community building. Cutting corners in building relationships at the outset will undermine the effectiveness of the substantive work in the long run.

Work with the media required a long view, an analysis of the structures that determine the tone of reporting, such as editorial boards, and attention to strategies such as producing good data and careful analysis to counteract sloppy reporting, and becoming a credible public voice through sustained outreach.

CREATING THE SPACES AND GATHERING THE RESOURCES TO ACT

The meeting closed with consideration of next steps as well as a discussion of specific tools and strategies. In particular, participants endorsed:

A. BEST PRACTICES

Develop “Golden Rules” of action Sex workers and allies should work together to develop a booklet/web page with ‘Golden Rules’ for working with sex workers, addressing such topics as sex worker organizing/self-organization, protocols for social science, legal, and bio-medical research, and service design. This booklet would be aimed at allies, including lawyers, health care providers, social workers, policymakers, and human rights groups.

Sex worker organizations and their allies should be supported to develop advocacy materials for sex-worker rights-based policy reform; increased use of creative media and information technology is a priority

16 Steps include: • Translation of sex worker health and rights magazines and newsletters, to and from local languages, as well as case studies of experiences in using new media, such as radio, Internet, blogs, and video technology. • Development of guidelines for the ethical representation of sex workers (and control of self-representation) in media initiatives and other public education campaigns of people in marginalized communities. • Research, publication and translation of country-specific, accessible reports analyzing the health and rights impacts of recent national and local prostitution policy reforms.

B. CAPACITY BUILDING MATERIALS

Sex workers and allies should be supported to develop a ‘health and rights advocacy’ toolkit Modules of the toolkit could include: • Worksheets evaluating different ways to frame rights claims to best achieve sex worker health and rights. • Hands-on exercises for use in local-level workshops for sex workers, designed to build awareness, capacity, and use of human rights tools and tactics by sex workers in all levels of policy reform. Materials would present a wide range of rights tools, such as ways to document abuse; basic human rights principles relevant to sex work; advocacy strategies; securing access to health services; community organizing strategies; and rights-oriented analysis of legal and policy frameworks. • Case studies of successful rights-based sex work policy reform at various levels.

This tool kit should fully integrate ‘neglected concerns,’ such as transgender issues, conditions for sex workers in sub-Saharan Africa, and different religious traditions and cultural contexts, such as advocacy for sex worker health and rights issues within Muslim communities.

C. RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Scholars, NGOs, sex workers and allies should develop well-documented analytic reports focusing on specific themes, such as: • The actual operation of the Swedish and Finish models, and their on-the-ground impacts. • Different models of prostitution registration/regulation systems, and their impacts on the health and rights of sex workers. • The health and rights impacts of anti-trafficking policies and frameworks in specific country contexts, with attention to changes in policing, NGO support, sex worker self- organization and access to health services. • Police brutality toward sex workers, in cross-cultural and regional contexts. • The diversity/types of sex work in practice in East and Southern Africa and its impact on access to health and social care.

Both scholarly documents and policy/advocacy-friendly materials are needed. All materials should ensure their analysis pays attention to differences among sex workers and types of sex work.

17 D. CONVENINGS AND SUPPORT FOR ALLIANCE BUILDING AND COALITION WORK

OSI and other progressive funders have a role to play in increasing the funding pool for sex- worker health and rights-focused funding

• Information exchange and coalition building demonstrate the benefits of support for sex worker rights-promoting activities, especially with donors who fund HIV prevention, health and harm reduction efforts. • OSI and other progressive funders should continue to educate and advocate with other donors to support sex worker health and rights initiatives within funding networks and other venues. At the least, more donor education is needed to ensure that funders “do no harm” by supporting interventions which do not have a rights-based perspective. • OSI and other progressive funders should support effective sex worker participation in, and organization of, meetings, trainings and programs that contribute to alliance building and stronger, more accountable relations with allies around important health and rights issues.

Key fora for supporting participation and organizing include those that focus on health, labor rights, migrant rights and progressive women’s rights. Mainstream human rights and harm reduction conferences and advocacy venues should also be considered.

Resources are needed for sex worker health and rights networking and organizing at all levels • Support is needed for local sex worker self-organization efforts in many regions, especially in areas where such initiatives are relatively new, such as across Africa, in Central Asia, in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as regional/global linkages and networks.

18 APPENDIX A

Panels and Panelists: Day One

PANEL # 1 CLAIMING RIGHTS – SEX WORKER COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND POLICY REFORM The opening panel featured presentations from New Zealand, Brazil, and Canada on distinctive efforts by sex workers to mobilize for policy reform.

1) Catherine Healy, the national coordinator of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, described the recent successful federal-level campaign to decriminalize sex work in New Zealand, led by a sex worker collective that has carefully constructed alliances with health, HIV/AIDS, and human rights groups, including some women’s groups. The Coalition targeted political leaders across the political spectrum as well as civil servants. Careful research, progressive analysis, and long-term planning played a key role in the victory, as did efforts to engage with media directly and regularly.

However, discussion with Healy revealed that not only did the policy change not yet include street-based sex workers or to address ongoing stigma and discrimination against many sex workers, but also sustaining victory was very hard. For example, local authorities have undermined the progressive intent of the federal law subsequently by resistance to implementing measures at the municipal level.

2) Allessandra Chacham of the Pontificia Catholic University of Minas Gerais in Brazil described the distinctive, post-dictatorship social movement of citizens’ rights and health groups in Brazil This movement highlighted notions of accountability that include sex workers as key participants in combating HIV and AIDS. The national Ministry of Health and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have driven much of the progressive change. However, Chacham noted that the focus on health has failed to challenge the underlying criminalization of sex work. Moreover, as NGOs have also stepped in to provide key health and other services, some critics note that the NGOs are not accountable to citizens the same way as the state.

Chacham described Brazil as a “paradox,” whereby a progressive government policy of allowing sex workers to qualify for social security, and of refusing U.S. aid conditioned on “opposing prostitution” stands side-by-side with official illegality of prostitution.

3) Raven Bowen of the British Columbia Coalition of Experiential Women/Communities in Canada presented the struggles of a local, self-organized coalition of sex workers on the west coast of Canada that seeks to affect both local and national policy while meeting the basic needs of their membership. The coalition operates on the premise that sex workers are the experts about their own lives and not in need of “rescue.” At the same time, Bowen notes that participating in ongoing Canadian law reform efforts can be challenging for her diverse membership because of their day-to-day survival needs.

19 PANEL #2 EXPLORING THE LAW AND LEGAL FRAMEWORKS, IN GENERAL AND AT COUNTRY LEVEL

The meeting’s second panel focused on national laws and law reform efforts in five countries: Canada, Hungary, the United States, Kyrgyzstan, and the Czech Republic.1

1) Joanne Csete of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network described the work of the Legal Network to reform Canadian law governing prostitution, an effort that gained both urgency and momentum in the wake of media reports of the murder of over 120 sex workers in Vancouver, British Columbia. Canada is similar to many British Commonwealth countries in that the act of selling or buying sex is not illegal in itself, but all the surrounding acts that would make it safe, practical, and possible to live off the earnings of one’s sex work are illegal. These laws hit already marginalized people such as members of First Nation, migrants, transgender people, and injecting drug users particularly hard, effectively criminalizing their networks of support.

In conjunction with sex-worker groups such as Montreal-based Stella, the Legal Network produced a report to challenge provisions of the Canadian Criminal Code. The report identified specific laws, including those that prohibit keeping a ‘bawdy house,’ that create a presumption of guilt, and prohibit public solicitation. The report used a human rights analysis that drew on the non-discrimination, privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement guarantees embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to demonstrate the harmfulness of these laws.2

2) Eszter Csernus of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union set out the ways in which the government’s “hybrid” approach results in an abusive system. The government wavers between a tax registration scheme and avows at the same time, that registration is against international law as embodied in a 1949 United Nations Convention3. However, even this federal registration law has an uncertain status as municipalities are refusing to set up the designated zones for sex work, which are required to implement the federal law. Moreover, an increasingly moralistic anti-prostitution rhetoric in Hungary is making it harder for sex workers to protest such irrational policies. Csernus cited to the fact that Hungary requires expensive Hepatitis B and HIV tests for sex workers in the service of public health, yet refuses to pay for the tests as an example of a policy that irrationally straddles two responses to sex work.

3) Juhu Thukral of the Sex Worker Project at the New York-based Urban Justice Center noted that the penalization of sex work primarily happens at the state, not federal level, in the United States. However, recent anti-prostitution policies at the federal level are now having major local effects, particularly in policing. For example, a recent New York State anti-trafficking initiative introducing anti-trafficking legislation proposed the creation of a new crime with higher penalties for buying sex from a trafficked person, even absent specific knowledge that the person

1 See Appendix B for Eight Case studies on legal frameworks 2 The report, Sex, Work, Rights: Reforming Canadian criminal laws on Prostitution can be found at: http://www.aidslaw.ca/publications/publications.doc] 3 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949)

20 had been trafficked. This version of “demand-oriented” anti-trafficking/anti-prostitution law is akin to those being promoted globally by the United States and Sweden. Thukral said that arguments against this model include the fact evidence indicates it undermines anti-trafficking work by deterring clients of sex workers from reporting cases of human trafficking for fear of facing severe criminal penalties.

4) Cholpon Djakupova of the Adilet Public Foundation Legal Clinic in Kyrgyzstan spoke of the recent pressures on what she characterized as an otherwise “tolerant” Kyrgyz sex work legal regime. Selling and buying sex are not crimes, but buying sex from individuals under age eighteen and forced prostitution are crimes, as are organizing a place for prostitution. Djakupova noted that since 2005, a more conservative government has expanded criminalization. Kyrgyzstan is relatively democratic compared to other countries in Central Asia, but it is very poor and labor migration, both from rural to urban areas within Kyrgyzstan and across borders, is strongly linked to sex work. A negative public attitude to sex workers, combined with the vulnerability of mobile populations to exploitation (owing in part to the retained Soviet practice of requiring registration papers), has aggravated the conditions for abuse of sex workers. Police exploit their power over migrants’ papers, and she said, are themselves often the traffickers of sex workers.

5) Lenka Myslikova of the Ministry of the Interior in the Czech Republic reported that her government’s policy was shifting as the political landscape moved toward greater nationalism and morality-based judgmentalness. Her office was recently re-located to the Security branch, signaling that prostitution had become a security issue. Her office was charged with drafting a licensing system for prostitution premised on a system of local business regulation. They drafted a system, which included a renewable system of medical certificates for sex workers, with some sex-work specific privacy protections. Although the original bill was neutral with regard to citizenship, recent parliamentary revision limits legal sex work to Czech nationals. Even more recently, the government has been under renewed pressure following the 2006 elections to drop the licensing scheme and criminalize all forms of prostitution.

Panels and Panelists: Day Two

PANEL #3 APPLYING HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORKS: TOOLS AND EXPERIENCES

1) Katerina Jiresova of the NGO Odyseus in Slovakia highlighted the process, findings, and recommendations from a recent report4 about sex workers, HIV/AIDS, and human rights in twenty-seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The report revealed high levels of violence and discrimination against sex workers by police and health service providers, with particularly harsh impact on street- based and drug-using sex workers. It also revealed low levels of organization and human rights advocacy among sex workers, as well as low levels of human rights protection regardless of the legal regime (e.g., prohibitory,

4 Central and Eastern European Harm Reduction Network, Report on Sex Work, HIV/AIDS, and Human Rights in Central and Eastern Europe, [date/publication information?] (www.ceehrn.org/EasyCEE/sys/files/Report)

21 regulatory, partial de-criminalization) operating in the country. Despite the existence of anti- trafficking laws, few prosecutions for violence, coercion or exploitation of sex workers had ever begun, and there were few, if any, services for victims of any kind for trafficking.

2) Petra Timmerman of the Netherlands-based International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRESE) described the organizing and production of materials for their 2005 Conference in Brussels [“Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour, and Migration in Europe”] which included over 200 participants, including 120 sex workers and 80 persons attending as allies (six European unions were represented.) The Conference followed an open consultative process to build the rights claims “from the ground up.” After more than a year of work, the delegates produced a Declaration (a synthesis of key accepted international standards applied to the lives of sex workers), a Manifesto (a set of demands for rights to live in dignity as sex workers in Europe), and recommendations for action by European leaders.5

3) Rebecca Schleifer of the HIV/AIDS Program of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch presented advocacy tools used by HRW in its work, such as letters to governments; law and fact-based submissions to regional and international bodies, media work, and report-writing. She described the activities around their report on the Ukraine.6 The Report focused on abuses against people in the context of HIV/AIDS, and contained information on gross abuses of sex workers’ health and rights. Schleifer explained how human rights standards could be used to hold police accountable not only for their own abuse, but also for failing to provide protection from private actors. Schleifer stressed that HRW evaluates the success of its work not only by the willingness of governments to reform their policies and practices, but also by the contributions of their action to local advocacy capacity and coalition building.

Panels and Panelists: Day Three

PANEL #4 ISSUES IN FOCUS: POLICE ABUSE, GENDER, HIV AND AIDS, AND LABOR RIGHTS

1) Igor Vassilenko of the Pomosch [Help] Public Foundation in Kazakhstan spoke about his NGO’s work challenging police harassment of sex workers, in the context of both HIV outreach generally and in harm reduction activities with drug-using sex workers. The goal of this work was to change police from antagonists to allies, work that required a mixture of relationship- building, accountability-mechanism implementation, and education. The Foundation sought to explain to police the elements of harm reduction approaches in order to demonstrate that they did not undermine police work. They also sought to present the elements of effective HIV prevention with sex workers to police, again to demonstrate how police could support and not oppose these efforts.

5 The Declaration, Manifesto and other materials from the Conference can be found at: http://www.sexworkeurope.org 6 Rhetoric and Risk: Human Rights Abuses Impeding Ukraine’s Fight Against HIV/AIDS, report found at: http://hrw.org/reports/2006/ukraine0306

22 2) Meena Seshu of the NGO Sangram in India described her organization’s transformation from a well-meaning but unskilled group of social workers into people who challenged their own prejudices around women in sex work. Seshu emphasized that working with sex workers as peer educators requires taking on a “social change” focus, which does not ignore the conditions surrounding abuse (including trafficking) but rather works against those conditions. Sangram opposes the brothel raids, which have been recently instigated with the financial support of US- based Christian rescuers, because they believe these raids do not work. Their work has demonstrated that they do not effectively reach and protect trafficked people, and they are counter-productive to sex workers efforts to organize and protect their own rights. Nonetheless, because of her opposition to raids, Sash has been cast in the English language press as a “child trafficker.”

3) Hua Boonyapisomparn of the NGO Sisters in Thailand spoke about the specific needs of trans-gendered (TG or trans-people) in sex work, which have until recently been ignored. Her program seeks to reduce sex-related risks for Transgender people. She considers the work to include both public education and service delivery, as Sisters not only must undo the dominant narrow binary thinking about male and female bodies and roles, but also try to reach the TG people who are stigmatized by this thinking. Sisters provides a combination of health, outreach, and supportive activities to TG. Sisters amplifies its voice by joining networks working in other gender and sexually-stigmatized communities, including gay and lesbian communities.

4) Smarajit Jana of CARE-India described his experience with the changing nature of HIV- oriented public health work with sex workers. He said that public health in some places in India had moved from addressing sex workers as vectors of disease, to key allies in HIV prevention, and finally it could arrive at addressing them as equal members of society. Recognizing the difference between seeing sex workers as ‘health statistics’ to seeing them as people with lives, desires for work, and families, is essential if public health is to move from its HIV-driven frame, he said. Jana criticized the traditional public health view in India that focused only on changing sexual practices, without caring about power structures. He hoped that public health frameworks in India could be changed to challenge social stereotypes, including, sexism, and moralistic constructs.

5) Noi Apisuk of the NGO EMPOWER in Thailand explored the paradox in which sex workers are excluded from the traditional labor rights framework, even as the labor rights of sex workers are inextricably linked to the labor rights of all Thai workers. EMPOWER works on education, housing, and health care in the face of the criminalization of sex worker lives. They strive to understand and connect their work to larger social justice struggles for workers in Thailand. For example, she spoke of how EMPOWER evaluated the failures of the post-Tsunami relief effort of the Thai government in which poor people and irregular workers (including sex workers) were excluded from relief even as the government professed to be helping everyone. Because of this analysis, EMPOWER had something to contribute to the public debate over relief, an example of how their labor rights frame allowed them to join with others in progressive social movements.

23 PANEL #5 BUILDING ADVOCACY CAPACITY

1) Andrew Hunter of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers based in Thailand and Australia described some of the principles and tactics that have guided APNSWP’s efforts to build advocacy capacity among sex workers. He described the importance of linking sexuality to other issues arising in globalization debates, such as loss of local jobs and control over markets. AP- NSWP uses art and to move beyond text in campaigns and programming. Images are especially useful to transcend the more than twenty languages of Asia. They also use humor to get information out--for example, through slogans such as the Cambodian sex workers’ slogan, “‘Don’t talk to me about sewing machines, talk to me about workers’ rights, a slogan which exposes the ‘charity jobs’ approach to sex workers. They have hosted workshops where people in sex work made model dolls representing themselves, and then have sent the dolls to different international conferences to symbolize the movement that the sex workers themselves do not have to cross borders.

2) Claire Thiboutot of Stella, Canada showed a bilingual (English and French) film7made about Forum XXX. Forum XXX – Celebrating A Decade of Action, Designing Our Future was an international meeting of sex workers which took place in Montreal in May of 2005. The broad goal of the forum was to bring together 250 sex workers and their allies to share, transfer and develop practical and political knowledge and strategies. Sex workers travelled from different countries as well from across Canada to attend.

While recognizing that participants came from a diversity of sex work related contexts, experiences and politics, the Forum XXX was the opportunity for all to develop capacity, both individual and collective, in responding to a number of social, legal and human rights concerns facing sex workers today.

The resulting film, Live eXXXpressions: Sex Worker’s Stand Up in Montreal!, is a powerful advocacy tool. It depicts the diversity of leadership and organizing among sex workers around the world and gives a glimpse into the Forum XXX discussions, demands, and struggles for human rights that took centre stage. For Stella, ethical considerations regarding the representation of sex workers were critical in making the film. For example, they were careful to ensure they used only images of sex workers from whom they had received permission.

3) Juhu Thukral of the Sex Workers’ Project/Urban Justice Center in the USA, described a New York-based coalition of groups seeking to improve media coverage of sex worker issues. The group, formed in 2004, seeks to take into account the diversity of its memberships views while combating what they consider to be simplistic messages about sex work generated by a new and powerful alliance of Republican conservatives and anti-prostitution feminists. In particular, the group is developing materials to provide careful research and analysis to counter what the group considers to be inaccurate presentations of the links between trafficking and sex work. The group includes members who have worked against trafficking for many years, and they have

7 Live eXXXpressions: Sex Workers Stand Up in Montreal! / eXXXpressions en direct : travailleuses du sexe debouttes à Montréal ! 2005 available on Stella’s Website, http://www.chezstella.org/stella/?q=en/follow

24 contributed a great deal to the analysis of how bad anti-trafficking polices hurt sex worker rights and neglect other trafficked persons.

4) Olive Cheung, working with Zi Teng in Hong Kong, described how her NGO, formed by social workers, labor activists and researchers to support the rights of sex workers in Hong Kong, has created materials supporting advocacy for law reform. They have used photographs and stories made by sex workers themselves as a key part of their advocacy. Zi Teng’s goal is to make visible the realities of sex worker’s lives, especially making clear the interests and needs that sex workers share with other members of Hong Kong society.

25 May 2006

APPENDIX B

Concept Paper for a SHARP/Law and Health Gathering: Fostering Enabling Legal and Policy Environments for Sex Workers’ Health and Human Rights

Johannesburg, South Africa June 22-24, 2006

Background

Sex workers face a wide range of human rights abuses in all regions of the world, frequently as a result of the laws, policies, and practices of governments and state actors. Officials charged with enforcing prostitution laws routinely extort bribes, confessions, testimony, and other “favors” from sex workers. Such problems are exacerbated when police and security forces are required to meet quotas for arrests and criminal convictions. Sex workers often receive harsh punishments such as incarceration and flogging for committing prostitution-related offenses inscribed in national legislation. In the worst cases, police beat, detain, rape, and torture sex workers, and face little or no accountability for their actions because of sex workers’ relative powerlessness and social marginalization.

Police brutality may force sex workers into hiding, effectively alienating them from basic health and social care services. It is not uncommon for police to confiscate condoms from sex workers and use them as evidence of illegal prostitution, including in those areas hard hit by HIV/AIDS. Even well intentioned efforts to “rescue” women and men in the sex industry can compound human rights abuses against them, allowing officials to detain sex workers arbitrarily in the course of brothel raids or forcibly evict them from their homes and communities. Sex workers also face a wide range of abuse within health care settings, such as forced testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), pressure to terminate pregnancy, verbal harassment from health care providers, and denial of basic health services.

In many countries, government policies focus on eliminating sex work through criminal laws rather than either adopting pragmatic “harm reduction” interventions that attempt to mitigate harms linked to sex work, or responding with reforms to create environments for sex worker rights promotion. A comprehensive approach to protecting sex workers’ health and human rights must confront the harms that emanate from society’s response to sex work, not simply from sex work itself. Yet efforts to do so are hampered by at least three factors:

1. Legal context: The complexity of legal, regulatory and administrative regimes governing sex work, confusion about these regimes, and the disconnect between laws “on the books” and their enforcement “on the street,” can make it difficult to advocate for effective legal frameworks which protect sex workers’ health and rights.

2. Analytic framework: While sex workers and their allies are united in their desire to reduce the harms associated with sex work, they may be divided by different political perspectives: feminists, victims’ rights groups, AIDS activists, anti-trafficking advocates, labor rights groups, and sex

26 May 2006 workers themselves bring diverse and often conflicting priorities to the challenge of protecting sex workers’ rights.

3. Networking: Sex workers’ marginalized social and political status often inhibits their ability to organize with other sectors in society, and also makes it more difficult to build their own advocacy capacity, gain access to resources and assert a meaningful voice in the policy process. Sex workers’ issues are often misunderstood by those who do not share their experiences; even within progressive movements, sex workers can still face discrimination. In addition, sex work is a diverse profession that is highly stratified, meaning that some sex workers have more access than others to social and political power. Such stratification may inhibit or impede effective communication and organizing efforts among sex workers.

A gathering on sex workers’ health and human rights

In June 2006, the Open Society Institute will convene an international gathering on the impact of laws, policies, and law enforcement practices on sex workers’ health and human rights. Building on efforts by sex worker groups, researchers and advocates, the meeting will examine the ways in which legal and regulatory frameworks either support or inhibit sex workers’ ability to protect their health and rights, particularly in the context of HIV/AIDS. It will examine the ways in which local advocates have used human rights arguments to change laws and regulations that negatively impact sex workers’ health. It will use local law reform efforts as a lens through which to examine global issues such as the impact of police conduct on HIV prevention, the rise of health regulations governing sex work, and the policies of international donors toward sex work. The scope of the meeting does not include discussion of child prostitution or trafficking per se.

The gathering will bring together diverse constituencies of sex workers, legal and policy advocates, human rights experts, health providers, and researchers from multiple regions. While sex workers and their allies have accomplished much in the advocacy arena, it is hoped that participants will leave the seminar better equipped to advocate for legal reforms that advance sex workers health and rights, through having a concrete set of tools and models for local advocacy, a clearer analytic framework with which to understand the issues, and a stronger network of international contacts and allies. It is also anticipated that some global funding ideas for advancing sex worker health and rights will be developed out of this meeting.

The legal and regulatory context

Understanding various elements of the legal regulation of sex work is critical to conducting effective advocacy to ensure sex workers’ health and human rights. Criminal laws are an important determinant of sex workers’ health, but other types of laws and regulations may have an equal or greater impact, both positive and negative. Public health regulations may require sex workers to undergo regular HIV testing, to register with “social hygiene clinics” or to use condoms with their clients. Zoning laws sometimes place brothels and other “entertainment establishments” in neighborhoods that are at great distances from health services or are so isolated as to make it impossible for people to work (even where prostitution is legal). Immigration laws may effectively exclude sex workers without legal immigration or work status from protection and drive a wedge between those with differing immigration status. Social welfare laws may entitle or bar sex workers in regard to certain benefits, including health benefits, disability benefits, or child-care grants. Each

27 May 2006 of these bodies of law, as well as others, brings sex workers into contact with state authorities who may or may not respect their basic rights of due process and privacy.

Even within the realm of criminal law, a wide (and often misunderstood) variety of national approaches exist. In some countries, such as the United States, criminal prohibition of sex for money and surrounding activities is the norm in most states (with the exception of the state of Nevada). In many countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom and India, there are diverse regimes of prohibition or criminalization of the activities surrounding sex work, such as “living off the proceeds of prostitution” or “running a bawdy house.” Countries such as the Netherlands and Australia have decriminalized some forms of sex work and have implemented different types of local regulation. Thailand and the Philippines have maintained a criminal ban on prostitution while regulating the sex industry; both countries intermittently and inconsistently suspend prosecution. The regulation of sex work may, as in the Philippines, Senegal, and Mexico, be contingent on participation in mandatory health testing and registration with “sanitation” or “hygiene” clinics.

This complex web of national (and sometimes local and municipal) laws and policies on prostitution has been made more complicated by the recent adoption of laws against trafficking in persons. The 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (“Trafficking Protocol”) requires governments to prohibit the coercive movement of persons into any labor or service sector for exploitation, while remaining neutral on whether states must penalize prostitution per se. While this should in theory have no impact on existing prostitution laws, some anti-prostitution advocates have argued that the Trafficking Protocol should be interpreted to penalize all forms of sex for money transactions, whether or not these activities involve the coerced movement of persons across borders or other factors commonly associated with trafficking.

Toward a common analytic framework

Even assuming the legal regime governing sex work can be clearly described, a lack of consensus exists on the appropriate framework for analyzing and evaluating these laws and regulations. Various “analytic frameworks” used by law reformers may include human rights (which assumes the inherent dignity of all persons), public health (which applies scientific research and evidence- based practice), and harm reduction (which focuses on reducing the harms associated with behaviors such as sex work rather than insisting on total abstinence). Differences of opinion determine how these approaches operate both in theory and in practice. These disagreements may stem from the diverse priorities that sex workers and their allies bring to the discussion, such as HIV prevention, women’s rights, anti-trafficking, anti-poverty, and labor rights. Even within communities, little consensus exists regarding the preferred legal and regulatory frameworks governing sex work and the appropriate method for evaluating their impact.

Advocates for sex workers frequently make appeals to “public health” in promoting legal reforms, yet consensus has not been reached on precisely what a “public health” approach means. Some advocates support public health regulations that require sex workers to register with health clinics and undergo routine testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Others, including international bodies such as the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), oppose elements of these regulations—particularly mandatory HIV testing as a condition for legal work—as undue infringements upon human rights. This debate is further complicated by the lack of agreement on what constitutes a “human rights” approach to sex work,

28 May 2006 an approach that has yet to be defined. While international law prohibits specific forms of violence and discrimination against men and women whose work is criminalized, it stops short of compelling any particular approach to criminal law or public health regulation of sex work. Even the concept of “harm reduction,” which enjoys a great deal of support in the context of preventing HIV and other health risks associated with injection drug use, may fail to capture the full range of needed interventions to protect the health and human rights of sex workers.

In short, despite some promising directions and linkages across communities and geographic boundaries, advocates for sex workers’ health and human rights do not work from a common framework of analysis and advocacy when engaging in legal and regulatory advocacy. Law reform efforts could be strengthened by the development of such a framework. While this cannot be accomplished in one meeting, it may be possible to reach consensus on some basic principles of public health, human rights and harm reduction, and to apply these principles to current law reform efforts. Important questions that might be resolved through an international dialogue include: What are the elements of a “good” analytic framework? What are concrete examples of participatory advocacy or other reform efforts that have been carried out using public health, human rights and/or harm reduction principles? What is unique and can be shared in useful ways? What skills and capacities are needed to apply these tools? Who should be involved? What are the key outcomes being sought?

The need for networking and alliances

Struggles to advance the health and human rights of sex workers have global resonance, but they ultimately take place at the local level. Local law reform efforts may involve opposing the establishment of a “social hygiene clinic” to conduct mandatory HIV testing of sex workers, fighting a zoning ordinance that results in the displacement of sex workers into areas that lack health services or are unsafe, or advocating for a commission on inquiry into police brutality. These efforts require a nuanced understanding of local law and practice, as well as a strategic sense of how to effect policy change in a given environment. In some cases, international attention to a local law reform struggle may distort the debate or cause policymakers to dig their heels in further. In others, it may empower local activists or shame officials into changing a policy that defies international consensus. Regular and well-coordinated communication between local and international allies is needed to ensure that the latter are engaged in a strategic and productive manner, and that they grasp the nuances of the local struggle at hand.

The ability of international advocates to assist local struggles will be strengthened by a broader global network of advocates working to advance sex workers’ health and human rights. While various local, regional and international sex work groups have been building this knowledge and capacity, their work does not always reach other actors. Building up the repository of experience on issues such as health regulations, zoning ordinances, criminal laws, and police brutality, and facilitating links and exchanges across common concerns, will facilitate joint advocacy and enable more rapid responses to policy shifts. Lessons learned from previous policy struggles can be applied to current and future ones. If certain types of struggles occur in different jurisdictions, joint campaigning and workshops to share effective strategies are likely to be useful.

International alliances can also help to ensure that sex workers enjoy a strong voice at the policy table. Sex worker self-empowerment and advocacy efforts are arising powerfully (though unevenly)

29 May 2006 in countries as diverse as Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Sex workers can and should be at the forefront of demanding changes to the legal and health regulations that affect their lives. Yet sex workers face the reality of being criminalized as individuals and in associations, as well as being marginalized. Sex workers encounter coalitions of some feminists and right-wing “compassionate conservatives” (especially from the United States) who have exploited the global AIDS epidemic to advance a strict prohibitionist and zero-tolerance approach to prostitution. A global networking meeting on sex workers’ health and rights can help to amplify the voice of sex workers in this debate and ensure their meaningful participation in the formulation of laws and policy.

30 SEXUAL HEALTH AND RIGHTS PROJECT

APPENDIX C Eight Working Papers/Case Studies Examining the Intersections of Sex Work Law, Policy, Rights and Health

In June 2006 the Open Society Institute convened an international gathering in Johannesburg, South Africa about the impact of laws, policies, and law enforcement practices on sex workers’ health and human rights. Eight case studies were prepared as a tool to assist participants in understanding the legal regulation of sex work in a variety of settings. The studies allowed participants to compare and contrast different frameworks and build advocacy strategies that heeded lessons learned from law reform actions to date. Each study was developed collaboratively involving input from a number of local and international advocates and represents a snapshot of some key issues in each local environment rather than a definitive statement of all trends and issues. Information about the experiences of male, female and trans- people is included and input was sought to describe the experience of a diversity of sex workers such as street sex workers, indoor sex workers, migrants and people who engage in more informal kinds of sex work. The case studies describe the criminal laws surrounding sex work because they may be an important determinant of sex workers’ experience. However, other types of law and regulation can have an equal or greater impact, both positive and negative. Information about the effects of public health regulations, zoning laws, immigration laws and social welfare laws has therefore been incorporated to provide participants with materials needed to evaluate different policy environments.

Studies summarize the health and rights impact of different legislative and policy frameworks in:

India Australia South Africa Thailand Canada Netherlands Brazil Senegal

Cross cutting themes that emerge are:

1. The environments that work best for sex workers offer the most choice in work situations and minimize the effect of municipal and health regulation to allow sex workers to be safe on their own terms. Ideally, these environments include support for sex workers’ organizations as well a societal commitment to justice for sex workers.

2. Several cases document abuse and violence committed against sex workers [Canada, India, Brazil]. Sex workers subjected to violence often cannot access, or are denied, legal remedies and protection.

3. Defining commercial sex as “work like other forms of labor” can allow sex workers to draw on social security systems and other forms of benefits [Brazil]. Redefining prostitution as work requires linking with other social movements, against corruption for example, and understanding how struggles for workers’ rights occurs in local contexts including informal labor sectors

4. Systems that empower the police to enforce public health measures or legislatively mandate condom use undermine HIV prevention initiatives [Australia, Thailand]

5. Systems that allow unfettered local or municipal control of sex work via code requirements undermine sex workers’ independence and may create a two tiered system [Netherlands, Australia]

6. Licensing and registration of individual sex workers forces those who cannot fulfill licensing requirements because of gender, age, history of substance use, or health status into situations of illegality [Australia, Senegal]. Licensing systems that require sex workers to provide health certificates and include mandatory HIV/STI testing violate their privacy and undermine health promotion efforts

7. Policing and other forms of control will undermine the health and rights of groups considered “outsiders” (street workers, drug users, racial and ethnic minorities, people of non-heteronormative sexuality and gender) [India, Canada, South Africa, Brazil]. This can occur even when the particular form of sex work is not illegal in any way [Australia]. Anti-discrimination efforts and organizing from the affected communities for rights can ameliorate this [Australia, India, Brazil]

8. The cases illustrate the different ways in which sex workers travel within their countries and cross borders. Migrant sex workers are criminalized or marginalized by multiple means such as laws against trafficking [Australia, Canada, Thailand, Netherlands], by immigration restrictions [Netherlands] and by labor codes [Thailand]

9. Visa systems that allow migrant sex workers to travel under broader work categories, such as “entertainer visas” or “dancer’s visas,” have been helpful to migrant workers. Even where it is technically legal for sex workers to apply for a visa to enter to engage in sex work, such as Australia, this option is difficult to exercise because of discrimination.

10. Measures to address trafficking in persons have often undermined relatively good systems of sex work policy [Australia] and complicated law reform processes in other countries [South Africa, India]

11. Public health and policy research often serves purposes that do not practically assist sex workers and their organizations. Research may jeopardize sex workers’ safety and rights or bolster negative stereotypes of sex workers [South Africa]

12. The framing of sex work issues within health has been both useful and dangerous for sex workers. Many good organizations working with sex workers and actions for change have been supported by health funds, especially HIV funds [Thailand, Brazil, Australia]. However, the most repressive forms of regulation have also been justified on public health grounds [Queensland, Australia]

13. In many countries policy makers assume that all sex workers are women [India, Thailand, Senegal]. Males and transgendered people are also affected by laws and policy, but their presence as sex workers is frequently obscured or denied because of prejudice and discrimination

14. All systems of law and policy, even relatively good situations, are to some degree exclusionary. The key to good policy and law reform is to include a diversity of perspectives and evaluate different options to find the best local solution from a range of options.

INDIA1

Background: The context of commercial sex in India

India is known for incubating several innovative organizing initiatives among sex workers. These include the DMSC, located in Calcutta, and SANGRAM/VAMP, located in western Maharastra, in the district of Sangli, and North Karnataka. These initiatives have included self-governing boards of sex workers that promote universal condom use as well as collectives of sex workers that address health and policy issues. These efforts have had a positive impact on the ways in which sex work is regulated by local police. Recently, the US “prostitution pledge” policy has been used to undermine NGOs working with sex workers from a rights based perspective.

Sexual commerce takes place in urban and rural areas, in every economic stratum, and in every community. However, there are some observations one may make about the majority of sex workers in India. Many are from rural areas, where they and/or their families worked as landless agricultural workers. Most of these communities are dalit2 (the lower castes’ “lowest caste”), and consist of people who do not have access to education, literacy, adequate health care, and, in many cases, do not have access to adequate food and water. Although sexual services are sold or traded by women, men, and transgendered people, the juridical debate on sex work in India has been primarily informed by an understanding of women as sex workers, and men as clients for sexual services. The most iconic, visible aspect of sex industries in India is to be found in urban red light areas, such as Kamathipura in Bombay, Sonagachi in Calcutta, and G.B. Road in New Delhi. Urban sex work also includes street-based solicitation of clients, as well as intermittent sexual commerce that is practiced alongside other income-generating strategies, such as manual day-wage labor. In cities that do not have a red light area, including cities in the Southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, sex workers solicit clients from the street, or work in rented flats and solicit clients through intermediaries.

Legislation and Policy

The overarching law governing sex work in India is the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA). This act was passed into law in 1956, as one of the obligations of the Indian state following its ratification of the 1949 UN anti-trafficking convention. ITPA does not criminalize the exchange of sexual services for money per se. Rather, it criminalizes all economic activity around sex work including living off of the earnings of a sex worker and soliciting clients for sex. The anti-solicitation clause of ITPA affords the police the power to arrest anyone who “seems to be soliciting clients for the purposes of prostitution.”

Police also use anti-vagrancy laws against sex workers, as well as sets of laws called “Police Acts,” which empower the police to regulate the uses of public spaces, including footpaths and commuter railway stations. Laws that regulate the city, particularly the city’s slum areas, have a serious impact on sex workers. Bombay, for example, labels slum dwellers as “encroachers” and intermittently bulldozes slums without notice. Red light areas are potentially subject to these kinds of clearances, and may suffer the same problems of access to water and city amenities that other slums face. Section 377, the “anti-sodomy” law, has also been used against transgender and male sex workers, and against health outreach workers who may, or may not, be sex workers themselves.

1 Prepared by Svati P. Shah, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow, New York University with additional input from Meena Seshu, Secretary General, SANGRAM. 2 ‘Dalit’ refers to people who belong to the lowest caste in the Hindu hierarchy, and is a libratory name taken up by members of this grouping. Dalits have been historically marginalized, oppressed economically, socially, and politically.

Key issues: Challenges to Section 377, ITPA Reform and Anti-trafficking Measures

1. Outreach workers who have attempted to distribute condoms have been arrested under the Section 377 for allegedly “promoting prostitution” by advocating for and facilitating condom use. This tactic is being contested as part of a legal challenge to Section 377, which is due to be heard in the Delhi High Court. This challenge claims that Section 377 and its implementation contravene several articles of the Indian Constitution, including Articles 14-15 (Right to protection against discrimination), Article 19 (Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression) and Article 21 (Right to Life and Liberty, includes the right to privacy).

2. ITPA is currently undergoing a reform process that will likely remove the anti- solicitation clause. The proposed amendment would strengthen the linkage between prostitution and trafficking, criminalize the act of prostitution, and penalize purchasers of sexual services (i.e. clients).3 The proposed law reform would change India’s legislative What is the “Swedish Model”? In 1999 Sweden approach to be more like the “Swedish passed legislation that penalizes “[t]he person who, for Model.” Advocates in India have noted payment, obtains a casual sexual relationship… with that the proposed amendment to the ITPA fines or imprisonment for a maximum of 6 months.” would harm sex workers and undermine Swedish legislators believed that prostitution would be health initiatives forcing both sex workers reduced if men could be deterred from purchasing and clients underground. sexual services. An evaluation of Sweden’s legal experiment concluded that it did not greatly reduce the number of women engaging in street sex work. Figures 3. In 2003 India was placed on the “Tier from Stockholm show that the total number of women 2 Watch list” of the U.S. State on the street has remained stable from 1999-2003. Department’s Global Trafficking in Significantly, the report found that during this period Person’s Report. Concerns about street sex workers became more fearful of violence, trafficking have long been linked to the were pressured to reduce prices and were pressured to question of migration to urban red light engage in unprotected sex. areas in India. Official responses to trafficking have not advanced sex workers Source: Report from the Working Group on the Legal Regulation of Sexual Services, Norwegian Ministry of Justice rights and can undermine the rights of and the Police, 2004. Purchasing sexual services in Sweden migrant women in general. Policy has been and the Netherlands: Legal Regulation and Experiences. framed by larger concerns about labor migrations from Bangladesh and Nepal into India. Anti-trafficking measures have usually taken the form of closing or further regulating borders, especially for single women wishing to cross. International pressure likely influenced current reform of the ITPA and the development of anti-sex worker legislation.

4. In 2005, the state of Maharastra decided to ban beer bars where “bar girls” dance for tips. Although there are many artistic and cultural forms in India which involve women dancing publicly, sometimes for money, another rationale applied by proponents of the ban was that bar girls dancing for men in beer bars is against “Indian culture.” This attempt to ban dancing was seen as the state’s attempt to cut off bar girls’ livelihood, and led to a powerful mobilization by the bar girls’ labor union. The union reached out to local women’s organizations to buttress support. The issue has sparked a new round of conversations and debate in the Indian women’s movement about sex work. The law banning beer bars that employ bar girls was successfully challenged in the Maharastra State Court. Following an appeal by the State of Maharastra to the high court’s decision, this case will be heard in the Indian Supreme Court, as well.

3 The provisions in question are in Sections 5A, 5B and 5C of the amendment bill (tabled in December 2005). For commentary see: http://www.swop-usa.org/news/solidarity.php

AUSTRALIA4

Background: The context of commercial sex in Australia

Australia is a large country almost the size of the United States with a relatively small population of 20 million people. Even though systems of public support have been eroded in the last decade, Australians can access free health care maintaining a high standard of health overall.5 The country has been very successful in preventing the spread of HIV via community lead programs that have included sex workers. Australian sex workers are highly politically organized. Australian labor in general has been highly organized and unionized. Each State has at least one sex worker organization and the national organization of sex workers, Scarlet Alliance, is a strong voice on sex worker issues. This politicization explains why people engaging in commercial sex describe themselves as either “sex workers” or “workers”—the term prostitute is considered less relevant and somewhat demeaning. Sex work occurs in brothels, massage parlors, escort agencies, private homes and in public space (i.e. street based). People working out of their homes or seeing clients independently of an agency are called “private workers.” Customers are usually males described as “clients” or “punters.” Business owners are simply called ‘”owners” or “operators” and terms such as “pimp” are considered outmoded.

Historically, sex work was perceived as a woman’s issue and women’s groups were strong allies in pressing for law reform in states such as New South Wales (NSW) in 1970s. The presence of male and transgendered sex workers is now fairly widely acknowledged. However, concerns about trafficking have whipped up public anxiety about “Asian women” forced into “sex slavery.” As a result conservative feminists and their allies are attempting to reframe sex work as a site of degradation for women, especially for immigrant women from parts of SE Asia who enter Australia to work. Australia’s current Federal government is highly conservative on many issues adding support to this anti-immigrant trend.

Legislation and Policy

Australia’s open-minded approach to sex work is well known internationally. A closer look at law and policy reveals a much more complicated picture. Prostitution is not regulated by national law. Rather each of Australia’s 6 states and 2 territories has a distinct approach including:

Criminalization: South Australia and Western Australia prohibit most forms of prostitution via laws against solicitation, loitering for prostitution, “living off the earnings” and against “receiving” money in a brothel. Police must prove that a location is a brothel by collecting evidence such as condoms and client statements. In Western Australia police have been unable to enforce sex industry related laws because of difficulties gathering evidence, resulting in a form of “tolerance” of prostitution since the 1950’s. In South Australia escort agencies have long been able to evade prostitution laws since sex workers travel to hotels or private homes. Recently South Australian police stopped enforcing certain sex industry related laws. Street based sex workers however are still targeted in both states. Aboriginal sex workers are more likely to work in the street sex industry than other ethnic groups and are over-represented in the arrest statistics.

Legalization with regulation: Victoria, Queensland, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) all have forms of legal sex work that are highly regulated. In Queensland only two forms of sex work are legal: “private work” is allowed if a person works either entirely alone without support staff of any kind or in a licensed brothel. A health certificate is required in order to work and must be kept on file by brothels. A 2003 amendment to the Prostitution Act

4 Prepared by Penelope Saunders with additional input from Scarlet Alliance, Australia. 5 Socially marginalized groups, such as Aboriginal people, fare extremely poorly in comparison.

1999 requires all sex workers and clients to use prophylactics during sex, including oral sex. The law in the NT operates similarly for private workers-they must work alone-but they are further restricted because brothels are prohibited. Escort agencies must be licensed and all escorts must have a certificate. A person who has been convicted of a “violent or drug-related crime” is ineligible to receive a certificate. Brothels in Victoria must be licensed and registered, an extremely expensive process because municipalities further restrict where brothels may operate. It is illegal to purchase or provide sexual services in an unlicensed brothel or escort agency. In the ACT, Victoria and the NT private sex workers must register and these records are either collected by the police (NT), shared with the police (ACT), or available to the police under specified circumstances (Victoria).

Decriminalization: NSW has decriminalized most forms of sex work. It is the only state to allow street sex work which is entirely legal if soliciting is not within view of a dwelling, school, church or hospital. Brothels are no longer under the jurisdiction of the police. Their legal status may be controlled by local councils through planning policies and the Development Approval process under the Planning and Assessment Act. Private workers may also be subject to this approval process. Sex work in the ACT was said be “decriminalized” in 1992 but regulations restrict brothels to “light commercial zones,” street work is not permitted and private workers register.

Key Issues: Regulation, decriminalization and policing, and immigration

1. In practice, the most restrictive regulation has undermined sex workers health and safety. In Queensland, for example, private workers have been targeted for sexual assault and robbery because it is widely known that they are forced to work alone. The imposition of a highly regulated system of brothel work also creates two sectors, one legal and the other illegal. Sex workers Policing condom use in Queensland: A who cannot provide health certificates, are common “public health strategy” involves undocumented or have, in the case of NT, been police posing as clients and pressuring sex convicted for drug related crimes are relegated to workers to offer oral sex without a condom. the illegal tier. Here they face heightened policing Recently one entrapped sex worker plead not and are marginalized from support services. Most guilty. He won his case--the court ruled that he Australian States have laws against “knowingly had only spoken about the issue--effectively ending this policing strategy. The Police infecting” or “reckless behavior” in regards to HIV Minister then introduced legislation to and some states mandate condom use in the sex criminalize even the discussion of oral sex industry. Some sex workers in the ACT have found without a condom between a sex worker and a laws on compulsory condom use to be helpful client causing outrage amongst sex workers because they supported their insistence on condom and public health advocates. use. More recent debates in Queensland highlight the problems of imposing safe sex by law.

2. The legal environments that work best for sex workers in Australia offer the most choice in work environments, such as in NSW, and minimize the effect of municipal and health regulation to allow sex workers to be safe on their own terms. However, even in the best legal environments some sex workers continue to be harassed. In 2001 a ‘Move On’ directive was included in NSW’s Summary Offences Act. While this law was originally intended to combat street level drug trade, some police in Sydney started using this law to intimidate, threaten and falsely arrest street workers in a legally permitted zone.6 Sex workers reported that their fear of arrest, detention, and harassment led them to engage in risky, unsafe behavior. Workers began carrying fewer condoms, hiding their safe sex and injecting equipment in surrounding areas and jumping into cars straight away instead of talking to the client first through the window. Support from sex worker organizations and public awareness

6 Wotton, Rachel, 2004. “The Relationship between Street-Based Sex Workers and the Police in the effectiveness of HIV Prevention Strategies.” Research for Sex Work, Vol. 8: 11-13.

36 campaigns have been necessary to stop crackdowns on street sex workers and change perceptions.

3. An extremely important policy issue for sex workers in Australia is the issue of migrant sex work. It is theoretically possible for an immigrant sex worker to obtain a visa to come to Australia to work in the legal sectors of the industry.7 However, because this would involve sex workers disclosing their intention in their country of residence and having a permanent record of their intention to travel for sex work, this option has never been exercised by a migrant worker. Concerns about trafficking have allowed the Australian Federal Police and immigration authorities to justify raids on many different kinds of sex business (brothels, massage parlors and escort agencies) in jurisdictions across Australia. Undocumented immigrant sex workers, along with from time to time, documented immigrants and second generation women (i.e. adult children of immigrants) are detained in efforts to “help victims of trafficking.” Immigration raids exacerbate existing problems caused by the complicated legal frameworks listed above, further alienating immigrant sex workers from services they need. Women’s rights are violated when they are held in detention for weeks at a time without legal representation and then summarily deported if they refuse to “testify against their traffickers.” The new justification for police intervention is changing the relationship between law enforcement and well functioning legal sections of the industry.8

7 Sex workers are not excluded from applying for a visa, but sex work itself is not regarded as “skilled migration” by the Australian Government. 8 This has been reported in the brothel sector in the ACT where the police have not had an interventionist role for a decade. In some States law reform was motivated by a desire to separate sex work businesses from police intervention, to reduce corruption. In NSW and QLD in particular police pay offs and bribes were wide spread.

SOUTH AFRICA9

Background: the context of commercial sex in South Africa

The regime of apartheid in South Africa ended in 1990 but its effects are felt to this day in terms of gender and racial inequality. For example, many black women in South Africa have low levels of formal education and experience high levels of unemployment. Sex work can provide more income than other work options, such as domestic labor, available to these women. Consequently many sex workers in South Africa are black women who engage in sexual commerce in order to provide for themselves and their families. Men and transpeople are also present as sex workers. A demographic survey carried out by a Capetown based NGO, Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) found that approximately 6% of sex workers interviewed were male and 1% transgendered.10 Sex work occurs in extremely diverse environments including private homes, brothels, hotels, bars and clubs including shebeens (informal/illegal drinking locations), the streets, clustered around mining settlements,11 along national roads, truck stops, border posts, via the telephone, the internet or from advertisements in daily newspapers. Indoor sex workers are protected to some degree from violence that can occur in public space. Intensive drug use is more associated with street working sex workers (i.e. in Hillbrow areas of Johannesburg and inner city of Durban).

In the post-apartheid period South Africa adopted a progressive Constitution and a Bill of Rights protecting many social groups, including lesbians and gays, from discrimination.12 However, the Sexual Offences Act continues to criminalize sex work. Local advocates have argued that this is out of step with South Africa’s new approach to rights. In 2002 the constitutionality of the sections of the Act criminalizing sex work and brothel keeping was challenged by Ellen Jordan, a brothel owner. High Court judges found the section of the Sexual Offences Act criminalizing sex workers to be unconstitutional in March 2002. This judgment was overturned in the Constitutional Court by a narrow margin. The Constitutional Court requested that the South African Law Reform Commission review the legislation. This process is ongoing.

Legislation and Policy

Sex work is criminalized in South Africa. National legislation, the Sexual Offences Act of 1957, formerly the Immorality Act, penalizes the keeping of brothels, procurement of women for prostitution, soliciting by prostitutes, and living off the earnings of prostitutes. In 1988 additional legislation, Section 20 [1] [Aa], criminalized engaging in sexual intercourse or performing indecent acts for reward. Section 20 [1] [Aa] has always been interpreted as criminalizing sex workers rather than clients. Clients could possibly be penalized under the Riotous Assemblies Act, as conspirators or accomplices, but this has never actually occurred.13 In practice it is very difficult to successfully prosecute under the Sexual Offences Act, so authorities have resorted to municipal bylaws to police prostitution. Most bylaws focus on public space.14 Some municipalities have bylaws specifically against loitering for the purposes of prostitution allowing

9 Prepared by Penelope Saunders with additional input from Jayne Arnott, SWEAT, South Africa. 10 The survey was conducted with 200 sex workers in the Cape Metropole in 2005. Information accessed May 1, 2006 from: http://www.sweat.org.za/ 11 300,000 miners work in South Africa’s gold and platinum mining sectors. These men usually live in large single sex dormitories near the mines and settlements of women cluster nearby to provide them with sexual and other services (Campbell, Catherine, 2000. “Selling sex in the time of AIDS: the psycho-social context of condom use by sex workers on a Southern African mine.” Social Science & Medicine 50: 479-494. 12 Clause 9(3) of the South African Bill of Rights states: “The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.” 13 SWEAT, Submission on Trafficking in Persons, Issue Paper 25, No, 31: p 8. Report accessed May 1, 2006 from: http://www.sweat.org.za/ 14 Including minor offences like loitering, littering, causing public disturbance or public indecency.

38 the police to detain street sex workers. However, despite laws against sex work for a number of years during the post-apartheid period sex work was, for the most part, tolerated. Policing, when it occurred, was directed at street-based sex work primarily in response to community complaints. This period of tolerance was destabilized by the defeat of the Constitutional challenge that created considerable negative publicity about sex work. Local governments used the judgment to I am a sex worker for twenty years. I have justify an increase in policing and pass repressive local experienced a lot from the police. First they legislation.15 used to pick us up in trucks. They used some of the girls. They ask us for money or they

would leave us in the cell. They would Key Issues: Corruption, Labor Rights, Health, release the girls they have used or who give Organizing, Research Ethics, Trafficking them money.

1. Police raid brothels or arrest street sex workers Comments made by a sex worker during the even when they know that the workers will likely be seminar on Adult Commercial Sex Work: released. Sex workers are often held for 48 hours and Decriminalisation or Regulation, National Conference May 4 and 5, 2000 released without seeing a magistrate. The purpose of http://www.wlce.co.za/advocacy/ the arrest is often extortion.

2. Sex workers, even those in indoor venues, have no recourse to labor rights and very limited recourse to any protection under law. Indoor workers experience poor conditions, report being fined large amounts for being late, and some fear not getting paid by owners.

3. Criminality hampers health promotion efforts. Sex workers are isolated increasing vulnerability to abuse and many are cut off from health interventions. Isolation, social stigma and lack of support make it difficult for some sex workers to negotiate safe sex--requests for condom use have lead to violence against sex workers. Police use condoms as evidence of prostitution and some sex workers, even though they may be highly aware of the risk of HIV infection, are reluctant to carry condoms for fear of arrest.

4. A priority issue for sex workers in South Africa is support for the emerging National Sisonke Sex Worker Movement of South Africa. Regional representatives accountable to local communities have established themselves but longer-term investment is needed for this movement to reach the capacity of challenging the repressive law and policy environment.

5. Sex worker organizations are also concerned that all research (medical, social science, ethnographic) addressing health questions be ethical and human rights based. Some research on sex workers in South Africa has pursued very narrow medical aims and/or has played into stereotypes about sex workers’ experience.

6. In May 2006, the South African Law Reform Commission released a Discussion Paper and proposed legislation on ‘Combating of Trafficking in Persons.’ The Discussion Paper focuses on prostitution and cites arguments from conservative US based abolitionist movements that equate all sex work with exploitation and trafficking. This perspective on sex work may undermine the steps taken by South African organizations to promote sex workers’ health and rights. The debate on trafficking has emerged at a critical time because rights based work with sex workers is not yet widely understood outside of key organizations. The current trafficking discourse in South Africa that erroneously presents sex work as “a form of trafficking” could, therefore, influence those organizations that have not yet had the opportunity to hear other perspectives on sex work issues. SWEAT has recognized this need to publicize counter arguments and is developing relevant research that will inform policy and legislation in relation to trafficking debates.

15 Fick, N, 2005. Coping with Stigma, Discrimination and Violence. SWEAT, South Africa.

THAILAND16

Background: the context of sex work in Thailand

Although prostitution is a criminal offense in Thailand, sex work occurs throughout the country. Many media depictions of global trends in prostitution focus on “red light zones” in Thai cities, such as Bangkok, where a wide variety of different forms of sexual entertainment is made available for tourists. Even though sex work of different kinds is tolerated, prostitution is viewed as immoral and damaging to the nation's image. This ambivalent attitude results in discrimination and oppression of women in sex work. The presence of men and transgender sex workers is largely invisible in any discussion around prostitution in Thailand.

Most sex workers in Thailand work in venues referred to in law and policy as “entertainment places.” Workers are employed to supply massages, serve alcoholic beverages, sing karaoke, or perform. Sexual services are usually provided off-site. A smaller number of people work independently from streets, cinemas or discos. Sex workers themselves prefer to be referred to as “entertainment workers” or use the English term “sex worker.” Sex workers refer to their clients as “clients, guests or customers.” Employers are referred to as “employers” or sometimes “owners” meaning “owner of the work place.” Pimps are called meng dah, a type of male beetle that lives on the back of the female, eating whatever food she forages for him. In the last decade the role has changed and meng dah are considered “errand boys” employed by sex workers. Most people working as sex workers are Thai or hill tribe people from Thailand. A minority comes from Burma, Laos, Cambodia and China and are undocumented migrants.

Legislation and Policy

The first law criminalizing prostitution in Thailand was passed in 1960. This law was amended in 1996 and prostitution remains criminalized under the Prevention and Suppression of Prostitution Act 1996. This national law makes it a criminal offense to solicit or advertise prostitution, cause public nuisance or associate with others for the purpose of prostitution, recruit or arrange the prostitution of others. Sex workers convicted of prostitution can be sentenced to 10 days gaol or a maximum fine of 1000 Thai Baht.17 Customers of adult sex workers are not penalized. If the person involved in prostitution is under 18 years, heavy penalties can be imposed on clients and others involved. The minor is often detained in a social welfare facility for “rehabilitation” consisting of “improving morals” and compulsory vocational skills training.

In addition to the prostitution law, the Entertainment Place Act 1966 also effects sex workers. This Act came into being when Pattaya and Bangkok became popular “rest and recreation” destinations for the US and Australian military fighting in the Vietnam War. The Act requires that all Entertainment Places be registered, including registration of all staff, with the police. Workers have their history recorded on a “charge sheet” at the police station, are fingerprinted and officially registered as a nang bam luer.18 Only about one third of entertainment places in Thailand are registered. Entertainment workers are not considered workers under Thai Labor Protection Act 1998 nor are they included in the National Social Security Act 1997 preventing them from accessing social support such as disability payments. Entertainment work is not included in the list of occupations that can be undertaken by foreign migrant workers according to cabinet resolutions on the Foreign Labor Act 1978.

16 Prepared by Liz Hilton of the Empower Foundation, Thailand. 17 This is approximately one quarter of the minimum monthly wage. 18 This is a highly offensive term translating as sex slave or concubine.

Key Issues: Corruption and condoms; Lack of Labor Protection; 100% Condom Use Programs and the Police; Inclusion of sex workers perspectives in HIV/AIDS Prevention

1. In Thailand it is not unusual to pay/bribe the police and sex workers must calculate police bribes into their normal business expenses. Very few people are actually gaoled for prostitution. Usually they are “arrested” and held at a police station until a fine or bribe is paid. Police frequently use entrapment operations where they pose as customers, arresting the women and presenting the condoms they used as part of the evidence package. Over the last five years police have increasingly used the presence of condoms in premises to threaten owners with charges of running a place of prostitution. This has led to entertainment places being unwilling to stock condoms for their staff and customers, increasing the risk of unsafe sex.

2. The lack of labor protection means the employer is free to decide the hours of work, rates of pay, duties, availability of sick leave, and “fines” imposed for lateness. Each venue has its own set of “bar rules” and these rules have a great impact on the life of the workers. The Migrant sex workers experience the worst “bar rules,” combined with sex workers’ working conditions. Invariably migrant sex exclusion from the social safety net, have a workers will work longer hours, be paid the direct effect on work conditions. “Bar rules” least and have the most restrictions placed determine if sex workers can afford to take care of on them by employers. The undocumented status of migrant sex workers allows their own health or if they can afford to refuse a authorities to extort money from both customer. Many prevailing “bar rules” are illegal employers and workers for immigration under the Thai Labor Protection Act 1998. Much offences. health-based work in Thailand has focused on the prevention of HIV transmission by sex workers. However, the focus on sex workers as “vectors for HIV transmission” has obscured the fact that the key health issues for sex workers in Thailand stem from their position outside Thai labor laws and the Social Security Act.

3. Programs focusing on sex workers as vectors and mandating sex worker behavior, like the 100% Condom Use Policy (CUP), have reinforced stigma and empowered the authorities to control sex workers. In the early 1990's law enforcement were included in efforts to prevent HIV by policing locations not complying with the 100% CUP. Public health staff was obliged to inform police of non-compliant premises and police were empowered to close them down. Systems of corruption described above have been augmented by new police entrapment operations that allow the extortion of extra bribes from owners deemed not to be enforcing condom use. Immigration officers also intervened, waiting at the government STI clinic in Chiang Mai to arrest undocumented migrant workers as they were bought to the clinic by order of the 100% CUP. Brothel owners would then have to “buy” women out and this cost was passed back to the women. Public health officials had no power over the police or immigration. Most of these activities have ended as the 100% CUP has been scaled back in Thailand, but the program model may have similar implications in other countries where it is being established. In Thailand even the benefits the 100% CUP bought for sex workers have dwindled—free condom distribution has stopped and government STI clinics have closed.

4. The HIV epidemic has had one positive note. When the Thai government and other stakeholders realized they could not effectively confront the HIV epidemic without involving sex workers this provided a space for Thai sex workers to have a voice in society. For the first time sex workers were included in government and non-government discussions and funding for sex worker groups in Thailand was made available.

CANADA19

Background: the context of commercial sex in Canada

Advocates estimate that 80% of sex work takes place indoors, yet much media attention and policy debate has focused on street-based sex work. Research indicates that most sex workers are not associated with bosses or pimps; many sex workers are independent or self-employed. Sex workers are very heterogeneous in Canada. Some sex workers have established successful political organizations with an important public voice and others are heavily affected by poverty and marginalization. Some overlap between sex work and drug use occurs. Discrimination against and socio-economic marginalization of Aboriginal people in Canada has resulted in conditions that place Aboriginal sex workers, especially women, in situations of risk. Transgendered sex workers, particularly those working on the street, are frequent targets of violence and abuse. Sex workers often face social disdain and are alienated from the protective services of police when their safety is threatened or they have been the victims of crime. Much remains undocumented about the situation of sex workers in Canada, especially the situation of indoor workers and migrant workers.

Legislation and policy

The Criminal Code of Canada contributes to the risk of violence and other human rights abuses faced by sex workers (most specifically section 210-213 CC, inclusive). While selling sex for money or other things of value is not illegal per se, virtually all aspects of sex work are criminalized under the Criminal Code:

• (Section 210 CC) It is illegal to operate or be found in a “bawdy house,” defined as any venue regularly used for prostitution. This includes a residence, a parking lot or vehicle. Sex workers cannot rent an apartment for their work or work in their own homes. If a landlord believes that sex work will occur or has occurred in a residence that he or she owns, the landlord can evict the person(s) in question to avoid criminal charges. The effect of this provision is to keep many sex workers on the street, where they have less control over their working conditions, including condom use, facing heightened risk of violence.

• (Section 212 CC, otherwise known as the ‘pimping’ law) It is illegal for sex workers to work with one another, to refer clients to one another, or to work for an agency since this is considered “procuring” under the Criminal Code. Anyone who regularly spends time with a sex worker, who is supported by a sex worker, or who makes money from the work of a sex worker, including a family member or roommate, can face criminal charges for “living on the avails of prostitution.” These provisions were designed to keep people from being coerced into prostitution or being exploited in their work. In reality, they limit the ability of people in sex work to determine their working conditions and to form and maintain family and other relationships.

• (Section 213 CC) “Communicating” in a public place for the purposes of prostitution, which means talking with or even making gestures to a prospective client in a public place, is illegal. Over 90% over charges against sex workers occur under this offence. A “public place” can mean the street, parks, bars, even inside cars, and it is practically impossible for a sex worker to work legally anywhere in public. The communicating law, formerly known as the solicitation law, applies to both sex workers and clients.

Violation of these sections can result in prison sentences, fines or both. State authorities also rely on licensing and other regulatory legislation to control sex work and sex workers.

19 Prepared by Joanne Csete, Executive Director, and Glen Betteridge, Senior Policy Analyst, of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network with additional input from Jenn Clamen, Mobilisation Coordinator, Stella, Canada.

Key issues: Violence Against Street Workers; Crackdowns, Visa Program Suspended and Law Reform

The combined effect of these provisions and their enforcement by police is deeply harmful to people who sell sex.

1. Street-based sex workers, in attempts to avoid the wrath of law enforcement, are forced to work in darker, more remote areas, such as industrial areas or parks. There is less traffic in these places, fewer pay phones, fewer places such as bars or cafes – in short, fewer people to turn to for help if they face aggression or violence. Over 65 sex workers in the Downtown East Side area of Vancouver, and 84 from the city of Edmonton were killed from 1998 to 2005. Many of these sex workers worked on the street and had been reported missing; police investigations of these reports were slow or non-existent. Negative police attitudes towards sex workers mean that they are reluctant to rely on the police for help or protection.

2. Sex workers are subjected to police crackdowns because they are defined as “undesirable” elements and are then further stigmatized by criminal records. For example, in Canada’s second-largest city, sex workers were arrested four times more frequently in 2005 than in 2004 as the city sought to “clean the streets” to appease residents of rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods and businesses concerned about tourism. Some sex workers face the double criminalization of their work and their drug use making them a prime target for police crackdowns. Once they have been arrested, sex workers are hampered by criminal records that prevent them from migrating and entering other workforces, if desired.

3. Criminalization undermines sex workers own strategies for safety and health. Sex workers go to great length to avoid police and arrest. With the fear of police appearing at any time, they have less time to check out clients, negotiate price, sex acts and condom use. Condoms are also often used as evidence against sex workers and for this reason it is dangerous for sex workers to carry more than a few condoms on them at any given moment.

4. Avenues for immigrant sex workers, such as dancers, to enter Canada have been reviewed because of international pressure to address “trafficking.” In 2005, for example, John Miller, head of the US Trafficking in Persons’ Office, told Canadians that the visa program that allowed exotic dancers come to Canada every year was “being abused” by traffickers to force women from Eastern Europe into prostitution.20 In reaction to public pressure to discourage exotic dancing and migration of women into Canada the visa program was temporarily suspended.

5. In 2002 House of Commons formed a Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws of the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and began investigating the impact of the Criminal Code provisions on sex workers. This process stalled due to a Federal Election in 2005 and the Committee Report and its recommendations were not released at that time. The initiative was a response to murders of sex workers in Vancouver and the acknowledgement that the criminalization of sex work and sex workers contributes heavily to the level of violence sex workers experience. The subcommittee heard from a variety of academics, activists, feminists, and sex workers across Canada. In 2006 the subcommittee was reconstituted.

20 Godfrey, Tom, “Slavery a Canuck problem: U.S.” Toronto Sun, June 9, 2005. Accessed June 11, 2006 from http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005/06/09/1078918-sun.html

NETHERLANDS21

Background: the context of commercial sex

The Netherlands is often used as example to illustrate how tolerant social polices, such as decriminalization of the sex industry and drug use, operate. Prostitution per se has never been criminalized in the Netherlands, but the involvement of third parties benefiting from sex work was prohibited. In the 1970s, the Netherlands began to reform laws prohibiting the prostitute- brothel keeper/third party relationship and to impose more severe penalties for trafficking, defined as any use of deceit, coercion or force by a third party in relation to recruitment or working conditions. This process of reform was guided by gedoogbeleid (policy of tolerance) that operates similarly to harm reduction. This perspective acknowledges that drug use and prostitution are unlikely to be stopped by repressive laws. In practice gedoogbeleid meant that, as long as no coercion or disturbance of the public order was involved, brothels were tolerated. In itself this was not a bad system, but sex workers could not enjoy labor rights mandated for other Dutch workers. In the 1970s and 1980s Netherlands introduced numerous social service programs for sex workers, focusing primarily on women in sex work.22 Sex worker rights organizations, such as the Red Thread, were closely linked to women’s rights movements and allied with organizations of supportive non-sex working women, such as the Pink Thread.

Sex work has several distinct versions including “windows” (street level storefront rooms rented by solo sex workers who attract clientele by appearing in the window), tippelzones (literally “zones of walking” established in urban areas for street work), sex clubs (brothels) and escort. Prostitution also occurs on the street in urban areas and in private homes. Tippelzones were originally conceived as public health and safety measures for drug using sex workers and their clients. The zones include spaces for clients to park their cars or bicycles, garbage disposal bins for used condoms, needle exchange and other social services via a huiskamer or drop-in center for the workers. A survey of 20,000 sex workers conducted in 1999, found that two-thirds of sex workers in the Netherlands were migrants: 32% from Latin America, around 28% from Central and Eastern Europe, 26% from Africa and 5% from Asia.23

Legislation and Policy

In 2000 the Netherlands reformed its legal code to remove the laws prohibiting brothels and brothel keeping. Even though forms of sex work had been tolerated for many years, this reform officially removed adult, consensual prostitution activity from the criminal code. Prison sentences of up to six years were mandated for individuals found guilty of forcing others to engage in prostitution, employing the services of a minor, or bringing others across national borders to engage in prostitution even without force or coercion.24 Indoor sex work establishments became subject to licensing codes developed and enforced by local municipalities. Municipal bylaws (not the criminal code itself) stipulated that businesses discovered to be employing or renting space to sex workers who were not legal residents of the European Union and/or lacking the proper documents would have their business licenses revoked. In 2005 article 250a of the Dutch Penal Code, that had limited trafficking to situations of exploitation in prostitution, was amended to include other forms of labor abuse within the purview of human trafficking.

21 Prepared by Penelope Saunders with input from Elizabeth Bernstein from her forthcoming book cited below and from an interview with Marjan Wijers. Marieke van Doorninck and Petra Timmermans provided comments. 22 Bernstein, Elizabeth, 1997. Temporarily Yours: Sexual Commerce in Post-Industrial Culture, forthcoming, University of Chicago Press. 23 Th. van der Helm and L. van Mens, 1999. Mobility in prostitution in The Netherlands 1998-1999. An inventory done under the auspices of EUROPAP-TAMPEP 1998-1999, Municipal Health Service Amsterdam. 24 An older trafficking law stayed in place with harsher penalties. Officially any recruitment across borders is punishable, but in practice this is only enforced when coercion etc is used. Bernstein, op. cit.

Key Issues

The 2000 law reform illustrates how a move from a situation of tolerance to rigid social control can undermine the health and safety of sex workers. Before the law reform migrant sex workers, including trans-women, could work fairly freely in many parts of the sex industry even if they did not have documentation. The Migrant Workers Act already officially prohibited employment of migrant sex workers in the Netherlands but this was rarely enforced. The introduction of rigid policies towards undocumented sex workers was not only the result of the legalization of the sex industry, but also due to the much stricter alien laws passed in the late 1990s.

1. Law reform did not remove restrictions against migrants in the sex industry from the Migrant Workers Act. This, combined with stricter controls as a result of the law reform, meant that thousands of undocumented migrant workers were no longer able to work in any legal sectors of the industry. They turned to street based work or the tippelzones. Tipplezones became overcrowded. For example, Utrecht’s tippelzone had space for 40 workers but suddenly 100 to 150 women began working there resulting in a public backlash against the supposed “criminality” connected to the presence of undocumented migrant women. In response to public outcry, several tippelzones have been closed. Undocumented sex workers have gone underground to avoid police detection, some of them moving within the Netherlands to avoid police detection in any one city. This distances them from health services and has made them more dependent on other parties for places to stay and work. Advocates have noted that prostitution law reform provided the state with an excuse to find and deport undocumented immigrants: “10 years ago everyone knew that there were undocumented workers in the industry but the priority was to keep the relationship of trust with sex workers, in case of violence or other need, than to enforce the immigration law. This has changed.”25

2. People who can work legally in the sex industry often do not do so because of the overly onerous requirements placed on small sex work businesses and on individual workers. One sex worker can work privately out of her house but if two join together the operation constitutes a The last straw was when I wanted to move brothel that is subject to state control. Most cities do not upstairs to a bigger flat so that I could have have a positive attitude to brothels and only the larger more space. When I applied for the permit scale or pre-existing brothels tend to get licenses. This to run my business there, they asked if it was more than 7 meters. I said that it was restricts options for sex workers, empowers large-scale 7’10. They told me, in that case, that I commercial enterprises, and leaves little space for would need fire stairs, which would cost innovation in the sector or for individuals to start small- me 20,000 guilders [approximately 11,000 scale brothels. The law reform offered the U.S. dollars]. opportunity to introduce labor laws in the sex industry that could be of benefit to sex workers but Marie, an escort and former madam, the system’s implementation has not prioritized Amsterdam interviewed by Elizabeth Bernstein, Temporarily Yours: Sexual Commerce in Post- this. Local and national authorities focus on control and Industrial Culture, forthcoming, University of regulation of the industry and not on the improvement of Chicago Press, 2007. working conditions and labor relations per se.

3. Laws to prevent trafficking in the Netherlands are not ideal but they have been altered to reflect the broader definition of trafficking preferred by most human rights advocates. This means that trafficking is no longer limited to sex work but can occur in any labor sector. People found to have been trafficked are eligible for a temporary residence permit during criminal proceedings and may continue working in sex work should they choose to do so. This is in sharp contrast to the United States, for example, where advocates for trafficked persons strongly advise them against continuing in sex work fearing their arrest.

25 Personal communication with Marjan Wijers, May 1, 2006.

BRAZIL26

Background: The context of commercial sex

Brazil’s progressive approach to HIV/AIDS garnered global attention when, in April 2005, the country refused $40 million in US grants because of a Bush administration requirement that HIV/AIDS organizations pledge to oppose sex work. Pedro Chequer, the director of Brazil's AIDS program described the “prostitution pledge” as “interference that harms the Brazilian policy regarding diversity, ethical principles and human rights.”27 Prostitutes, who had felt scapegoated by Brazilian public health responses at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, have been key partners with government HIV prevention efforts since 1989.28 Prostitutes are highly organized with approximately 27 groups affiliated to a national organization, the National Network of Sex Professionals. In Latin America the term sex worker is widely used, but two years ago the Brazilian prostitutes’ rights movement elected to embrace the term prostitute instead of sex professional or sex worker. The strategy is to destigmatize and reclaim the word prostitute. Brazilian prostitutes often travel for work. Some men, women and trans-women travel outside of the country to Europe and other destinations in Latin America to work in more lucrative locations. A study involving 178 people in Belo Horizonte found that most women interviewed (86%) were internal migrants and 43% had worked as prostitutes in more than one city in the last three years.29

Legislation and Policy

Law in Brazil is centrally organized at the national level and references to prostitution can be in the Brazilian Penal Code. Prostitution itself and soliciting are not illegal under the Penal Code. However, many activities associated with sex work such as “procuring and trafficking” of women are prohibited, as is benefiting from the proceeds of prostitution and maintaining premises where prostitution occurs. In 2005 the section of the Penal Code that prohibits trafficking for sexual exploitation (Article 231) was amended to extend to both international and internal trafficking involving transportation within Brazil. The involvement of minors in the sex industry is prohibited under the 1990 Estatuto da Crianca e do Adolsecente based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child.30

Key Issues

1. The legal situation for sex workers is extremely ambiguous and how they are treated very much depends on whether or not local police choose to enforce the laws. In larger cities “short stay” hotels offer rooms by the hour that are rented by prostitutes and their clients. These locations are known to be places of prostitution and in some places, such as Rio de Janeiro, city regulation requires that management supply each couple with condoms on arrival.31 Yet places of prostitution such as short stay hotels and brothels are prohibited under the Penal Code and police are sometimes paid off so that they will not enforce the law. Many hotel locations that survive by paying the police may still subject to crackdowns motivated by

26 Prepared by Penelope Saunders with additional input from Alessandra Chacham. 27 Phillips, Micheal and Moffett, Matt, “Brazil Refuses U.S. AIDS Funds.” Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2005. 28 Hinchberger, Bill, “Brazilian sex workers don’t mourn, they organize.” Brazilmax, October 19, 2005. Accessed June 1, 2006 at http://www.brazilmax.com/news4.cfm/tborigem/fe_society/id/23 29 Chacham, A and Maia, M, 2002. “A profile of mobile sex workers in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.” Research for Sex Work, no. 5. 30 Bindman, K, 1997. Redefining Prostitution as Sex Work on the International Agenda, Antislavery International with Jo Doezema. A person who is convicted of prostituting a minor less than 14 years can be sentenced with 2 to 5 years prison. Currently, debate is occurring about increasing the sentence. 31 Bindman, op.cit.

46 local policy drives. For example, campaigns against the commercial sexual exploitation of children have provoked police raids. Some prostitutes have reported that the police are not truly investigating locations where minors might be found, but targeting premises for the purpose of extortion.32 Other groups of sex workers may also be subject to policing and extortion, once again depending on local conditions. Street prostitutes may be harassed for violations of local ordinances by the police. Transgendered and male sex workers are particularly subject to harassment and arrest Enforcing prostitution law is up and can experience police violence while in custody.33 to police discretion: In one urban center in Brazil, twenty “short stay 2. The laws against maintaining premises for hotels” cluster together in the prostitution in effect criminalize the workplace and historic red light zone. Women rent prevent prostitutes from enjoying labor standards rooms for a day or evening and recognized for other workers in Brazil. Prostitute rights take clients to their rooms for sex advocate Gabriela Leite of Davida notes: "She [the transactions. Women report that prostitute] is forced to work in miserable conditions and police do not interfere with their can't do anything about it. She can't make legal business unless a serious crime complaints about mistreatment, simply because her has been committed. The women employer and the police have more power. It's a vicious theorize that police officials may circle that we want to break.”34 own the short stay hotels. Sex workers have fairly good relations 3. In 2002 the term “sex professional” was added as a with the police and will call on them labor category in the National Labor Registry.35 This for assistance when clients refuse means that prostitutes can access the national system of to pay or when other needs arise. social security (INSS) under a broadly defined category of “sex professional.” Other categories, such as Personal communication with “autonomous worker,” were used by sex workers wishing Alessandra Chacham, Grupo Musa, to access the social security system before the June 12, 2006 introduction of the new category. It is not clear how many people have declared themselves as “sex professionals” in order to access the INSS system, but advocates note that the official recognition of prostitution as labor has helped reduce discrimination and stigma. Advocates also argue reform of the Penal Code would further facilitate the idea that prostitution is work like any other form of labor.

4. Much international attention has focused on the issue of “child prostitution” in Brazil especially among street children living in large urban areas. It is illegal in Brazil for a minor to have sexual relations with an adult and the involvement of minors in the sex industry is prohibited. However, teenagers and youth are involved in sex work in Brazil. In Rio, for example, miches or male hustlers aged between 11 and 23 years engage in sex for money with other men.36 Some health workers have found the laws an obstacle to providing care: they fear charges of promoting illegal relations if they supply teenagers with condoms.37

32 Bindman, op.cit. 33 Amnesty International has documented instances of ill-treatment of transgendered sex workers in Brazil. For example, in 1997 Civil Police in Maceio detained three trans-women allegedly because the women failed to pay them a "fee.” At the police station the women were brutally beaten and humiliated. The women did not file a formal complaint about the incident because they feared reprisals. Accessed June 1 at http://www.ai- lgbt.org/ai_report_torture.htm 34 Gabriela Leite quoted in Jeffrey, Paul, “Brazilian prostitutes lobby for respect.” National Catholic Reporter; 11/14/1997. 35 Information about the category can be accessed at the Ministerio do Trabalho e Imprego website: http://www.mtecbo.gov.br/busca/descricao.asp?codigo=5198 36 Longo, Paulo, 1994. “The Meeting of the Miches.” The New Internationalist, Issue 252. Accessed June 1 at http://www.newint.org/issue252/miches.htm 37 Bindman, op. cit.

Senegal38

Background: the context of commercial sex

Senegal is a small (population 11 million), relatively stable, country in West Africa. French is the official language. It is one of Africa’s poorest countries (UNDP Human Development Index 2005 157 out of 177), with a low literacy rate. Religious leaders play an important role in setting the tone for a relatively conservative and gender–regulated society (Senegal is 93-95% Muslim, the remainder predominantly Christian). Advocates note that in the last decade the form of religious leadership and intervention into public life has changed, newly stressing conservative gender roles. However, civil society is vocal and active, especially around media, women’s rights and human rights. While the NGO sector is vibrant, cross-connections are not fully developed. Women’s rights groups acknowledge that they had not included violence against women in sex work in their on-going VAW campaigns, and HIV/AIDS service groups are only beginning to make contacts with groups working on protection of the rights of marginalized populations, including people in sex work and men who have sex with men.39

Legislation and policy

Senegal is recognized in Africa as the first, and to date one of the few countries in the region, to have a framework for regulated prostitution. The system was established in the 1960’s: the permissive regulatory framework operates alongside a system penalizing offenses against public morals and private sexual offenses. Criminal law thus punishes any sex worker who is not registered as well as those facilitating registered and unregistered sex work. Articles 318 to 325 of the Penal Code address the morals offenses and sexual crimes: among other things, these articles criminalize sexual commerce occurring outside the regulatory framework and prohibit a range of activities around otherwise legal sexual commerce. These include “living off the earnings of a prostitute,” and “contributing to the financing of an establishment of prostitution.” Article 318, which criminalizes acts of public indecency, outrage public a la pudeur, is often used to stop, harass and regulate all kinds of women in public settings (bars, discotheques, hotels, etc).

The regulation of prostitution operates through STI/health-based administrative statutes and codes, established through law # 66-21 of February 1966 and applied through a series of ministerial decrees and instructions (# 69-616 May 1969; No 73 of 28 August 1969). Women over 21 who are Senegalese nationals and non-national women40 may participate in the system of regulated prostitution by registering. Officially the system works through voluntary self- registration. Women are interviewed by health clinic social workers about their reasons for turning to prostitution and are given a sexual health/medical check-up. Registered sex workers receive a carnet sanitaire (green booklet with photograph) with a unique identification number from a National database. ID numbers are provided to local government health clinics and dossiers with identifying information are provided to local police units. Fifteen government clinics, primarily in urban areas, officially list prevention information, HIV testing, free condoms, and STI treatment as part of their treatment and care.41 In order to remain “legal” registered sex workers must receive bi-monthly medical check-ups at government clinics and are suspended from work if infected with an STI until treated completed. Registered workers are not suspended for testing HIV positive. There is no requirement for workers at the government clinics to report

38 Prepared by Alice Miller, Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health and Legal and Health Advisor, SHARP/OSI, with additional input from Aissatou (Aida) Lo. 39 Alice Miller, notes from focus group session in Senegal May 2006. Much material in this analysis was drawn from a report prepared by Aissatou Lo for OSI SHAPR/NPHP, Western Africa Needs Assessment for Sexual Health and Rights, 2/2006 40 The data on migrant sex workers is slim: popular accounts describe most registered sex workers as Senegalese and Nigerian, with a fluctuating population of Ghanaians and other West Africans. 41 Some other health care is said to be provided such as dental care for children.

48 the results of HIV tests to any other agency or national database. Anti-retrovirals (ARVs) are provided through NGO-run HIV/AIDS clinics and are offered free to the all who test positive. These NGO clinics do not limit their work to sex workers and services are open to everyone providing sex workers a degree of anonymity.

Key Issues Senegal’s regulatory approach has been praised in public health circles for reducing the spread of STI’s/HIV.42 Yet those working within the system report that it is not working as planned. 1. A growing number of people find the system unworkable, do not register and sex work clandestinely. There are several reasons for this. Female sex workers report that the clinics are of poor quality, describe the bi-monthly testing regime as onerous and find the clinic staff abusive. Thus many women either Police surveillance of sex do not register or fail to return after suspension (misdemeanor workers: Registered sex offense). Male sex workers are simply ineligible to register. workers by law must produce 2. HIV prevalence, while low in comparison to other countries in their cards on demand to police Africa, is steadily increasing amongst women and among patrols. If women cannot produce a card they face marginalized groups. 10% to 30% of sex workers and approximately 43 extortion. Under the soliciting or 20% among men who have sex with men are positive. racolage law many women can 3. The country-wide system of government clinics intended to be arrested. Detention in a police provide services for registered sex workers are in disrepair. The station –if one fails to pay a services are less than acceptable quality and workers go elsewhere bribe—on a Friday evening can to receive HIV medication. Moreover, the HIV/AIDS treatment mean remaining in jail till provided free through clinics receiving funding untied to prostitution Monday. regulation is less stigmatized and considered of better quality. 4. Both registered and unregistered sex workers complain of abuse by the police who are entitled by the law to constantly monitor women. Sex workers accuse police of corruption including extortion and bribery, rape, assault, extended and arbitrary detention to extract fines. These concerns have not been addressed in the public health literature, although at least one public health NGO, Enda Sante, seeks to address abuse of power by police in community accountability settings. 5. Registered and clandestine sex workers are denied public benefits and day to day necessities because of stigma underscored by punitive laws. Sex workers report that landlords refuse to rent spaces to them or charge exorbitant prices with the punitive law as leverage. Registered sex workers are officially entitled to health care for their children in government clinics, fathers often refuse to acknowledge children rendering them ineligible for these benefits and school registration. 6. Openings for rights based discussions exist. Senegal revised its Constitution in 2001 to include guarantees of equality and respect for the dignity of all persons. Plans exist to introduce a bill protecting PLWHA in Senegal against discrimination along with a newly drafted law on sexual and reproductive health. Public discussion around sex work policy concerns have to date not included the voices of people in sex work and dominated by health professionals. Some NGOs, as well as semi-independent “government NGOs,” have begun to address organizing concerns with sex workers. Enda Sante has been working with a fluid population of unregistered sex workers, attempting to meet their health needs and ascertain other rights concerns. AWA (Association of women affected by AIDS) works primarily with registered sex workers, often via ties with government clinics, and to date has empowered social workers to speak about sex workers rather than fostering independent action.

42 See Homaifar, N, and, Wasik, S, 2005. “Interviews with Senegalese Commercial Sex Trade Workers and Implications for Social Programming.” Health Care for Women International 26: p118-133. See also, C. Laurent, C, Seck, L, Coumba, N, and Kana, T, 2003. “Prevalence of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections and risk behaviours among unregistered sex workers in Dakar, Senegal.” AIDS vol. 17:1811-1816. 43 The national HIV prevalence rate in Senegal is 1.4%. HIV rates amongst women attending antenatal clinics (ANC) are increasing. For instance, In Dakar, HIV prevalence in ANC rose from 0.5% in 1998 to 0.8% in 2001 to 1.1% in 2002. http://www.unaids.org/en/geographical+area/by+country/senegal.asp

SEXUAL HEALTH AND RIGHTS PROJECT

APPENDIX D

Harm Reduction, Health and Human Rights, and Sex Work

Open Society Institute, 2006

This discussion paper was commissioned1 by OSI’s Sexual Health and Rights Project for an international gathering held June 2006 in Johannesburg, South Africa about the impact of laws, policies, and law enforcement practices on sex workers’ health and human rights. NGOs, agencies and funders who work with people in sex work have used different frameworks, such as harm reduction and human rights, to guide their work. This document provided a basis for discussion of the pros and cons of these approaches. This was achieved by reviewing the ways harm reduction strategies and rights-based frameworks have been developed in various regions in the world, clarifying terms, noting strengths and weaknesses, and finding common ground for future work.

For more information contact: Sexual Health and Rights Project Open Society Institute 400 W. 59th St. New York, NY 10036 212-548-0600

www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/sharp

Sue Simon, Project Director, [email protected] Rachel Thomas, Project Associate, [email protected]

50 Harm reduction, health and human rights, and sex work

“Harm reduction” and “human rights” are both useful frameworks for addressing issues within sex work, including health. They are distinct approaches with their own strengths and weaknesses. This issue paper explores the differences and connections between the frameworks. Both approaches can be broadly defined and to some degree this has opened the possibility for confusion and appropriation of the terms. This working paper seeks to set out some points for consideration about how to strategically and carefully apply these frameworks.

What is a harm reduction approach?

The term harm reduction, or harm minimization, has been used since the 1980s to describe a set of practical strategies developed to prevent the transmission of HIV and address the negative effects of substance use amongst injecting drug users (IDUs).2 The term has no universally agreed upon definition, though harm reduction organizations have produced statements of the central principles constituting the framework.3 The approach prioritizes the reduction of harm over the abolition of drug use. While harm reductionists may differ on the extent to which stopping illicit behavior should be the goal of interventions, most focus on client centered efforts, such as needle exchange and peer education, that meet clients “where they are at.” Many harm reductionists take no public stance on the legalization or decriminalization of drug use and related activities and/or adopt a “neutral” stance on drug taking (i.e. that they are neither for nor against it). This perspective allows broader coalitions of people to come together to work in progressive ways about drug use and can also deflect criticism of programs that work to help people who continue to use drugs. However, some have argued that this neutrality has masked the differences between those who see harm reduction narrowly as a medical means of promoting health and a more activist group who see it as a platform for broader and more structural social change.4

Harm reduction, therefore, is an umbrella term that encompasses a continuum of beliefs from libertarian to strict “disease control” public health. The framework holds the potential to support transformational agendas addressing questions of social, economic and racial inequality and repressive conservative policies that violate the rights of drug users. In some instances, harm reduction, focused on individual patients, has been extended to include efforts to reduce social harms related to drug use. For example, in Britain the rhetoric of harm reduction has been deployed to justify coercive Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTOs) that force drug users into treatment programs.5

Applying harm reduction to sex work

The term harm reduction is widely used to describe actions to promote health and safety work in sex working communities. Approaches developed with drug users have been applied to work with sex workers with relatively little discussion about the approach, the need for modification or clarification of tactics. In its most basic interpretation the “use of harm-reduction principles can help safeguard sex workers’ lives and health in the same way that drug users have benefited from drug-use harm reduction.”6 It is also clear that drug use and sex work engage different actors and social issues and that the harm reduction approach to sex work encompasses a continuum of views concerning sex work specific issues.7

Many health service providers who wish to reduce the perceived HIV and STI risks of sex work use harm reduction to “meet sex workers where they are at.” Harm reduction allows these organizations to frame their work as helping individuals live safer lives without taking any stance on whether prostitution should be criminalized or decriminalized. Until recently this neutrality has

51 allowed organizations to work with communities of sex workers while avoiding debates over prostitution and to protect themselves somewhat from being attacked by groups convinced that prostitution must be ended.8 Today, those promoting a harm reduction approach to sex work may have to do so in the face of vocal opposition to prostitution which proclaims that sex work is itself a harm constituting a fundamental violation of human rights. Moral judgments about sex, sexuality, and the proper behavior of women and girls may also be used to trump efforts to promote harm reduction. Indeed, the sex work as violence argument has been used to attack service providers as enablers of sexual slavery, and has interfered with harm reduction-based public health efforts, including condom distribution.

Despite some harm reductionists claim to be neutral on prostitution, the emphasis on peer education methods which acknowledge and empower current sex workers as health educators does in practice distinguish harm reduction organizations from groups that aim to rescue women from prostitution. Furthermore, harm reduction is frequently interpreted to encompass law reform to create safer environments for sex work to occur.9 Some organizations include protecting sex workers’ rights as a condition for successful harm reduction and some call for decriminalization of prostitution and the removal of other barriers to health promotion.10

What is a human rights approach in the context of sex worker health and rights concerns?

Human rights work combines elements of formal treaty development with grassroots activism for rights and justice.11 In order to outline a human rights approach to sex work we need to consider the principles and state obligations that emerge from key international agreements along with the actions of communities, such as groups of sex workers, endeavoring to create the conditions where they can enjoy their rights to health as well as other rights. Key principles include: • the primacy of nondiscrimination and equality, • the equal dignity of all persons; • respecting core rights to protection against violence (bodily integrity rights) and its consequences; • understanding that all rights – civil, cultural, economic, political and social – are interconnected and interdependent in their realization; • building accountability between state (and increasingly non state actors) and rights holders to create rights-enabling environments; and • the participation of individuals and groups in the determination of issues affecting them.12

Article 12 of International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) describes States’ responsibility to “recognize the rights of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” The “right to health” is not a guarantee of individual healthiness, rather it is a series of steps that States must take to respect, protect and fulfill this right. General Comment 14 adds that the right to health outlined in the ICESCR “include[s] the right to control one's health and body, including sexual and reproductive freedom, and the right to be free from interference, such as the right to be free from torture, non-consensual medical treatment and experimentation.” It also includes the “right to a system of health protection which provides equality of opportunity for people to enjoy the highest attainable level of health.”13 The ICESCR and related documents make no specific mention of sex workers but since this rights- based approach to health covers all in society, it is inclusive of sex workers.14

However, the application of these principles to sex work has been very limited. The ongoing debate over the status of sex work/prostitution in the human rights field (some press for

52 prostitution to be codified as a violation of women’s rights; others have pushed for international recognition of prostitution as work and for its decriminalization)15 has resulted in a standoff. Almost all references to sex work in international documents refer to the need to prevent “forced” prostitution, do not require any particular legislative response to sex work and skirt the issue of what measures would allow sex workers to fully realize their right to the highest attainable standard of health. Materials produced by the ILO have been clearest in categorizing sex work as a form of labor16; and General Recommendation No 19 of the UN Committee on CEDAW requires States to ensure equal protection under the law for prostitutes because they “are especially vulnerable to violence because their status, which may be unlawful, tends to marginalize them.”17 These relatively weak pronouncements lag behind the demands of organized sex workers (locally, regionally and internationally) for the application of a human rights framework when working with sex working communities. Sex workers have protested rights violations (such as unethical drug trails), have implemented programs that work to address human rights violations central to the vulnerability of sex workers to HIV (such as police brutality, corruption and gender based violence), and have challenged laws and policies that disenfranchise sex workers reducing their ability to mobilize for the defense of their health and rights.18 In addition to sex worker-led initiatives, other international NGOs and UN agencies have adopted rights-based approaches to HIV programming.19

Connections and Differences between Harm Reduction and Human Rights

Advocates from the human rights and harm reduction fields have begun to explore the connections between the frameworks primarily in regards to drug use and HIV/AIDS with some attention to people in sex work. This includes noting that a human rights approach to health requires harm reduction because it allows the “fulfillment of the human right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”20 Advocates have also stressed that for harm reduction in regard to HIV/AIDS and IDUs to succeed, fundamental rights, such as protection from police abuse and arbitrary detention must be guaranteed.21

What new directions can advocates explore between harm reduction and rights approaches to sex work to strengthen progressive work overall?

• Participation for Public Health Outcomes or Rights Outcomes Harm reduction and rights work with sex workers often overlap in terms of what programs actually do on the ground. Both kinds of programming emphasize the involvement/participation of affected communities of sex workers using, for example, the concept of “peer education” to achieve program goals. Harm reduction programs frequently tap into sex workers’ skills to reduce HIV transmission amongst sex workers, and the community in general, via peer-led outreach. These kinds of programs can be successful in reducing the transmission of HIV, but the inclusion of sex workers in programming does not necessarily imply that broader rights based outcomes desired by sex workers will occur. In some instances peer education programs have become little more than cost-saving measures for public health interventions (i.e. peer educators often work for free or for small ‘stipends’). Sex workers are not primary decision makers and are relegated to the lowest rungs of NGOs reinforcing discriminatory attitudes towards them and their communities. The rights based approach to peer education, an approach that exists primarily in sex worker organizations, incorporates it as part of an overall strategy for change that promotes health while challenging discrimination. This approach goes much further than ensuring that sex workers have access to condoms to prevent disease by incorporating sex workers’ demands to be recognized as decision makers and actors in the process of creating the conditions that ensure their health.

• Ongoing commitment to rights The prioritization of mobilization for rights distinguishes a health and human rights approach to sex work from much of what falls under the banner of harm reduction. This is not to say that harm reduction programs never advance campaigns for fundamental change. In many cases harm reduction programs do this very proactively. However, the idea of rights has not yet been developed as an essential element of harm reduction in regards to sex workers. Most funding bodies pressure programs to achieve “health outcomes” as opposed to “rights outcomes.” This may mean that harm reduction groups who have been supportive of rights based work while the overall funding environment supported sex worker organizing, may “fall away” from rights work such as policy reform and sex-worker participation, should public health policy move in a more conservative direction.

• Law reform, rights and health Discussions within the formal human rights system are stalled at an unproductive equilibrium between prohibitionist and decriminalization perspectives on sex work law reform. Some human rights NGOs follow this trend of remaining “agnostic” on sex work – neither supporting decriminalization nor rejecting it. Despite this impasse, rights approaches have been emerging from the health field that can support progressive harm reduction work and are consistent with many of the perspectives of sex worker rights organizations. Some harm reduction networks, for example, have clearly supported law reform as central in promoting sex workers health and rights.22 Health and rights organizations, like the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, have documented how the criminalization of sex work undermines health and human rights.23 This complements the work of organizations such as Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) in South Africa and Scarlet Alliance in Australia to hold governments accountable for their failure to “respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of sex workers” and create safe working conditions for sex workers through comprehensive law reform and anti-discrimination efforts.24 In these formulations sex workers’ health and rights are connected to and dependent on other rights (such as right to enjoy just and favorable conditions of work, the right to organize, the right to adequate standard of living, and the right to be free from discrimination).

• Accountability and new connections to be made The idea of holding States accountable is a key element of human rights work and, as discussed above, this has been expressed in very clear ways by organizations insisting on law and policy changes that enable sex workers to enjoy their health and rights. Ultimately legislative changes are achievable only via State action. Certainly prioritizing the need for reform will assist progressive work with sex workers, whether rights-based or harm reduction, to maintain integrity in the long term. However, in rights terms, accountability runs in two directions. States should be held accountable by civil society, but organizations themselves must be accountable to the communities they serve and represent. Developing this notion of accountability to sex worker populations is key to overcoming weaknesses in both harm reduction and human rights. Accountable harm reduction programs, for example, must support organizing efforts and recognize sex workers as decision-makers and organizational leaders. This would reorient organizational priorities from what funding bodies support to what sex workers demand. Rights based organizations struggling with what position to adopt in regards to sex work, could move the discussion forward by considering what importance they should place on sex worker demands for freedom and justice and what priority they should give to other debates about the morality of women’s engagement in sexual commerce.

1 Penelope Saunders authored this discussion paper with assistance from Alice Miller.

2 Harm reduction grew out of work by activists, health service providers and policy-makers committed politically and socially to opposing the legal suppression of drug use and the oppression of drug users in the 1960s and 70s (see Vellemen, R. & Rigby, J. (1990).Harm minimization: Old wine in new bottles. International Journal of Drug Policy, 1, 24-27). More recently, public health interventions have incorporated harm reduction principles into smoking cessation initiatives and treatment programs for all types of substance use. 3 See http://www.harmreduction.org/ and http://www.ukhra.org/harm_reduction_definition.html. 4 Roe, G. (2005). Harm reduction as paradigm: Is better than bad good enough? The origins of harm reduction, Critical Public Health, 15(3), 243–250: p. 244. 5 These changes occurred under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act (2000). See Hunt, N. and Stevens, A. (2004). Whose Harm? Harm Reduction and the Shift to Coercion in UK Drug Policy, Social Policy & Society, 3(4), 333–342: p. 336. 6 Rekart, M. (2005). Sex-work harm reduction, The Lancet, 366, 2123-2134 7 While it is true that sexual and drug commerce are often intertwined, sex workers have been more easily able to argue that they have a right to earn a living than drug users have been able to argue for their “right to use”. Drug users in certain environments, such as within the Australian drug users movement, have worked to establish more positive views of the drug using identity and of drug using itself but this movement is not as widespread internationally as the idea of sex worker rights. 8 Donna Hughes, for example, equates prostitution with “sexual slavery.” She proposes “report and rescue” along with prohibition as a “bold, new approach represents a break with the accommodationist schemes that normalize prostitution and merely try to distribute a few condoms.” Hughes, Donna, 2003, Accommodation or Abolition? Solutions to the problem of sexual trafficking and slavery. National Review, May 3, 2003. Accessed May 15, 2006 at http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-hughes050103.asp 9 For example, recent prostitution law reform that decriminalized sex work in New Zealand was justified by its sponsor via “the concept of harm minimisation.” “Comment” by Tim Barnett: NZ HERALD September 30, 2003 http://www.walnet.org/csis/news/world_2003/nzherald-030930.html accessed May 8, 2006 10 See Central and Eastern European Harm Reduction Network (2005). Sex Work, HIV/AIDS, and Human Rights in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. p. 6, accessed at www.ceehrn.org. 11 Freedman, L. (1995). Censorship and manipulation of reproductive health information: an issue of human rights and women’s health. In Coliver, S. (Ed), The Right to Know: Human Rights and Access to Reproductive Health Information (pp. 1-37). London: ARTICLE 19. 12 Miller, A. (2001). Uneasy Promises: Sexuality, Health, and Human Rights, American Journal of Public Health, 91(6), 861-864: 862. 13 The full text of General Comment 14 is available at: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/gencomm/econ.htm 14 States should not violate rights standards, for example by coercive mandatory HIV testing or by limiting individuals’ ability to safeguard their own health. States are obligated to protect individuals from the actions of others who would violate their rights –such as blocking sex workers from access to health care because of discrimination. Finally, States must also ensure that their actions, at all levels, make the enjoyment of health rights possible. 15 Seeshu, M. and Csete, J. (2004). Still underground: searching for progress in realizing the human rights of women in prostitution. HIV/AIDS Policy and Law Review, 9(3), 8-14. 16 See www.ilo.org for ILO publications 17 The full text of General Comment 19 is available at: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/recomm.htm. 18 Examples of this kind of programming include: the Sonagachi project (see Jana, S., Basu, I. Rotheram-Borus, M.J., and Newman, P.A. The Sonagachi project: A sustainable community intervention program. AIDS Education and Prevention, 16(5), 405-414:2004); EMPOWER in Thailand (www.empowerfoundation.org) and sex worker organizing efforts in the Dominican Republic (see Moreno, L. & Kerrigan, D. (2000). HIV prevention strategies among female sex workers in the Dominican Republic. Research for Sex Work, 3, 8-10). 19 See Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network (2005). Sex, work, rights: Reforming Canadian criminal laws on prostitution accessed at www.aidslaw.ca. 20 Elliott, R., Csete, J., Wood, E., and Kerr, T. (2005). Harm Reduction, HIV/AIDS, and the Human Rights Challenge to Global Drug Control Policy. Health and Human Rights, 8(2) 105-138: p.115. 21 Human Rights Watch (2006). Rhetoric and risk: Human rights abuses impeding Ukraine’s fight against HIV/AIDS. Available at: http://www.hrw.org/ 22 Central and Eastern European Harm Reduction Network, op cit. 23 Canadian HIV Legal Network (2005), Sex workers and international human rights, no page number, accessed at www.aidslaw.ca. 24 Scarlet Alliance and Australian Federation of AIDS Organizations (1999). Unjust and counter-productive: The failure of governments to protect sex workers from discrimination. Available at http://www.scarletalliance.org.au/pub/. Many good discussions of health and rights for sex workers can be found at SWEAT’s website http://www.sweat.org.za/.

APPENDIX E

Provisional framework for analyzing laws and policies that affect sex workers1 Overarching comments to consider in relation to all frameworks: • What is the overall intent behind the law as well as the substance of the law (in contrast to actual enforcement of law)? • How does HIV or fear of HIV impact these different legal frameworks and the implementation and/or enforcement of the law? • Frameworks penalizing sex work are not discrete and intersect in many ways. It is necessary to look at the interplay between formal criminal law and administrative/ entertainment law, particularly the impact of local and municipal regulations. Local accountability and local participation of people in sex work is critical Legal Frameworks Definition Examples Questions Notes/comments Prohibition/partial Criminalization of the - The “Swedish model”: partial *what specific act(s) are - It is important to understand prohibition (often purchase and/or sale of prohibition model implemented addressed by the law (sex for that structures of “partial associated with the sexual services and or in 1998, which criminalizes money, the offer/agreement of prohibition” in practice still ‘abolitionist’ position) associated activities. purchasing but not selling of sex for money, moving result in sex work being fully sexual services.** publicly to offer sex for penalized but under variable money, facilitating sex for formal systems. Most common money, coercing sex for contemporary legislative - Canadian law does not prohibit money, etc.) response to prostitution the act of prostitution, but - Criminal prostitution law

criminalizes all activities and overlaps with other types of law behavior related to prostitution *which persons engaged in (i.e. anti- nuisance law) to further Often targets more public (i.e. it is illegal to “live on the those acts are addressed in the criminalize sex work and visible forms of sex avails” of prostitution). law (person offering sex, work (e.g. street-based sex person offering fee for sex work, brothels) and is often [also, is gender of buyer or selectively enforced. - In NY State, prostitution is seller specified?], other persons considered a Class B connected to those acts, e.g. Misdemeanor. Article 230 running premises, relation to (NYSCL) states that a person is earnings etc.) guilty of prostitution when such person engages or agrees or offers to engage in sexual *what do police need for

1 Created by the Law & Policy Project, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and circulated at the conference. 56

Legal Frameworks Definition Examples Questions Notes/comments conduct with another person in evidence of a crime? How do return for a fee. Promoting they obtain such evidence? prostitution and patronizing a prostitute are also criminalized *who can be charged with under NY State Law. These “living off the earnings” of offenses are classified as prostitution? misdemeanors or felonies, depending on various criteria (i.e. age of person engaging or offering to engage in sex for fee; other criminal actions associated etc.) De-criminalization/ Refers to the removal of The Netherlands, New Zealand, *does decriminalization - Many argue that partial criminal penalties applying parts of Australia, and Germany adequately address the question decriminalization decriminalization to (adult) sex work. all utilize a decriminalization of protection for under-aged, reduces covert sex work and model. non-resident, or trafficked sex increases sex workers’ ability to workers? (e.g. in the De-criminalization may be seek redress for labor and/or Netherlands, non EU nationals partial wherein some forms In the Netherlands, the objective rights violations, but need to pay cannot by law practice sex of sexual services are is a rules-based control of attention to the local context and work) decriminalized (i.e. escort, prostitution. Prostitution is a specific ways in which sex work home, or brothel based legal activity in sex clubs, behind regulation occurs under decrim work) and other remain “display windows”, in hotels, in *what are the implications of regimes. criminalized. bars, as escort services, and on decriminalization structures the streets. Regulation of implementing criminal - As in the Netherlands, prostitution is considered a provisions against forced Under de-criminalization, decriminalization allows for municipal affair. prostitution and trafficking, but regulation of sexual services variation according to local laws, neglecting to institute a formal then often moves to the local politics, etc. In some cases, recognition of voluntary adult or municipal level, decriminalization may or may sex work as a legitimate form not fit with the creation of an frequently through a nexus **Some anti-prostitution of labor? occupational category, and it of non-prostitution specific advocates refer to the Swedish may or may not intersect with law and codes such as liquor model as a “de-criminalization other structures that govern work licensing, hygiene, public model”, but in the context of this environment/ health benefits, or nuisance, labor law, chart’s understanding of de- enforce other legal rights of sex entertainment venues, criminalization, this label does workers, e.g. rights of contract, taxation, etc. as well as not fit. prostitution specific law and safety etc). policies.

Legal Frameworks Definition Examples Questions Notes/comments Legalization, Government control and State regulation and licensing are *who/what actor determines - Other types of regulation often including state oversight of the sex sector common methods of legalization. the circumstances under which co-exist with the regulation of regulation where specific acts are legal Regulation implies strict a person can sell or buy sex? prostitution (i.e. building codes, under certain specified surveillance and oversight over [government prohibits, liquor licenses, massage laws, conditions. prostitution within limited government licenses, person taxation systems, public circumstances (i.e. control over engaged determines….] nuisance) which function as number and type of another site of state intervention State institutes varied establishments, control over into the lives of people who buy measures of control to *important to consider the individual workers through or sell sex, since many women regulate the sale and ways in which regulation of the mandatory monthly STI/other move between work in purchase of sexual services workplace impedes workers’ screenings, licensing or “entertainment” and sex and the practices of rights (i.e. in whose interest is registration of individual workers establishments. These different individual workers the law claiming to act? What and/or worksites with a state types of regulatory regimes often (primarily health/STI evidence supports or authority). May also include complicate the legal and status), premises, or brothel contradicts this claim? Are the government enforcement of financial status of persons in sex owners. people most affected key workplace conditions and work, and complicate efforts to decision-makers in the legal adherence to public health reduce the impact of the law (in regime?) Often includes state revenue guidelines. most cases, not enough just to

interest in the sex sector decriminalize prostitution). *what about the welfare of Senegal: In an effort to stem the individuals who don’t/ can’t spread of STIs, the state legalized - Some countries debate the participate in the prostitution in 1969 and requires involvement of government in licensing/registration regime, all sex workers to register with specific approval (or particularly street-based, non- the government (women must be disapproval) of the sale of sex nationals, or under-age over 21). All registered sex workers? workers are required to receive monthly check-ups at specialized health centers where they can also receive condoms, STI education, contraception, and prescriptions for medication. If sex workers do not comply with these requirements, their registration cards may be revoked. Non-prosecution/ Refers to a policy decision, In Thailand, prostitution is *how strong are the structures - Local discretion may be suspension not enshrined in law, criminalized but the government that oversee the variable, thus requiring effective of arrests (sometimes functioning as guidance to simultaneously enacts strict implementation of this policy? oversight to ensure police

Legal Frameworks Definition Examples Questions Notes/comments called pragmatic or not arrest or prosecute under health codes for brothels and sex To whom are they accountability selective enforcement) prostitution law or other workers. accountable? policies, absent evidence of other crimes or violence (i.e. The implementation of the Thai *how do governments benefit under-age prostitution, government-sponsored 100% (i.e. financially) from this type forced prostitution). condom program exemplifies a of selective enforcement of pragmatic approach to prostitution law? enforcement. The program requires that condoms be used in all brothel-based sex acts and includes monthly screening and management of STIs among female sex workers, a media campaign directed at male clients, and free access to condoms in sex establishments. Sex establishment owners not in compliance are subject to sanctions, while the law against prostitution remains in place.

APPENDIX F

SOME SUGGESTED ISSUES OF IMPORTANCE TO SEX WORKERS FOR RESEARCH AND RIGHTS-BASED DOCUMENTATION

1. Exploring the processes and impacts of HIV/AIDS vaccine, treatment and microbicide trials in light of rights, such as the right to be free from exploitative experimentation and a right to meaningful participation 2. The rights’ impacts of 100% condom use campaigns 3. The impact of anti-trafficking laws and polices on sex worker rights 4. Exploring specific aspects of health rights, including rights against forced testing; or rights supporting effective and appropriate treatment 5. Media violations of rights (privacy) through publication of names, photos of sex workers 6. The rights of the children of sex workers 7. The rights impacts of forced rehabilitation programming 8. The rights impacts of governmental promotion of false data and information (on HIV/AIDS prevention, trafficking) 9. Rights to fair compensation for work, safe conditions, access to remedies, for sex workers across a wide range of work environments

60 APPENDIX G “Fostering Enabling Legal and Policy Environments for Sex Workers’ Health and Human Rights”

A Gathering Hosted by the Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights Project and Law and Health Initiative

Johannesburg, South Africa June 22-24, 2006

Sunnyside Park Hotel Princess of Wales Terrace Parktown

AGENDA

Wednesday, June 21

16:30 – 18:30 MEETING REGISTRATION (Outside Ballroom)

18:30 – 20:00 OPENING DINER AT HOTEL • Welcome: Sue Simon, Project Director, Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP), OSI Jonathan Cohen, Project Director, Law and Health Initiative (LAHI), OSI • Introduction of Speaker: Zohra Dawood, Executive Director, Open Society Foundation for SA • Keynote Speaker: Justice Kate O’Reagan, Constitutional Court, South Africa

Thursday, June 22: Day 1 – Facilitator, Sue Simon

6:30 – 9:00 BREAKFAST (in Milner Dining Room)

8:00 – 9:00 MEETING REGISTRATION (Outside Ballroom- for anyone unable to register June 21st)

9:00 – 10:15 Welcome: Zohra Dawood (5 min.) • Review of Agenda and Materials: Sue Simon (10 min.) • Logistics: Aiste Slabokaite, OSI Seminar Series Coordinator, OSF Lithuania (5 min.) • Participant Introductions: Françoise Girard, Director, Network Public Health Program, OSI (40 min.)

10:15 –11:45 Plenary: CLAIMING OUR RIGHTS: SEX WORKER COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND POLICY REFORM Chair: Catherine Mumma, Commissioner, Kenya National Commission of Human Rights

Presenters: (15 min. each) • Smarajit Jana, Assistant Country Director, CARE, India • Raven Bowen, Regional Coordinator, BC Coalition of Experiential Women, Canada • Catherine Healy, National Coordinator, NZ Prostitutes Collective, New Zealand • Alessandra Chacham, Professor, Pontificicia Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Question and Answer: (30 min.) 61

11:45 –12:00 TEA BREAK

12:00 –13:00 SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION ON ORGANIZING AND POLICY REFORM Facilitators: Jayne Arnott, Director, SW Education & Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), S.Africa Jonathan Cohen, Project Director, Law and Health Initiative (LAHI), OSI, US Meena Seshu, Secretary General, SANGRAM, India Beauty Mogasha, Representative, Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and AIDS; Coordinator, Nkailela Youth Group, Botswana Petra Timmerman, Coordinator, ICRSE, Netherlands

Goals: Participants will divide into groups based on geographical regions for the purpose of: (1) reflecting on successful actions and sharing lessons learned; and (2) identifying key factors (e.g., environmental, internal capacity) that impede and/or support strategies for policy reform and organizing.

Small Groups: guiding questions (35 min.) • What makes a given policy reform campaign unique or distinctive? • What issues and histories seem similar, or different, to your own experiences? • What tools, resources or actions are the keys for success?

Plenary: facilitators report back (25 min.) Chair: Catherine Mumma

13:00 –14:15 LUNCH

14:15 –15:30 Plenary: EXPLORING THE LAW AND LEGAL FRAMEWORKS Facilitator: Ali Miller, Law and Health Advisor, SHARP and LAHI, OSI

Goals: This session will identify the various legal concepts that are relevant to the regulation of sex work worldwide. The goals of the session are: (1) capturing the diversity of legal frameworks that affect sex work and sex workers lives; (2) demystifying legal terms across different countries; and (3) reaching a common- sense understanding of how laws intersect with other forces (e.g., policing, families, health systems).

Brainstorming Terminology: The group will identify and explain significant laws and legal forces affecting sex work and the lives of sex workers.

Exploring the Frameworks: The group will discuss the terms and over-lapping systems of sex work regulation.

15:30 –15:45 TEA BREAK

15:45 – 17:00 Plenary: UNDERSTANDING SEX WORK LAWS AT THE COUNTRY LEVEL Chair: Meena Seshu

Goals: This panel will move from general concepts to exploring legal strategies in specific national contexts. The aims of the session include: (1) understanding the various forms and impacts of legal regulation in specific country contexts; and (2) building greater awareness of the various ways to intervene in the law (e.g., reform or advocacy). 62

Presenters: (10 min. each) • Joanne Csete, Executive Director, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Canada

• Eszter Csernus, HIV/AIDS & Patients’ Rights Program Director, SWAN Legal Advocacy Coordinator, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, Hungary

• Juhu Thukral, Director, Sex Workers Project, Urban Justice Center, United States

• Cholpon Djakupova, Director, Public Foundation Legal Clinic «Adilt», Kyrgyz Republic

• Lenka Myslikova, Legal Consultant, Analyst and Anti-Trafficking Expert, Security Policy Department, Ministry of Interior, Czech Republic

Question and Answer: (25 min.)

17:00 –17:30 Plenary: SUMMING UP Chair: Jonathan Cohen Questions: (1) What are the important themes and ideas that have come from today’s discussions? (2) What questions do we need to address in the next two days?

18:00 – DINNER

Friday, June 23: Day 2 – Facilitator, Jonathan Cohen

6:30 – 9:00 BREAKFAST (in Milner Dining Room)

9:00 –10:30 Plenary: TOOLS FOR APPLYING A HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK Chair: Françoise Girard

Goals: This session will present various tools used by human rights advocates to advance sex workers’ health and human rights. Aims include: (1) identifying the variety of rights-based tools for sex work advocacy; (2) assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the various tools (noting context and specific issues that the tool can address); (3) identifying principles and best practices underlying research, advocacy and policy reform; and (4) exploring the ethical issues which encompass human rights work with socially marginalized populations.

Presenters: (10 min. each) • Petra Timmerman, Coordinator, ICRSE, Netherlands Presentation of the SW Manifesto and “The Declaration of Rights of SW in Europe”

• Katarina Jiresova, Director, Odyseus, Slovakia Presentation of CEEHRN report “Sex Work, HIV/AIDS, and Human Rights”

• Rebecca Schleifer, Researcher, HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program, HRW, U.S. Putting together a report for trans-national advocacy

Question and Answer: (60 min.)

10:30 –10:45 TEA BREAK

10:45 –12:30 SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS Chair: Andrew Hunter, Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, Thailand

Goals: For this discussion, participants will divide into assigned groups and discuss the significance of human rights tools to their work.

Facilitators: Claire Thiboutot, Claire Thiboutot, Executive Director, Stella, Canada Joanne Csete, Executive Director, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Canada Raven Bowen, Regional Coordinator, BC Coalition of Experiential Women, Canada Alessandra Chacham, Professor, Pontificicia Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil Tsepho Mokgeti, Representative, Sisonke, South Africa

Small Groups: guiding questions (75 min.): • What do you mean by a human rights approach to sex work? • What is your experience of using human rights tools? How far can you go with human rights in your country context? • What are the most appropriate and promising human rights arguments (e.g., privacy, equality, the right to health, association) in your country context?

Plenary: report back from small groups (30 min.)

12:30 –13:45 LUNCH

13:45 –15:45 HARM REDUCTION, HEALTH & HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACHES TO SEX WORK Chair: Penny Saunders, Executive Director, Different Avenues, United States

Goals: For this discussion, participants will be divided into groups to discuss various conceptual “approaches” that are applied to sex work by different advocates. Goals of this session include: (1) clarifying the relationship between different approaches (e.g., strengths, weaknesses, complements and tensions); and (2) coming to agreement on core elements of rights based, harm reduction, and public health approaches to sex work.

Facilitators: Jayne Arnott, Director, SWEAT, South Africa Katarina Jiresova, Director, Odyseus, Slovakia Petra Timmerman, Coordinator, ICRSE, Netherlands. Elizabeth Ngugi, Professor, University of Nairobi, Kenya Nolunthando Ntlokwana, Legal Advisor, Women’s Legal Centre, South Africa

Small Groups: guiding questions (75 min.): • What are the strengths and challenges of these approaches? • What do these different approaches do best? What do they not do? • How do these conceptual approaches impact different advocacy goals? • How do you build support for a chosen approach among stakeholders? • How do these approaches make sense in your political context?

Plenary: facilitators report back (30 min.) Chair: Penny Saunders

15:45 – 16:00 TEA BREAK

16:00 – 17:00 Plenary: ORGANIZING, ALLIES AND MOVEMENTS Chair: Eszter Csernus

Questions for Discussion • How do sex workers successfully organize? • How do they overcome stigma and fear of disclosure? • How do they respond to and overcome divisions within the community? • How can respectful coalitions be built between sex workers and their allies?

17:00 – 17:30 SUMMING UP Chair: Ali Miller Questions: (1) What important themes and ideas have come from today’s discussions? (2) What questions do we need to address tomorrow?

18:00 – 19:00 DINNER

19:00 – 21:00 EXCURSION: Soweto

Saturday, June 24: Day 3 – Facilitator, Rachel Thomas

6:30 – 9:00 BREAKFAST (in Milner Dining Room)

9:00 – 10:30 Plenary: ISSUES IN FOCUS: POLICE ABUSE, GENDER, HIV/AIDS, AND LABOR RIGHTS Chair: Noluthando Ntlokwana, Women’s Legal Centre, South Africa

Goals: This session is aimed at: (1) deepening knowledge of critical rights issues in sex work advocacy; and (2) understanding environmental challenges and constraints on sex worker health and rights.

Presenters: (10 min. each) • Policing and Police Abuse: Igor Vassilenko, Chairman, Public Foundation “Help”; Technical Advisor, OSI’s SHARP and IHRD, Kazakhstan

• Rights of Women: Meena Seshu, Secretary General, SANGRAM, India

• Working with Transgender Communities: Sitthiphan (Hua) Boonyapisomparn, Program Supervisor, Sisters, Thailand

• Health and HIV/AIDS issues: Smarajit Jana, CARE, India

• Labor Rights: p’Noi Apisuk, Director, EMPOWER Foundation, Thailand

Question and Answer: (40 min.)

10:30 – 10:45 TEA BREAK

65 10:45 – 12:00 Plenary: BUILDING ADVOCACY CAPACITY Chair: Tsepho Mokgeti, Representative, Sisonke, South Africa

Goal: This session will explore some of the challenges for capacity building among sex worker groups and their allies for undertaking advocacy work. The aims of this session include: (1) identifying opportunities and threats for successful advocacy and policy change; (2) sharing lessons learned about what works and what has failed; and (3) determining what capacity gaps exist and strategizing about how to best fill them.

Presenters: (10 min. each) • Communications and Networking: Andrew Hunter, The Asia Pacific Network of SWers • Building Leadership: Claire Thiboutot, Executive Director, Stella, Canada • Coalition/ Media Work in US: Juhu Thukral, Sex Workers Project, Urban Justice Center • Materials Development: Olive Cheung, Researcher, Zi Teng, Hong Kong

Discussion: (35 min.)

12:00 – 12:45 Plenary: WHAT’S MISSING? BRAINSTORMING ABOUT WAYS TO MOVE FORWARD Chair: Sue Simon

This session will provide participants with the chance to brainstorm about concrete opportunities for new and expanded ways to foster enabling legal and policy environments for sex workers’ health and human rights. We can address issues including global movement building (e.g., what mechanisms and linkages already exist or are needed to connect advocates around the world?); shared advocacy platforms (e.g., what kind of advocacy efforts do stakeholders want to undertake during the Toronto International AIDS Conference?); resource mobilization (e.g., how do we generate additional support for this work); and reaching allied communities (e.g., how to engage other stakeholders to support sex worker health and rights issues). Where do we go from here? This session is OPEN and offers the chance for participants to develop shared strategies and activities for the future.

12:45 – 13:00 Closing Remarks: Sue Simon and Jonathan Cohen

13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH (we have the possibility to break out into “issue tables” for any final discussion)

14:00 – 16:30 EXCURSION: Constitution Hill

66 APPENDIX H

Panelists Biographies

Chantawipa (Noi) Apisuk- Director, Empower Foundation A social worker trained in community development, Noi Apisuk is the founder of the Empower Foundation (education means protection of women engaged in re-creation) in Bangkok, a grass roots advocacy organization focused on the rights of women working in the entertainment industry.

After graduating with degrees in Sociology and Anthropology from Thammasart University in Bangkok, Ms. Apisuk traveled to the United States to continue her work and study, later alternating between the US and Asia as she worked on human rights issues, taught school in northern Thailand, and worked at the South East Asia Resource Center in New York. In 1984, she returned home to Bangkok and began working with women in the sex industry, founding Empower. Empower now encompasses a school of adult education and alternative training for employment and a legal assistance unit for sex workers in Bangkok, and a social service center and health clinic in the northern cities of Chiangmai and Chiangrai. Since its beginning, as a one- woman operation focused exclusively on educating sex workers, Empower has expanded its capacity and now educates the general Thai public about prostitution and HIV/AIDS prevention, striving to reduce discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS.

Ms. Apisuk has received a number of honors in recognition of her work, including a scholarship from Harvard Law School for International Human Rights training in 1997, and the “Outstanding Social Worker” award in 2000, from the Social Welfare Department of Thailand’s Ministry of Social and Labor Affairs.

Jayne Arnott- Director, Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) Jayne Arnott has been the Director of SWEAT (Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce) for five years. She has an Honours in Social Work and her previous work experience has been largely in community development work, particularly with youth. SWEAT is a non-profit organisation based in Cape Town that works with sex workers around health and human rights. It has an outreach, advocacy and research programme, advocates for the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa, and is active in supporting sex workers in organising to take up their issues.

Sitthiphan (Hua) Boonyapisomparn- Program Supervisor, Sisters In June 2005, Sitthiphan (Hua) Boonyapisomparn began working with Population Services International (PSI) as the Outreach Supervisor of Sisters. Based in Pattaya, Sisters is the first transgender program on HIV prevention issues of PSI, Thailand. Hua is now the transgender Program Supervisor of PSI, Thailand, responsible for intervention planning and outcome reports to PSI’s head office in Bangkok.

Before working with PSI, Hua worked as Project Manager with the Rainbow Sky Association of Thailand, a legal organization which arranges activities for the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual

67 and Transgender) network in Thailand, including both HIV prevention among MSM and human rights support for those groups.

Raven Bowen- Regional Coordinator, BC Coalition of Experiential Women/Communities Raven works with individuals involved in sex work and survival sex. With more than 12 years experience in this area, she has taken on various roles from peer to providing professional support services to project coordination and media spokesperson. She served for 5 years as Executive Director of PACE Society. Raven has worked toward the mobilization of sex workers and those addicted to substances by ensuring that the populations they are meant to serve design all projects and programs. These programs ranged from testing a social enterprise among sex workers, the development of direct services, to educational materials and presentations, policy development in areas of operations and research involving humans and other harm reduction strategies for sex working populations. Raven has also designed and supported community- based research, consultations and project evaluations. Raven currently serves as a special consultant for PACE Society, is a founder and on the management team of the Mobile Access Project and is the Regional Coordinator for the BC Coalition of Experiential Women/Communities (BCCEW/C). The BCCEW/C are a consortium of sex worker activists working toward legislative and policy change for the betterment of those involved in the sex industry. Raven is working on a degree in Sociology at Simon Fraser University.

Alessandra Chacham- Professor, Pontificia Catholic University of Minas Gerais Alessandra Chacham is a sociologist living and working in Brazil. She has been working in the field of sexuality and sexual and reproductive rights for a number of years, and has accumulated experience both as a scholar and a sexual/reproductive rights activist. Her training and expertise has encompassed both the academic world and work with NGOs and political activism. She has researched and written articles on sexual and reproductive issues and has participated in a variety of social intervention projects focused on sexual health for sex workers and low-income women and adolescents. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

In addition to her academic experience, Alessandra is active in the feminist NGO Mulher e Saude, which focuses on women’s sexual and reproductive health, and served as the organization’s president from 2002 to 2004. She is a member of the Brazilian National Feminist Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Health, serving in their Director’s Board from 2003 to 2004, and has worked for the New York based NGO International Women’s Health Coalition.

Olive Cheung- Researcher, Zi Teng Olive Cheung is currently working on a PhD with Health and Social Care at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research project aims to explore the working experiences of sex workers in Hong Kong, including risk related issues such as client violence, emotional risk and sexual health. She also works with Zi Teng, a non-governmental organization which is based in Hong Kong, and works for the benefits of sex workers through outreach work and the provision of legal, occupational safety and health information to the sex worker community. Through conducting research and public education, the organization aims to let the public know about the

68 situation of sex workers in order to eradicate the social prejudices against sex work and the people involved. Through Zi Teng, Olive is involved in a research study on government policies on sex work in a variety of countries.

Jonathan Cohen- Project Director, Law and Health Initiative (LAHI), OSI Jonathan Cohen is the director of the Law and Health Initiative at the Open Society Institute. He oversees a range of legal assistance, litigation, and law reform efforts to advance public health goals worldwide. Mr. Cohen was previously a researcher with the HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, where he conducted numerous investigations of human rights violations linked to AIDS epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia, and North America. A Canadian lawyer, Mr. Cohen served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2001 and was co-editor-in-chief of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review. He holds degrees from Yale College, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

Eszter Csernus- HIV/AIDS & Patients’ Rights Program Director, HCLU Eszter Csernus graduated from the Law Faculty of the University of Szeged (Hungary), and specialised in human rights and civil liberties at Paris X University in 2001. She has been working as the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union’s (HCLU) HIV/AIDS & Patients’ Rights Program Director since July 2002. Eszter has authored several studies and articles about AIDS policy, patients’ rights, and reproductive rights, and is involved in legislation monitoring and legal advocacy work. She was elected to the Executive Committee of HCLU in autumn 2004. Eszter Csernus recently became the coordinator of the newly operationalized network, SWAN (Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network) that links 16 NGOs from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Joanne Csete- Executive Director, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network Joanne Csete has been Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network since late 2004. She came to the Network from Human Rights Watch, where she was founding director of the HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program. In that capacity, she oversaw research and advocacy on a wide range of human rights violations related to the AIDS epidemic, including against sex workers. She was previously Chief of Policy and Programs at the UNICEF Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa in Nairobi, where she worked on AIDS programs and policies. She lived and worked in Africa for over ten years, focusing mainly on public health and nutrition programs in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Zohra Dawood- Executive Director, Open Society Foundation for South Africa Zohra Dawood has a degree in law, one in African Government and Administration and a Master’s Degree in Economic History. She has worked for a decade as a chief researcher for a land rights organisation and has during this time, written widely on the issues of land reform and in particular on the restitution of land rights. This was at the height of apartheid, where land struggles and land access were central to debates on the construction of the post-apartheid state.

On moving to government after 1994, she had been involved in drafting land legislation for the new government. Her work with the Department of Land Affairs and Agriculture involved policy formulation and implementation, including negotiations and settlement of land claims. She has

69 been advisor to Cabinet Members and the Presidency of Nelson Mandela. She has also worked for the Department of Defence in drafting their legislation and policies on Land and Environment.

In mid-1999 she joined the Open Society for South Africa as Deputy Executive Director and from June 2001 has held the position of Executive Director. Her responsibilities at the OSF-SA include the development of a strategic vision and policies for the foundation as well as devising strategic programme plans and the development of partnerships with other donors.

Daouda Diouf- HIV/AIDS Program Director, Enda Tiers Monde Daouda Diouf is the HIV/AIDS Program Director of Enda Tiers Monde in Dakar, Senegal. Enda Tiers Monde works to strengthen the community response to HIV/AIDS with persons living with HIV/AIDS and vulnerable groups, including sex workers. Formerly, Daouda worked as the Program Director at the African Council of AIDS Services Organizations and the Coordinator for the Africa Facilitators for Change Network. Prior to his current position, Daouda served as Associate Program Coordinator, Program Manager, Program Assistant, and Health Trainer for the Enda Tiers Monde Health Team. In addition, he has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, UNDP, UNAIDS, and Alliance Nationale Contre le SIDS. Daouda Diouf received his teaching certificate for secondary and technical school from Cheikh Anta Diop University and went on to complete his Masters in Social Economics. He is the author of several publications related to HIV/AIDS in Africa, reproductive health, and community response to HIV/AIDS.

Cholpon Djakupova- Director, Public Foundation Legal Clinic “Adilet” Cholpon Djakupova is the Director of the Public Foundation Legal Clinic Adilet in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Projects at the clinic are implemented under the auspices of UNHCR, the State program on prevention of HIV/AIDS, UNICEF, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR). The clinic has seven main directions of activities: legal assistance; judicial assistance; social assistance; protection of the rights of juveniles in conflict in law; protection of rights of persons living with HIV/AIDS and vulnerable groups; projects support by DIHR and the Danish Refugee Council; and the elaboration and improvement of the law of the Kyrgyz Republic. Ms. Djakupova was a teacher and worked at the Kyrgyz University for 13 years. In 1995, she served as Director in the Migration Department of the Ministry of Social Security and Labor. Prior to her current position, Ms. Djakupova worked as the Deputy Director of the Regional Center of Migration. She received her PhD in History and is the author of 2 monographers, 2 textbooks and 18 clauses, in addition to 4 reference books on human rights.

Manohar Elavathi- Executive Director, Suraksha WRHCP Manohar Elavathi has been part of the sexuality minorities' movement for the last 9 years through the organization SANGAMA (www.sangama.org), which he founded and where he served as Executive Director until September of 2005. He has been part of advocacy efforts for sex workers' rights for the last 5 years and works closely with progressive groups/movements on class, caste, gender, sexuality, anti-religious fundamentalism, ecology, and anti-globalisation issues.

At present, he is Executive Director of Suraksha WRHCP, which works among sex-workers (women, men and transgender) on sexual health and human rights issues in Bangalore Rural

70 District and Hubli City. Suraksha is part of nationwide advocacy efforts for sex workers' rights and actively supports the sex workers' trade union building process.

Françoise Girard- Director, Network Public Health Program, OSI Françoise Girard has been the director of the Open Society Institute’s Network Public Health Program since March of 2006. She is a lawyer by training, and before joining OSI was director of the feminist advocacy and policy group Eve & The Snake, which promotes gender equality and sexual rights. From 1999 to 2003, she was Senior Program Officer for International Policy at the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), with a focus on advocacy and policy development with UN agencies and at UN conferences including ICPD+5, Beijing+5, the Special Session on HIV/AIDS and on Children, and ICPD+10. She has contributed articles to International Family Planning Perspectives, Reproductive Health Matters, the Journal of Women’s Health and Law, Populi, and QCQ, among others. Her other publications include “Global Implications of U.S. Domestic and International Policies on Sexuality," June 2004. Prior to joining IWHC, Ms. Girard was Regional Director for Southern Central and Eastern Europe and Haiti at the Open Society Institute.

Ms. Girard holds an M.A. in Political Science from McGill University, and an LL.B. from the Université de Montréal. She was a law clerk to the Honorable Charles Gonthier, associate justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. She is a member of the bar of the province of Québec, and is on the advisory boards of the journal Q/C/Q (Population Council), and of the solidarity networks on sexuality in the Middle East and South/South-East Asia.

Catherine Healy- National Coordinator, New Zealand Prostitutes Collective In 1987, together with other sex workers, Catherine Healy established the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC) with the purpose of advocating for the human rights, occupational health and safety, and employment rights of sex workers. NZPC initiated the movement to decriminalise sex work in New Zealand. They also collaborated with other stakeholders to craft the Prostitution Law Reform Act (PRA). Their successful campaign for law reform involved building relationships with politicians, government and non-governmental organisations while gathering a broad spectrum of public support for the decriminalisation of prostitution. Catherine is currently on the Prostitution Law Review Committee, which is legally required to review and monitor the impact of the Prostitution Law Reform Act of 2003.

Stephen Heyns- Rapporteur Stephen Heyns has, since 1993, produced meeting documentation for a range of NGOs, donor organisations and government departments. He has copy-edited over 50 publications on a wide variety of development-related topics for universities and academic think-tanks (in South Africa and Norway), and for NGOs, donors and government departments (in South Africa). Stephen has also written plain-language website and print material on Parliament, human rights and the law, and specific South African laws.

Andrew Hunter- Campaigns Director, Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers Andrew Hunter has over 17 years experience working as an activist with marginalized groups such as sex workers, injecting drug users, gay and other men who have sex with men, transgenders and street youth. This work has mainly been in the areas of HIV, health and human

71 rights issues as they relate to sex work, gender and sexuality.

Andrew was a founding member and first National Coordinator for the Scarlet Alliance- the Australian Forum for Sex Worker's Rights Groups in 1990. He was also a founding member of Australia's first drug user's organisation. Since 2002 he has been working with the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers on campaigns and a cultural action project called Making Sex Work Safe in Asia and the Pacific, which aims to strengthen and network groups of sex worker activists. Andrew has also worked as a consultant with a number of sex work and other HIV programs in Asia.

Smarajit Jana- Assistant Country Director, CARE Smarajit Jana is a pioneer in the field of public health, especially sexual health. He is widely recognized as the person who initiated and nurtured the Sonagachi revolution. He is universally respected as an expert on community processes, addressing vulnerabilities and exclusion. His conception of Community Led Structural Intervention (CLSI) has transformed both the discourse and project activities in relation to HIV prevention efforts. He is an esteemed member of various policy making bodies including the National Council on HIV/AIDS, Steering Committee of NACO, UNAIDS, etc.

Dr. Jana is a physicist by training, with specialization in Social and Preventive Medicine from AIIH & PH, Calcutta. He has served in numerous organizations, including the All India Institute of Hygiene & Public Health, Calcutta, India, the Government of West Bengal as well as in NGOs such as CARE, where he holds the present position of Assistant Country Director.

Dr. Jana holds the spread of HIV as one of the most significant challenges in the modern world, especially because of the social challenges that it brings to the fore as well as accentuates. In spite of his stature, he retains and fiercely espouses the simple dictum that shaped his life: "Learn from the people and be led by them".

Katarina Jiresova- Director, Odyseus Katarina Jiresova is the cofounder and acting director of the Slovakian NGO Odyseus, which was created to help drug users and sex workers protect their health and well-being. Odyseus offers street-based needle exchange, safer sex education and HIV testing, and provides advocacy and extensive training for injection drug users and sex workers. Ms. Jiresova has worked with drug users and sex workers at a variety of levels, having done both grassroots training in the field and projects more national, regional and international in scope. Jiresova is involved in qualitative research on sex work, and is currently serving as a consultant for the Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights Project, compiling the results of 8 Central and Eastern European sex work policy projects. She has co-authored several publications, including a portion of the recent WHO publication on HIV and a book on harm reduction in Slovakia.

Gulnara Kurmanova- Chairwoman of Coordinating Committee, Tais Plus NGO Gulnara Kurmanova, PhD, is Chairwoman of the Coordinating Committee of Tais Plus NGO, and one of the organization’s founders. In her current position, Ms. Kurmanova's responsibilities include determining strategies and priorities for prevention field activities and implementing prevention programs among sex workers (both male and female). As a professional researcher

72 and trainer, she led Tais Plus NGO to the position of National Methodological and Research Center in Sex Work with special focuses in HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. She developed a successful advocacy campaign aimed at stopping the Initiative on the Criminalization of Sex Work in Kyrgyzstan. She is also the Regional Communicative Focal Point of the Delegation of Developing Countries NGOs for the GFATM Board.

Ali Miller- Law and Health Advisor, SHARP and LAHI, OSI Alice M. Miller, J.D. became the SHARP and LAHI Legal Advisor in September of 2005. She divides her time between this role and her position as Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health, at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, where she focuses on gender, sexuality, human rights and humanitarian issues. She also teaches at Columbia’s Schools of Law and International and Public Affairs. She works on the progressive development of international law and policy vis a vis, health, gender, sexuality and rights, with particular attention to the intersection of human rights and humanitarian action, the impact of legal regulation on rights, and rights-based approaches in health programming. She was a Rockefeller Fellow in the Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights at the School of Public Health.

She has worked for 20 years as staff or volunteer with NGOs, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Human Rights Law Group on human rights issues in the US and globally. Her scholarship and advocacy has addressed gendering humanitarian law, safe migration and anti-trafficking policies, criminal law, and specifically abolition of the death penalty, women’s rights, sexual and reproductive health and LGBT rights. She writes and publishes regularly in both scholarly and activist venues on these topics. Ali completed her B.A. at Radcliffe College/Harvard University in 1979 and her JD at the University of Washington in 1985.

Beauty Mogasha- Coordinator, Nkaikela Youth Group Beauty Mogasha has been working in the HIV/AIDS field for 5 years and is especially interested in working with vulnerable women, advocating for their human rights, welfare and health. She is a social worker by training, and works as the coordinator of Nkaikela Youth Group in Tlokweng, Botswana. Nkaikela Youth Group is a non-governmental organization that strives to empower vulnerable women with HIV/AIDS and life skills through peer education, training and income generating activities. Beauty is also involved in the Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and AIDS.

Lenka Myslíková- Legal Consultant & Analyst, Ministry of Interior, Czech Republic Lenka Myslikova is a legal consultant, analyst and anti-trafficking expert for the Security Policy Department of the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Interior. Myslikova’s department was appointed National Anti-trafficking Reporter, a role consisting of analytical, coordination and conceptual activities.

She is one of two authors of the “National Strategy of the Fight against Trafficking in Human Beings” (the most recent version is for the period 2005-2007 and was approved by a Government resolution in 2005). The Strategy contains measures for the prevention of trafficking, information

73 regarding potential victims, and sanctions, but its primary measures are to improve the position of victims. Lenka Myslikova also worked on the proposal of the Prostitution Regulation Act, but it was retracted by government decision in spring of 2006.

Myslikova has been working at the Ministry of Interior’s Security Policy Department since 2004 when she received her degree from the Law Faulty of Prague's Charles University.

Elizabeth Ngugi- Professor, University of Nairobi Elizabeth Ngugi is an Associate Professor for the University of Nairobi’s Department of Community Health. She is a registered nurse, a midwife and a counselor, and has background in pediatrics, epidemiology and the control of diseases. Through these varied capacities, Elizabeth has served as an advocate for the rights of vulnerable populations for over two decades.

Elizabeth’s PhD research focused on the prevention of STD/HIV using the mobilization of vulnerable populations as the entry point, and education and counseling skills as the tools for empowering female sex-workers to negotiate safer/safe sexual practices. She is a founding member and chairperson of the Society of Women and AIDS in Kenya and International Women’s AIDS Run, is Founder and Director of the Kenya Voluntary Women Rehabilitation Centre, which was started in 1992 and provides economic alternatives and human rights skills to women and girls who have been pushed into sex work by poverty. Since 1990, Elizabeth has served as co-director of the Strengthening STD/HIV/AIDS Control Project in Kenya, and is overseeing its June 1, 2006 transition to the Unit for HIV Prevention and Research.

Noluthando Ntlokwana- Legal Advisor, Women’s Legal Centre Noluthando Ntlokwana is a legal advisor at the Women’s Legal Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. The Women’s Legal Centre is a non-profit, independently funded law centre founded by women lawyers to advance women’s rights through constitutional litigation and advocacy on gender issues. Prior to her current position, Ms. Ntlokwana was a legal intern for the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of Witwatersrand. After completing her LL.B degree from the University of the Western Cape, Ms. Ntlokwana did articles of clerkship at the Legal Resource Centre.

Terry Robinson- Personal Assistant to the Executive Director, OSF-SA Terry Robinson is the Personal Assistant to Zohra Dawood, Executive Director, of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa. Before coming to work at the Open Society Foundation for South Africa she worked as an office manager for a financial consulting company. In addition to the aforementioned positions, she has enjoyed a variety of jobs over the years and has had the opportunity to be a full time home executive raising her son. She enjoys the interaction with people both within the Open Society Foundation as well as those she has encountered within the Soros Network.

Penny Saunders- Executive Director, Different Avenues Penelope Saunders is the Executive Director of Different Avenues, a community based organization in Washington, DC, working on issues of sexual exchange, identity and sexuality. The organization works primarily with youth and young adults, many of whom are transgendered, gay or lesbian. In 2004 she became involved in DC organizing efforts to provide

74 information about harmful new prostitution legislation proposed by the Mayor of the District of Columbia. She was involved in establishing a multi-agency campaign group, the Alliance for a Safe and Diverse DC, to work for the rights of sex workers and others who would be affected by the legislation. She has run sex work projects in Australia, specifically the Sex Industry Network, and has carried out research in Australia, the US and Latin America. In 1999 she was a Rockefeller Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights. She is currently part of national efforts in the United States to organize around sex worker issues, including the Desiree Alliance and Best Practices Policy Project.

Rebecca Schleifer- Researcher, HIV/AIDS & Human Rights Program, Human Rights Watch As a researcher with the HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program, Rebecca Schleifer monitors human rights abuses linked to HIV/AIDS. She has conducted research and written reports about government restrictions on complete HIV/AIDS information to youth and on harm reduction services to injection drug users; access to antiretroviral treatment and other post-rape services to survivors of sexual violence; government efforts to provide antiretroviral treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS; and abuses against people living with and at high risk of HIV/AIDS, in the United States, Bangladesh, South Africa, Jamaica, and Ukraine. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, she worked with migrant farmworkers in Florida and Washington, litigating cases on wages and working conditions, and conducting advocacy regarding pesticide issues. Rebecca has an A.B. from Harvard-Radcliffe College, and an M.P.H. and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Meena Seshu- General Secretary, SANGRAM Meena Seshu is the founder and General Secretary of SANGRAM, an organization that works to stem the AIDS epidemic in Maharastra State, home to some of the highest infection rates in India. For Meena, AIDS is a human rights issue. She works with marginalized populations to stanch its spread by increasing their access to information, and skills for prevention. One of SANGRAM’s most successful projects is building the capacity of sex workers to organize in collectives, negotiate condom use with their clients, and assert and defend their rights. As a result of her work, Meena has endured personal attacks by local authorities but has not let these stop her from working on behalf of some of India's most marginalized people. More recently, SANGRAM refused to sign the pledge opposing prostitution, which is required to continue receiving U.S. funding. Their decision was misrepresented to the press as having been cut off from funding for "promoting prostitution.” Both U.S.-based organizations and members of Congress have attacked SANGRAM's work. SANGRAM is responsible for averting thousands of cases of HIV transmission each month, and has helped vulnerable groups realize their human rights.

Sue Simon- Project Director, Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP), OSI Sue Simon is the director of the Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP). Prior to launching SHARP in April of 2005, Sue was the Associate Director of the International Harm Reduction Development Program for almost five years. She has worked both

75 domestically and internationally around HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, and drug issues since 1984 in a direct service delivery, public policy and communications capacity. Before coming to OSI, Sue worked at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Planned Parenthood of New York City, and the Mayor’s Office of AIDS Policy. She graduated from Tufts University and received her Master’s degree in Public Policy from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Aiste Slabokaite- OSI Seminar Series Coordinator, Open Society Fund- Lithuania Aiste Slabokaite is an OSI Seminar Series Coordinator at the Open Society Fund in Lithuania. Pervious to her work at OSF, Aiste spent three years working in non-governmental Lithuanian and international youth organizations as an international officer. In this capacity, she organized international seminars and developed co-operative relationships between different youth organizations.

Aiste had a four-month internship with the Parliament of Lithuania’s Department of International Relations and a two-month internship at the Spanish Embassy in Lithuania. She studied Public Administration in Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid in 2005. In June 2006 she will graduate from the Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University. She is interested in politics, international relations and intercultural studies.

Claire Thiboutot- Executive Director, Stella As a long time activist and former stripper, Claire Thiboutot participated in the founding of Quebec’s first sex worker association, l’Association quebecoise des travailleuses et travailleurs du sexe (AQTTS) in 1992. Founding member and current director of Stella, Claire also set up an HIV prevention program for sex workers and injection drug users in Vietnam, for Medecins du Monde Canada (Doctors of the World) in 2002-2003. In April 2005, she received an award from the Foundation Farha, for her remarkable work in the fight against AIDS and for sex workers’ human rights. In May 2005, she and Stella’s team hosted the Forum XXX in Montreal, a fantastic international sex worker rendez-vous! In August 2006, Stella will be hosting the international sex worker-networking zone in the Global Village at the World AIDS Conference in Toronto.

Rachel Thomas- Project Associate, Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP), OSI Rachel Thomas has worked with SHARP since August of 2005. After earning Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Sociology, Rachel spent over two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkmenistan, remaining after the completion of her service to work with UNDP and UNICEF. After returning to the United States, she worked at the NGO Women’s Campaign International in Philadelphia before starting her graduate work at American University’s School of International Service. While finishing her M.A. in International Development, Rachel served as an intern, then consultant with the World Bank’s Health, Nutrition and Population Division in mental health, where her work focused on HIV/AIDS and conflict related issues.

Juhu Thukral- Director, Sex Workers Project, Urban Justice Center Juhu Thukral, J.D. is the Director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center. Her work on the legal concerns of sex workers combines Ms. Thukral’s background in working on economic justice, health, and safety issues for low-income women of color, particularly

76 immigrant women, and her past work on the labor rights of sex workers. Prior to her work at the UJC, she was a Fellowship Attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York and a Ruth Chance Law Fellow at Equal Rights Advocates in San Francisco. She is a co-author and co- investigator of the reports, Behind Closed Doors: An Analysis of Indoor Sex Work in New York City (2005), Revolving Door: An Analysis of Street-Based Prostitution in New York City (2003), and The Family Protection and Domestic Violence Intervention Act of 1995: Examining the Effects of Mandatory Arrest in New York City (2001).

Petra Timmerman- Coordinator, ICRSE Petra Timmerman currently works at the Prostitution Information Centre in Amsterdam, and as the coordinator of the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE). Based in the Netherlands, the main goals of ICRSE are to bring sex workers and their allies together on an international level: to further the social acceptance and respect for sex workers, to guarantee their civil rights and to organise the support of allies. The ICRSE is currently working to strengthen a European network of sex workers and their allies by promoting communication, information sharing and collective action.

Petra spent 9 years working in the sex industry while at the same time participating in sex worker activism in Canada and completing a 2nd BA in Criminology & Law and (almost) an MA in Sociology. In her own words, she “prefers doing politics to talking politics.”

Igor Vassilenko- Chairman, Public Foundation “Help” A native of Kazakhstan, in 1987 Igor Vassilenko graduated from the Karaganda State Medical Institute under the Treatment Faculty, Specialist: Psychiatrist – Narcologist. Upon graduation he began working as a narcologist at the Narcology Clinic for the Kostanai Oblast in Kostanai, Kazakhstan, providing medical, non-medical and psychotherapeutic assistance to addicts. In 1989 he became the head of the Department of Anonymous Aid for Drug and Alcohol Addicts, a position he held for 12 years.

In late 1996 Vassilenko assisted with the creation of the non-governmental organization Public Foundation Help. The mission of this organization is to provide medical and social assistance in forming healthier lifestyles, with a focus on issues regarding drug use. In November 1996 he was elected as president for PF Help, a position he still holds, making him responsible for planning, coordinating, monitoring and evaluating the strategy and work of the organization. PF Help’s main directions of work are educating the community about drug use and HIV/AIDS as a means of prevention, and conducting a harm reduction project for intravenous drug users.

Vassilenko has continued to develop his skills and gain new experiences. He has participated in many seminars and conferences. In September 2000 he began serving as the Technical Advisor for Central Asia for the International Harm Reduction Development program. In this capacity he assists with the development of various harm reduction and sex workers projects in Central Asia and Russia.

77 APPENDIX I

P R O G R A M O R G A N I Z E R S

OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE

The Open Society Institute (OSI) is a private operating and grantmaking foundation based in New York City that serves as the hub of the Open Society Network, a group of autonomous foundations and organizations in over 50 countries. This network implements a range of initiatives that aim to promote open society by shaping government policy and supporting education, media, public health and human and women’s rights, as well as social, legal and economic reform. To diminish and prevent the negative consequences of globalization, the Network seeks to foster global open society by increasing collaboration with other nongovernmental organizations, governments and international institutions. OSI was created in 1993 by investor and philanthropist George Soros to support his foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Those foundations were established, starting in 1984, to help former communist countries in their transition to democracy. The Network has expanded its geographic reach to include foundations and initiatives in Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus, Haiti, Latin America, Mongolia, Southeast Asia, Turkey and the United States. OSI also supports selective projects in other parts of the world.

OPEN SOCIETY FUND - LITHUANIA

Open Society Fund–Lithuania (OSFL) is an independent, non-governmental, non-profit organization, founded in 1990. Its primary aim has been to support the development of an open, democratic, civil society in Lithuania during its transitional period. Throughout the years of its activities the OSFL and its partners have initiated and stimulated changes in self-management and self-government, human rights, dissemination of multinational culture, education, science and information, and other areas that produce the greatest impact on the formation of a free and creative personality and civil responsibility. Nearly 50 million US dollars have gone towards the achievement of those objectives.

The mission of the OSFL is to foster an open society, to strengthen its ideals and values at the level of governmental institutions, to prevent the monopoly of power and single truth. The building of an open society is a never-ending process involving a continuous change of challenges in a dynamic reality, discussions on the values of an open society, fostering the skills of analytical thinking and meeting the challenges of the future. The Foundation works in its priority areas through the Science and Education, Culture, Law, Civic Initiatives, Information,

78 Public Health, Baltic-American Partnership and other programs. More information about OSFL activities is available at http://www.osf.lt and http://politika.osf.lt

The general aim of all the public health programs is to contribute to the implementation of the major social rights in the area of medical care, to influence state health policies, to facilitate changes in people’s attitude toward their health, to create equal possibilities for everybody, the most vulnerable in particular, to access medical care and relevant information by implementing the principle “healthy individual – healthy society”. This aim was pursued through ten programs of the Open Society Institute network.

Open Society Fund-Lithuania began overseeing logistical administration of the Open Society Institute’s Network Public Health Program’s Seminar Series in January 2003 (http://health.osf.lt).