Tag: UN Women

The Rights of Sex Workers in the Digital Age #CSW67

Our sex worker coalition holds space at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and this year our session will be moderator by Monica Jones (Founder and Director of the Outlaw Project). She will welcome international and local advocates including Sinnamon Love of BIPOC-AIC, N’Jaila Rhee of NJRUA, Beyonce Karungi, Trans Equality Uganda and Nosipho Vidima representing The BSWC.

Time: 6.15pm, March 9, 2023

Location: 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017 (on the corner of East 44th Street)

Room: CCUN 2nd Floor

How to reserve your spot? Be there at 6 pm to get your spot. We may also update with an Eventbrite to assure seating. Keep an eye on the FB Event Page for more updates

More about the event: Sex workers’ rights are at the forefront of many social movements that are central to human rights for women and sex workers are innovators in technologies in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all. This in-person panel discussion will showcase sex worker leadership from across the globe to discuss digital technologies, online spaces and rights questions pertaining to access for women. We will describe how laws restricting sexuality, including sex workers, but more generally, limit women’s right to digital assembly (a vital way in which we all globally organize due to the COVID-19 pandemic), strategies for women’s rights in online spaces that defend our bodies, our speech, and the free flow of ideas. We will also review areas of multilateral and global policies that affirm the rights of sex workers and how fears about digital life are challenging these rights.


MARCH 17 EVENT during CSW61

CSW61PhotobyPJSTarr

During the Commission on the Status of Women in NYC we will co-host the parallel event Sex Workers’ Rights, Economic Empowerment & the World of Work.  The event will be moderated by Monica Jones and will describe the policies that allow sex workers to thrive and defend their rights. Speakers include Beyonce Karungi of Transgender Equality Uganda and Elena Reynaga of RedTraSex.

Friday, March 17 at 12:30 PM – 2 PM
Location: 221 E 52nd St, New York, NY 10022

The event is co-sponsored by The Outlaw Project, Best Practices Policy Project, New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance, American Jewish World Services, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and other groups. Follow @njrua for live tweeting of the event by Janet Duran.

Find out more information at www.facebook.com/events/1943993132487591/

UN Women’s 2 Week Extension Fails to Fix its Process

On September 7th of this year, UN Women distributed an email with the subject line: “Consultation Seeking Views for UN Women.” In the text of the email, UN Women sought comments for a forthcoming policy on sex work. Sex worker rights and other advocates raised multiple concerns with UN Women’s process and its proposal to draft another U.N. agency policy on sex work. They pointed out that UN Women failed to conduct in-person regional and national consultations for its process, opting instead for a brief, month-long online comment period that will exclude countless voices of directly impacted people. The questions UN Women asks sex workers and others to answer in order to participate in the consultation reference bureaucratic UN language and processes without providing adequate explanation.

 

Prior engagement by relevant UN agencies on this issue, including UNAIDS, has involved meaningful, lengthy sex worker consultation processes and arrived at policies that uphold human rights protections for sex workers and people engaged in sex trades. UN Women, as a cosponsor of UNAIDS, therefore already has a position supporting decriminalizing sex work as part of a broader agenda of human rights protections for sex workers. While the framing of its consultation process appears directed at fully reconsidering these questions, advocates pointed out that it is the existing policy that must be UN Women’s minimum standard and guide for any further elaboration of its approach to sex work. In addition, Best Practices Policy Project expressed its alarm to UN Women at the fact that the Policy Director in charge of UN Women’s process, Purna Sen, has publicly indicated her belief that sex work should be abolished, and cannot therefore be said to support human rights for sex workers.

 

UN women sent an email on Oct. 17 to policy advocates stating, “UN Women has heard the calls for an extended period of consulting time.” The email announced a deadline extension of two weeks for submissions. This deadline extension does not represent a genuine effort on the part of UN Women to create a truly consultative process. Two weeks is an inadequate amount of time to resolve the issues that advocates raised, including the lack of in-person local and regional consultations, the lack of engagement of sex workers in shaping the process to begin with, the lack of transparency in its process, and UN Women’s failure to look to current UN agency policies on the issue as a minimum standard and guide. Without addressing these foundational issues, UN Women’s process is still illegitimate and may do more to harm human rights protections than to assert them. By responding to calls for transparency and meaningful in-person consultations with a simple fifteen-day extension, UN Women is sending the message that communities that face discrimination don’t need to be meaningfully consulted—that UN agency officials and resource-rich NGOs can simply represent them. Ignoring the feminist principle of meaningful consultation with groups most impacted by an issue at hand sets a deeply harmful precedent and example for the broader UN community, and it must not be allowed to continue.

The Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) is continuing to call for signatories to their petition to put pressure on UN Women about the process. The petition is available in 5 language (English, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Russian) here: https://action.manifesta.net/efforts/call-for-un-women-to-meaningfully-consult-sex-workers

The NSWP is also encouraging those concerned about the process to highlight the issues in social media. The Best Practices Policy Project supports these actions and encourages all our allies to continue speaking out on the issues.

 

Sample tweets:

 

We have signed this submission to @UN_Women with 86 orgs for their consultation on #sexwork http://tinyurl.com/zf62zxx #sexworkiswork

 

We are one of 86 signatories of this letter to @UN_Women with #sexwork-ers and allies http://tinyurl.com/zf62zxx

 

We ask @UN_Women to meaningfully include #sexwork-ers in the development of their policy on sex work http://tinyurl.com/zf62zxx

 

Please sign the @GlobalSexWork petition. @UN_Women, meaningfully include sex workers in policy development! http://tinyurl.com/gmp3hqe

 

We support the human rights of #sexwork-ers and have signed this @UN_Women petition http://tinyurl.com/gmp3hqe please sign and share!

 

Sample Facebook messages:

 

We co-authored this submission to UN Women with 86 sex workers’ rights and women’s rights organisations. We are calling on UN Women to engage in a meaningful consultation with sex workers in the development of their policy on sex work. http://www.creaworld.org/announcements/response-un-women-s-call-consultation-seeking-views-un-women-approach-sex-work-sex

 

Please sign and share the Global Network of Sex Work Projects’ Petition. They are petitioning UN Women to engage in a meaningful consultation with sex workers as they develop their policy on sex work. https://action.manifesta.net/petitions/call-for-un-women-to-meaningfully-consult-sex-workers-as-they-develop-policy-on-sex-work?preferred_locale=en

 

Please sign and share this NSWP petition. They are urging UN Women to adopt a rights affirming approach to sex workers’ rights and to consult with sex workers in the development of their policy on sex work. https://action.manifesta.net/petitions/call-for-un-women-to-meaningfully-consult-sex-workers-as-they-develop-policy-on-sex-work?preferred_locale=en

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

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