Tag Archives: sex workers

Why I Traveled to the Sex Workers’ Freedom Festival

By Lily Goldschmidt  |  August 16, 2012

Members of AJWS’s Thai partner, EMPOWER, marched in the Sex Workers’ Freedom Festival in Calcutta, India.

Why would someone who works for the American Jewish World Service attend an international meeting of sex workers? At AJWS, we support people who chose to work as sex workers by making grants to their organizations and sending volunteers to work with them. As an organization committed to realizing human rights—including access to health care, economic autonomy, and control over one’s body and sexuality—we support sex workers who are organizing themselves to advance their own rights. That’s why, while many AJWS grantees participated in the International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC in late July, I was with more than 1,000 sex workers from 42 countries around the world who traveled to Kolkata (aka Calcutta), India for a Sex Workers’ Freedom Festival. The timing was no coincidence. Unfortunately, sex workers were not allowed by the US government to enter the United States for the AIDS conference, excluding people who must be part of the solution. Read More »

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Flawed Laws and Policies Will Not Right Our Wrongs

By Meena Saraswathi Seshu  |  July 16, 2012

Sex worker protest in Satara, India. Photo: Vidya Kulkarni.

Originally posted on the blog of Human Rights and HIV/AIDS: Now More Than Ever.

Just two months back, I marched with hundreds of sex workers in India to demand justice for Anu Mokal. Anu, a sex worker, was picked up by the police at a bus stop one evening, charged with ‘soliciting’ customers at the bus stand, abused and beaten up. As a consequence, Anu, who was then four months pregnant, suffered a miscarriage.

With the support of a collective of sex workers, Anu filed a complaint against the policemen who assaulted her. But two months down the road, has her complaint progressed any further? No. Has the promised State inquiry into the incident taken place? Unlikely. If it has, the results have not been made known. Has Anu been given a fair hearing? Not that I know of. (Instead, while she was complaining, she was told that sex workers cannot be mothers). Have the policemen faced any action for assaulting a woman in a public place, an action that was witnessed by others? No. Read More »

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Sex Work Is Not Sex Trafficking

By Jordan Namerow  |  June 19, 2012

Around the world, selling sex is as inflammatory an issue as abortion. It’s just as divisive, too—particularly among feminists and in the global human rights community.

At the 2012 AWID Forum—the largest women’s rights gathering in the world—sex workers’ rights took center stage. Panel discussions and plenary sessions featured sex workers from Burma, Thailand and Cambodia, along with myriad organizations—including several AJWS grantees—that protect sex workers from human rights violations. One grantee offered a clever metaphor to capture how sex work is relatively alien to women’s rights conversations. “Imagine you go to a restaurant with a friend,” she said. “You order beef. But your friend explains she is vegetarian, so she orders a plate of rice and vegetables. You look at her plate and think to yourself, ‘This is a bit strange; a little different.’ But it’s a choice on the menu. And it’s a choice she made herself, just like any other choice. That’s sex work—a choice.”

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Shame & Notoriety: Stopping Police Rape of Sex Workers in Uganda

By Avner Mizrahi, AJWS Volunteer Corps  |  July 15, 2011

Photo: Scott Davidson

Originally posted on Gender Across Borders: A Global Feminist Blog.

Last February, I sat across from 50 Ugandan prostitutes who sought my legal advice.  They wanted me to get the police to stop raping them. I was the legal consultant at Platform for Labour Action (PLA), a Ugandan non-governmental organization that provides marginalized workers with free legal services. The prostitutes had formed an association called the Lady Mermaids Bureau, which partnered with organizations like PLA to help the women receive medical, psychological, social, and legal support.

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