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

This 80-page report synthesises presentations, debates, insights, and action points from a June 2006 meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa which was convened to explore how legal and regulatory environments affect sex workers' health and human rights, around the world.

Co-organised 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. According to OSI, sex workers' marginalised social and political status often inhibits their ability to organise 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. The meeting was part of an effort to advance sex workers' health and rights, with a focus on strategies for empowering and involving sex workers and activists at all levels. Participants sought to map, by sharing on-the-ground knowledge, key laws governing prostitution and sex work globally and to assess how these regulations might impact sex workers' health and rights. In addition, the gathering was an attempt to foster dialogue both within and among various sex worker-related interest groups, hopefully spurring connections that might lead to continued dialogue, more responsive research, and more effective networking and advocacy.

The resource begins by sharing lessons learned, focusing on the barriers impeding self-representation - thought to be central to effective advocacy and useful policy results. The second panel focused on law and legal frameworks at the country level; highlights from the discussions are shared here. Panelists in the next session, titled "Mobilizing Human Rights Tools and Standards", presented the experience of national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to advance sex workers' health and rights. One communication-specific insight to emerge from this session involves the need to ensure that the experiences and priorities of sex workers are reflected in the development of human rights tools and strategies by involving them as full participants in the development of these tools. Yet, 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 capacity for advocacy.

Along these lines, two additional panel discussions focused on bringing sex workers' voices and insights to bear in designing advocacy and programming strategies. For example, the next session on "harm reduction" indicates that, while many were skeptical of this approach, some speakers agreed that it could be useful - but only if sex workers participate 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 marginalised, as opposed to sex work itself). Following a discussion of specific issues such as police abuse, gender, HIV/AIDS, and labour rights, new ways of creating ethical and effective images and stories for advocacy are described. Here, again, participation was a central theme: It was felt that NGOs, governments and bilateral organisations should engage with sex workers on the issues sex workers care about, not the issues that allies think they should care about. Complexities involving media representation are also described here; for instance, many speakers commented on the difference between their "dramatic" portrayal as victims, and the more challenging but ultimately more ethical process of sex workers speaking about their own lives, interests, and needs.

As indicated here, the meeting closed with consideration of next steps as well as a discussion of specific tools and strategies. One key point to emerge from this session was the importance of building accountable and ethical coalitions between sex workers and allies - a process that requires that allies "listen and learn". This strategy is envisioned as crucial in efforts to, for example, develop a booklet/web page with "Golden Rules" for working with sex workers, crafting advocacy materials for sex-worker rights-based policy reform (increased use of creative media and information technology is a priority, participants noted), and creating a "health and rights advocacy" toolkit for use in local-level workshops for sex workers (with modules including worksheets, hands-on exercises, and case studies of successful rights-based sex policy reform). Participants also called on scholars, NGOs, sex workers, and allies to create both scholarly and policy/advocacy-friendly analytic reports focusing on specific sex work themes.

In short, networking and participation - at various levels - are understood to be key strategies for sex workers, allied communities, donors and others seeking to: forge a common understanding of key health and social justice issues; identify common goals and priorities; and mobilise around targeted advocacy campaigns to achieve sex workers' health and rights. To make this possible, "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."

Click here to access a related peer-reviewed summary on the Health e Communication website, and to participate in peer review.