Macklean from Uganda of the UNAIDS Global Working Group on Sex Work & HIV from Naomi Akers on Vimeo.

In October 2009, the St. James Infirmary Executive Director was appointed to a Global Working Group on Sex Work and HIV Policy to UNAIDS. With its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, is an innovative joint venture, bringing together the efforts and resources of ten UN system organizations in the global AIDS response.
Cosponsors include UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency), UNICEF (UN National Children’s Fund), WFP (UN World Food Program), UNDP (UN Development Programme), UNFPA (UN Population Fund), UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime), ILO (International Labor Organization), UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), WHO (World Health Organization) and the World Bank.
In 2007, UNAIDS released a “Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work” that demonstrated a clear departure from human rights-based, evidence-informed approaches to an emphasis on eliminating sex work altogether as an HIV prevention strategy. Shortly afterwards, the Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), held a meeting with UNAIDS to comment on the 2007 version, noting that it departed from principles of human rights-based and evidence-based programming and policy.  In the meeting NSWP demanded that UNAIDS make changes to the Guidance Note that included meaningful participation and input from the global sex worker community. A new version of the Guidance Note has been drafted, with key global recommendations, including, but not limited to the decriminalization of sex workers, injection drug users and men who have sex with men to further the critical agenda of universal access to HIV prevention and treatment.   However several problems still existed with the updated Guidance Note.
In 2009, UNAIDS and NSWP established The Global Working Group on Sex Work and HIV Policy, a coalition convened by NSWP, to make changes to the Guidance Note with specific policy recommendations that addressed HIV interventions and access to HIV treatment for sex workers rather than trying to eliminate the world’s oldest profession.  As a member of the North American Network of Sex Work Project (NA-NSWP), the Executive Director of the St. James Infirmary was elected as the North American representative to the Global Working Group on Sex Work and HIV Prevention .
In November 2009 and June 2010, the ED was flown to Geneva, Switzerland as part of her work with the Global Working Group on Sex Work and HIV Policy to UNAIDS. The Global Working Group identified several issues in the UNAIDS Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work that needed to be addressed:
1.    Addressing criminalization of sex work and repressive law enforcement practices as barriers to universal access.
2.    Reduction of demand for sex work vs. the reduction of demand for unsafe paid sex.
3.    The conflation of human trafficking and sex work and consideration of the harmful effects on sex workers and universal access to HIV services of some anti-trafficking measures
4.    Economic empowerment of sex workers and a critical examination of mandatory programmes aimed at exiting sex work as opposed to programs that provided optional alternatives and/or professional support within the industry with respect to universal access to HIV.
As a result of these four issues in the Guidance Note that needed to be addressed, UNAIDS agreed to postpone publication and distribution of the Guidance Note until the Global Working Group could draft complimentary papers to the Guidance Note that would clarify the position of UNAIDS in regards to the rights of sex workers and the harms of criminalization, end demand policies, anti-trafficking polices and exiting programs to the mission of universal access to HIV prevention for sex workers.
In addition to working on drafting four annex papers to accompany the Guidance Note, the ED will work with the Global Working Group and UNAIDS to:  identify and secure the financial resources required to support sex workers rights regional and global networks; ensure meaningful participation of sex worker organisations in regional and national consultations and trainings; identify five or six countries and the process for following the roll-out of programmes on HIV and sex work, including the possibility of country visits for documenting and sharing good practices. While the efforts of the Global Working Group are primarily aimed at efforts for the global south and developing nations, the Guidance Note is an important policy guide for national and local efforts as well.

Jana from Peru on UNAIDS Global Working Group on Sex Work & HIV from Naomi Akers on Vimeo.

New York-based advocacy organization Sex Work Awareness recently implemented its first day-long Speak Up media training workshop, which took place at the Harm Reduction Coalition in mid-April. At the end of the day, the workshop participants made a public service announcement video.

Contact: Kimberlee Cline
Phone: 877-776-2004 ext. 2
Email: press(at)swopusa(dot)org

This December 17th marks the 7th annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Events are being planned in over two dozen countries and in dozens of cities. In San Francisco, sex workers Annie Sprinkle and Kimberlee Cline will host a remembrance ritual and a solidarity stroll down Market Street.

This annual event was created in 2003 in response to Gary Ridgway a.k.a. the Green River Killer’s trial and his brutal statements about choosing prostitutes because he could “get away with it.” Many believe that the Green River Killer did in fact get away with it in the Seattle area for over 20 years because of law enforcement’s disinterest in solving the murders of prostitutes and society’s general acceptance of violence against sex workers.

“If the victims had been teachers, nurses or secretaries or other women, I suspect–as Ridgway did– that the killer would have been caught much sooner.” Says Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D. a former prostitute and adult film star of twenty years, turned sexologist and artist. “While I personally feel that I came out of the sex industry a winner, I’m aware that there are those that aren’t as lucky as I was and are real victims of bad laws, whore-phobic hate crimes, rape and worse. It’s so important to remember those people, and to let the public know we care and we need and deserve safer working conditions.”

In 2008, San Francisco voters narrowly turned down Proposition K, an initiative that would have created more safety measures for sex workers in the City. “There is a distinct difference between consensually providing sexual services and being forced or trafficked. Efforts by opponents of Prop K to conflate these two very different scenarios confused voters. I’m speaking out about this because I think that when voters hear real stories from people like me and understand that criminalization is doing all of us more harm than good, they will support our reform efforts,” stated Kimberlee Cline, a woman working in San Francisco independently as an escort and adult film model.

Sex workers, their friends, the victims families, clients, supporters and people who want to learn more about these issues are invited to come together at Femina Potens, an art gallery owned and run by sex worker Madison Young for a memorial vigil ceremony. “As sex workers we open up our souls, our bodies, our minds and our spirits to guide others through to sexual pleasure and enlightenment.,” says Young, “We are educators, we are mentors, we are gladiators and athletes, performance artists using our bodies as a material for your entertainment and pleasure. We are survivors of a world that is so often ashamed by its sexual desires and frightened to engage in communication about sexual needs. This day, this moment is to acknowledge the damage that this fear, shame and hatred has inflicted upon our fellow sex workers. And I do hope that through our awareness and visibility we might prevent further injustices and cultivate compassion.”

After the ceremony will be a Solidarity Stroll down Market street, with people carrying red umbrellas (the symbol of the sex workers rights movement) and signs with names and photos of those victims that will be remembered. The stroll will end at the St. James Infirmary.

Media are welcome at the pre-event press conference, at the memorial, and for the stroll.

For more information about the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, see Annie Sprinkle’s article “Remembering Our Dead and Wounded”

* Who: Annie Sprinkle, Kimberlee Cline, SWOP-SF
* What: International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
* When: Press Conference 6:00-7:00pm
Ceremony 7:00-8:30pm
Solidarity Stroll: to the St. James Infirmary 8:30- 9:30pm

* Where: Femina Potens Art Gallery
2199 Market St
San Francisco, CA 94114

On the following evening a night of spoken word performance by Bay Area sex workers will be hosted at the Center for Sex and Culture. Details:

Ecstacies & Elegies: In Honor of International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
Friday, December 18th, 2009
7:30 doors, 8pm show
Center for Sex & Culture, 1519 Mission Street @ 11th, San Francisco
$10-20 sliding scale (nobody turned away)

Speakers (confirmed):

Naomi Akers, St. James Infirmary (San Francisco, California)

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI)

John Hassell, UNAIDS (Washington, DC)

The Honorable Jim McDermott (D-WA)

Michele Moloney-Kitts, Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator

Kolawole Muyideen Oreoluwa, Youth Action for Development

Dr. Steave Nemande, Alternatives (Douala, Cameroon)

This event is FREE and will be at the

Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill
400 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Room: Regency A
Washington, DC 20001

Register Here

Come show your support, learn about HIV research and the HIV vaccine trials and have some fun!

Call your legislators today! (Numbers below)

The Rhode Island legislature is currently considering a bill, HB5044A, which would recriminalize indoor prostitution. The main justification being offered for passage of the bill is that it is absolutely necessary to prevent and address trafficking into prostitution. Sex Worker Project’s experience has been that arrests for prostitution related offenses are more likely to hurt rather than help victims of trafficking, and rarely lead to identification and assistance of victims.

A VOTE IS LIKELY TO HAPPEN THIS WEEK, SO CALL NOW. (see
NEWS on this)

Human Trafficking is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. BUT: Criminalizing Sex Work to Combat Trafficking is harmful to ALL sex workers AND victims of trafficking!

What you can do: Please call or e-mail the members of the RI Senate Judiciary Committee today to let them know that this is not the way to help victims of trafficking!

They are under tremendous pressure to pass this legislation, and need to hear from people across the country!

Senator Leo R. Blais
401-823-4536
sen-blais@rilin. state.ri. us

Senator Maryellen Goodwin
401-272-3102
sen-goodwin@ rilin.state. ri.us

Senator Paul V. Jabour
401-751-3300
401-276-5594
sen-jabour@rilin. state.ri. us

Senator Charles J. Levesque
401-683-9194
sen-levesque@ rilin.state. ri.us

Senator Erin P. Lynch
401-739-8500
sen-lynch@rilin. state.ri. us

Senator Christopher B. Maselli
sen-maselli@ rilin.state. ri.us

Senator John F. McBurney
401-725-2459
sen-mcburney@ rilin.state. ri.us

Senator Michael J. McCaffrey
401-739-7576
sen-mccaffrey@ rilin.state. ri.us

Senator Harold M. Metts
401-272-0112
sen-metts@rilin. state.ri. us

Senator Rhoda E. Perry
401-751-7165
sen-perry@rilin. state.ri. us

Taking the Pledge is a 13-minute film featuring sex workers from Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Thailand and more! They describe the problems created by the ‘anti-prostitution pledge’ required to receive USAID and PEPFAR funds.

In English, Khmer, Thai, French, Portuguese and Bengali, with English subtitles. Watch in full-screen mode to read the subtitles.

Produced by the Network of Sex Work Projects.

Erin Siegal shot the interviews and edited the film.

The process for choosing Las Vegas as our next conference site was a lengthy one, that first involved a broadly distributed community survey that revealed the top three location sites for the next conference: Washington DC, Las Vegas and Tucson.  Next, the Desiree Alliance Board of Directors, a working group of sex workers and allies, assessed all three cities for viability by conducting interviews with various sex worker community members (stakeholders) in each of the three cities, and another survey that specifically measured “people power” and volunteer commitment to manage all conference logistics. After 6 months of this process, Las Vegas was chosen for both its affordability and on-the-ground commitment from volunteers.

For those of you who have attended the Desiree Alliance conference in the past, you will be pleased to know that next year’s conference in Las Vegas will include pre-planning preparations for the next (2011 or 2012) Desiree Alliance National Sex Worker conference to be held in the dynamic town of Washington DC.

On behalf of the Desiree Alliance Board of Directors, we would like to thank all of you who contributed to this process and for your patience.  We are thrilled and excited about another hot and stimulating conference where we can learn, share and network with all of you.  More than ever, we are eager to meet new community members.

See you next year in Las Vegas!

Dear Friends,
There is debate within the movement about how to address the numerous injustices that we see, committed against sex workers in the name of combating trafficking. GAATW has always supported decriminalization of prostitutionⁱ, and their anti-trafficking work is informed by sex worker rights issues.

This petition represents one strategy.  I encourage sex worker groups and advocates to review this material, and visit the GAATW website, to see if this strategy works for you.  I did sign on!

Carol Leigh
BAYSWAN

member, SWOP San Francisco

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-look-listen.html
GAATW Web site: http://www.gaatw.org
Background

Over the last ten years, human trafficking is gaining increasing global attention; many governments around the world are developing policies and laws to combat it, and hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent worldwide. The logical next step would be to examine these efforts to combat trafficking to assess how anti-trafficking measures are being implemented (including the way money is being spent) and what consequences they are causing.

We urgently need a rigorous review of the situation. Increasingly, human rights defenders and activists world-wide are concerned that these anti-trafficking measures are even leading to further violations. We need to ask what is actually being done by governments to prevent trafficking and to protect the rights of those that have been trafficked. Is it working? Who is benefiting? Are the rights of people migrating, or returning to their home countries, better protected by anti-trafficking policies?

CASE: The Indian Government considered women migrant workers a “particularly vulnerable lot” and “issued an order prohibiting any female household worker below the age of 30 from being employed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under any circumstance.” The concern was that women may be sexually/physically abused or trafficked into exploitative conditions. To avoid this ban, women have to take riskier migration options than their male counterparts, making them more vulnerable to abuse at the destination point.” (Collateral Damage, India chapter, GAATW p.129).

As part of our work to fight against trafficking in persons, we need to hold governments accountable to their international human rights obligations by reviewing their efforts and make appropriate changes to ensure that all anti-trafficking measures are effective and human-rights based.

This petition is part of the GAATW Stop, Look, Listen! urgent action calling for the implementation of a review mechanism and will be presented to governments during the fourth conference of states parties to the UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime and its Protocols (including the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons) – October 2010.

SIGN THE PETITION BELOW, AND SUPPORT THE URGENT ACTION TO CALL FOR A REVIEW MECHANISM OF THE INTERNATIONAL UN PROTOCOL ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-look-listen.html

You may also want to join the facebook cause.
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/296501/15643139?m=1b2abeb2

If you are too broke this year to donate, you can still help out by volunteering your time to help the St. James Infirmary, in collaboration with SF AIDS Walk, count checks on Tuesday July 21 or Wednesday July 22nd.  Shifts are only 3 hours and go from 9am-9pm either day. Refreshments will be provided.

All check counters will report to the offices of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation at 995 Market Street, 2nd Floor Conference Room, on Market Street @ 6th Street.

*Volunteers who work the shift on Wednesday, July 22 will report to the AIDS Walk San Francisco Office at 121 Second Street, 4th Floor, on 2nd street between Mission and Howard.

If you would like to volunteer please email or show up at the addresses above and DON’T FORGET TO say you are with the St. James Infirmary!!