Contacts: N’Jaila Rhee and Jiselle Parker – newjerseyrua@gmail.com, Penelope Saunders – bestpracticespolicyproject@gmail.com, Cris Sardina – director@desireealliance.org, Akynos – blacksexworkercollective@gmail.com, Monica Jones – theoutlawprojectinc@gmail.com
Sex Worker Rights Groups have told the United Nations how the U.S. violates human rights: here is how the US Government responded
Newark, NJ – April 27th, 2021 – This week our coalition of sex worker rights organizations is releasing a response to the United States response to the Third Cycle 36th Session Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations. The UPR is held every five years to hold member countries responsible for their human rights records and provides one of the only ways that our communities can shine a light on rights violations going on inside the U.S. In March the United States formally responded to 347 recommendations about human rights made by the international community, accepting 280 (whole and in part) of them.
“The current U.S. administration has the opportunity to take progressive measures in identifying how people labor, how people survive, and their lived realities,” says Cris Sardina of Desiree Alliance, adding that,“there should be nothing about us without us and the United States needs to consult with sex worker rights leadership to make the changes needed to make the accepted recommendations meaningful.”
“Black trans people in the United States are facing catastrophic levels of police brutality,” says Monica Jones, founder of the Arizona-based Outlaw Project. “We are pleased that member states of the UN have provided such clear recommendations regarding current policing practices targeting transgender people and that the U.S. accepted them. It is now time to make those recommendations matter by ending the violence experienced in our communities.”
“Ten years ago the U.S. accepted UPR Recommendation 86, requiring it to take action to address the vulnerability of sex workers and transgender people to violence and human rights abuses,” comments Penelope Saunders of the Best Practices Policy Project (BPPP). “We are gratified to see the U.S. accept new recommendations about police brutality targeting people of African descent, human rights abuses faced by transgender people, abuses of migrants, the impact of COVID-19, and gender based violence. However, these commitments will remain unfulfilled and Recommendation 86 will remain words on a page until the United States takes action.”
Previously in 2019, the Outlaw Project, Desiree Alliance, BPPP, the Black Sex Worker Collective, and New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance submitted a shadow report to the United Nations about rights violations and then spent a year meeting with policy makers despite the barriers of the pandemics of COVID19 and anti-Black police violence.
To download a full copy of the 2021 response report pls visit: http://www.bestpracticespolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Post-Report-Responses-to-the-Third-Cycle-36th-Session-of-the-Universal-Periodic-Review-.pdf
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