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WEBINAR OCT 18, 4pm ET: Moving Forward from Sex Work Diversion Programs to Harm Reduction and Rights

October 4th, 2017 · · Events No comments - Tags: ,

IntersectionalHairLogoAwareness of the negative impact of arresting and incarcerating people for engaging in sex work is growing nationwide in the United States. This webinar discusses the place of diversion programs in efforts to build health and rights for sex workers and communities routinely targeted by anti-prostitution law enforcement. Speakers include Monica Jones (CEO of The Outlaw Project), Jules Kim (CEO of Scarlet Alliance, Australia) and other experts in the field of sex worker rights. This webinar is convened by the Outlaw Project and BPPP with the assistance of NJRUA on social media.

Title: Moving Forward from Sex Work Diversion Programs to Harm Reduction and Rights: Putting Diversion and Prisons Out of Business

TIME: October 18 at 4 pm US Eastern time

RSVP for the webinar details.

Key issues explored during the webinar:

  1. What is diversion? This section will consider how diversion functions and what we know about its effectiveness and financial incentives in relation to the prison industrial complex.
  2. Should organizers and service providers have to choose between being for rights or supporting diversion in order to be able to help sex workers? This section will describe how debates about diversion have been framed in a binary fashion, inadvertently creating divisions in sectors that are already under-resourced and oppressed in the US.
  3. Placing diversion in a bigger rights affirming context with the expertise of our global partners and intersectional thinking from our US partners. In this section we will explore if elements of diversion can be reframed as harm reduction and how to think about ending the business of diversion and prisons as our ultimate goals.

Women’s March 2017: As Expected, the Erasure of Sex Workers Rights

January 17th, 2017 · · Campaigns, News Archive No comments

UPDATE January 18, 2017: Yesterday wording affirming the rights of sex workers was returned to the Women’s March Statement. The attempt to erase the presence of sex worker rights and sex workers’ voices in feminist spaces was reversed because of widespread public outcry. We must be honest with ourselves that until the criminalization and stigmatization of sex workers’ lives and work ends, sex workers can be erased with the stroke of a pen, one phone call to the cops and by putting up another piece of anti-sex worker legislation (yes, it is so easy to pass those laws under the guise of ending trafficking). The threat is always there. And so resistance is needed daily. We honor the fortitude of Janet Mock for her clear statement on why she wrote the line, “…and we stand in solidarity with sex workers’ rights movements.” And how and why she rejects the “continual erasure of sex workers from our feminisms.” Historically and today the people who have primarily stood up boldly for sex worker rights have been transgender women of color. We remain committed to highlighting the leadership of transgender people of color for the rights of sex workers.

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January 17, 2017: The presence of anti-sex worker rights advocate Gloria Steinem as co-chair of the Women’s March this weekend in Washington, D.C. meant that it was almost certain that the Women’s March would back away from its surprisingly forward thinking statement on sex work.The original statement read, “We believe that all workers – including domestic and farm workers – must have the right to organize and fight for a living minimum wage, and that unions and other labor associations are critical to a healthy and thriving economy for all. Undocumented and migrant workers must be included in our labor protections, and we stand in solidarity with sex workers’ rights movements.”

Today advocates noted that the Women’s March Statement has been changed to remove any mention of sex worker’s rights. The statement now reads, “Undocumented and migrant workers must be included in our labor protections, and we stand in solidarity with all those exploited for sex and labor.”

It is not so much that Steinem directly put pressure on the Women’s March to erase sex workers’ rights organizing from the page–though she most certainly would have–but more that the agreement to place an advocate who has so clearly spoken out against both the rights of transgender people and sex workers as a co-chair means that these issues are contested by the groups and advocates in the lead. In 2017, failing to recognize sex workers’ rights in the United States is simply unacceptable. Honoring both sex worker and trans leadership is the way forward.

Concerns about UN Women’s process for developing a policy on the rights of sex workers

October 14th, 2016 · · Campaigns, Policy Updates No comments - Tags:

The Best Practices Policy Project has submitted a letter of concern to UN Women about their email survey to ostensibly develop an organizational policy position on sex work. The full text of our letter of concern is below and is also available for download.

Sex worker organizations and allies have critiqued this UN process because it uses complex bureaucratic language and is occurring on an extremely short time frame (UN Women’s consultation ends October 16, 2016 October 31 extended deadline). BPPP is also concerned that process is biased towards harmful policies because it is being directed by UN Women Policy Director Purna Sen who has written that prostitution is a form of violence against women and who has dismissed sex worker rights organizing.

Writing a letter of concern about the process to the Executive Director of UN Women by email to <phumzile.mlambo-ngcuka@unwomen.org> is one of several actions groups can take, including signing this Call for UN Women to Meaningfully Consult Sex Workers as they Develop Policy on Sex Work and engaging with the UN Women email consultation process critically by October 16. The NSWP has sent in a response which is a useful example of how we may engage with this process.

October 11, 2016

H.E. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations
Executive Director, UN Women
c.c.       H.E. Lakshmi Puri
Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations
Deputy Executive Director for Intergovernmental Support and Strategic Partnerships, UN Women
c.c        H.E. Yannick Glemarec
Assistant Secretary-General
Deputy Executive Director for Policy and Programmes, UN Women

Dear H.E. Mlambo-Ngcuka,

We write to echo fellow human rights advocates’ concerns about UN Women’s process for developing a policy on the rights of sex workers, and to call for UN Women to support a human rights-based approach to sex work and the sex trades. Best Practices Policy Project (BPPP) supports organizations and advocates working with sex workers, people in the sex trade and related communities in the United States, by producing materials for policy environments, addressing research and academic concerns and providing technical assistance. As other advocates have already pointed out, UN Women has failed to conduct in-person regional and national consultations for its process, opting instead for a brief online comment period that will exclude countless voices of directly impacted people. Prior engagement by relevant UN agencies on this issue has involved meaningful sex worker consultation processes and arrived at policies that uphold human rights protections for sex workers and people engaged in sex trades. These documents should guide UN Women’s further engagement on this issue.
We add that this type of process places enormous stress on sex worker organizations, which generally operate with limited or no funding, in environments marked by stigma and ostracism. Across the globe, these organizations are engaged in local, regional, and international struggles to eliminate discrimination, violence and other abuses their members face at the hands of police and other state and private actors. They struggle for the realization of their and their families’ basic human needs, including adequate health services, housing, food, water, education, and economic wellbeing. While it is critical that sex worker organizations be consulted for a policy that will directly impact their access to human rights, it is also important that agencies like UN Women recognize and accommodate for the obstacles they face. This means UN Women should meaningfully involve sex workers in developing the very process through which they will inform any policy that affects them, in order to ensure its accessibility. The principle of meaningful consultation of those most impacted by an issue at hand is at the heart of a feminist approach to social change, and one which we recommend UN Women adopt.
We are alarmed that UN Women’s process is being directed by Policy Director Purna Sen, who has equated sex work with violence against women, and who has portrayed the movement for sex workers’ human rights as one located in wealthier countries. Someone who has taken such a clear stance against recognizing sex workers’ human rights should not be in a position to direct policy development that will impact sex workers on a global scale. Her perspective fails to recognize the important leadership of extensive sex worker collectives and organizations in developing and global south countries. We are concerned that her views have already shaped UN Women’s current process, which has failed to ensure sex workers in developing countries, and sex workers with limited resources in developed countries, are meaningfully consulted.
We echo the call for UN Women to meaningfully consult sex workers across the globe in developing any policy related to sex work, and to ensure their statements uphold sex workers’ human rights and recognize sex workers’ agency and self-determination. We further ask that UN Women follow and publicize transparent, established research standards to determine both the quality of information it receives, and the amount of consultation with directly impacted communities necessary to inform its policy. At this juncture, we believe that without significant changes, the process UN Women has embarked on is neither legitimate nor helpful to the struggle for human rights.

Sincerely,
Best Practices Policy Project

 

UN Women: Sex Workers Will Not Be Silenced

September 28th, 2016 · · Campaigns 3 comments - Tags: ,

UN Women has sent out an email survey to develop an organizational policy position on sex work. Sex worker lead organizations and allies have critiqued this process. Ruth Morgan Thomas of the Network of Sex Work Projects has said that this process is “not an accountable, transparent way to connect with sex workers” because it uses complex bureaucratic UN language and because the process is occurring on an extremely short time frame (UN Women’s consultation ends October 16, 2016 extended to Oct 31, 2016).

BPPP received an email from UN Women about the consultation as a follow up to a meeting we had with the agency earlier this year. We agree with our colleagues that the process is extremely difficult to access. Further, confusion within UN Women regarding their own ability to hear the voices of sex workers calls the consultation process into question. Purna Sen, the Director of UN Women’s Policy Division who is leading the consultation process and the development of the policy, has written that prostitution is a form of violence against women and was a keynote speaker in 2007 with Catherine MacKinnon and Sheila Jeffreys.

What can sex worker lead organizations and their allies do? Here are some suggestions.

  1. sign this Call for UN Women to Meaningfully Consult Sex Workers as they Develop Policy on Sex Work and/or publicize the petition on social media and in your networks.
  2. develop and share our own organizational stances on UN Women’s policy process and what we want. We can send our own letters of concern to the Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (the Executive Director of UN Women), comment in the media, post about the policy process, and make our own demands clearly about how to have a better process, up to and including saying that UN Women should not proceed with a policy process at all at this time.
  3. engage with UN Women email consultation process critically and on our own terms, and support sex worker lead organizations to engage in the process should they wish. UN Women must acknowledge our responses. The NSWP has sent in a response which is a useful example of how we may engage with this process.

How to send a response to UN Women’s consultation: UN Women is asking for “people and groups” to send responses to the following three questions to consultation@unwomen.org by 16 October 2016 with the subject title “Written submission.” According to the UN Women, “these questions relate to the current framing of the UN’s work, around Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.” However, people do not have to respond to the questions as UN Women has framed them, and can simply write in their own terms about the ways in which sex workers’ human rights should be actualized. According to UN Women emails should include “your name” and “organization and title, if relevant.” Please note that UN Women will post all responses online, but, “if you do not want your submission to be posted for reasons of confidentiality or for any other reason, please note this on your response.”

1) The 2030 Agenda commits to universality, human rights and leaving nobody behind. How do you interpret these principles in relation to sex work/trade or prostitution?

2) The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out to achieve gender equality and to empower all women and girls. The SDGs also include several targets pertinent to women’s empowerment, such as: a) reproductive rights; b) women’s ownership of land and assets; c) building peaceful and inclusive societies; d) ending the trafficking of women; e) eliminating violence against women. How do you suggest that policies on sex work/trade/prostitution can promote such targets and objectives?

3) The sex trade is gendered. How best can we protect women in the trade from harm, violence, stigma and discrimination?

UN Women is asking that responses to the above questions be kept to a maximum of 1,500 words in total.