Tag: UPR

We Want Our Voices Heard! Seeking information for the National UPR Report to the U.N.

SWOP-NYC & SWANK action to "86 the violence"

SWOP-NYC and SWANK public action in NYC in support of UPR Recommendation 86 in 2011

The Best Practices Policy Project (BPPP), Desiree Alliance, and SWOP NYC are calling on sex workers rights advocates and allies to join us in reporting the human rights abuses experienced by sex workers, people in the sex trades, people profiled as sex workers or impacted by anti-sex work policing and policies, and related communities. The U.S. will soon be reviewed by the United Nations (U.N.) Human Rights Council on its human rights record in a process referred to as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). We are submitting a report to the U.N. and the U.N. needs to hear from you. Through this process, we create awareness before the international community, media outlets, other government officials, U.N. Human Rights Council members, and other stakeholders on the pressing issues facing the community.  This is an important tool for pressuring the government to make changes.

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Phoenix calling the United Nations: new ICCPR report

In late December 2013 the Best Practices Policy Project worked with SWOP-PHX to send a report to the Human Rights Committee for consideration during the review of how the United States has fared in meeting its obligations to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the “ICCPR”). The ICCPR is a key human rights treaty that protects amongst other things equality before the law, the rights of minorities, gender equality, freedom of speech, freedom from torture, ill-treatment, and arbitrary detention, and the right to a fair trial.

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ARTICLE: Using Human Rights to Hold the US Accountable

Advocates and researchers Kari Lerum, Kiesha McCurtis, Penelope Saunders, and Stephanie Wahab who were involved in the Universal Periodic Review process at different points in 2010 and 2011, have produced an article about the importance of Recommendation 86 and the UPR  for publication in the Anti-Trafficking Review (a peer reviewed journal published by the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women).

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A Call to Action on Sex Work and HIV

Organizers in the United States representing communities of sex workers and people in the sex trade have produced a call to action in regards to US policies affecting sex workers and people in the sex trade for distribution during the International AIDS Conference (IAC) to be held in Washington, D.C. in July 2012. The group of organizations and advocates organizing to highlight the rights of sex workers during the IAC are demanding that the U.S. government make good on its 2011 commitment “that no one should face violence or discrimination in access to public services based on… their status as a person in prostitution”

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