Category: Reports

CSW70 Statements Submitted

October 10th, 2025 · · Reports Comments Off on CSW70 Statements Submitted - Tags: ,

Sex workers and trans folks have advised the Commission on the Status of Women of key issues communities are confronting in the United States and globally. In March 2026 (next year), the Commission will discuss “[e]nsuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and addressing structural barriers.” The Commission will also review five year progress towards, “[w]omen’s full and effective participation and decision making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls (agreed conclusions of the sixty-fifth session).”

The Sex Workers Rights Coalition submitted a 1500 word statement via BPPP, stating that, “justice cannot exist in spaces where fear, stigma, and criminalization persist. To achieve equality, we must build systems that see, hear, and protect every woman and girl including those society has pushed to the margins.” Read the full report here or download the report as a pdf.

The Best Practices Policy Project signed on to a collective statement by the LGBTI Caucus. The caucus stated that, “[e]nsuring access to justice, participation, and protection from violence requires deliberate attention to the lived experiences of LBTI+ persons, reflected in national laws, global policies, and multilateral mechanisms.” Download the LGBTI Caucus report as a pdf.

Being Heard – 2025 UN report

May 20th, 2025 · · Art, Reports No comments

We spent 18 months preparing, speaking to folks and gathering information to submit not one but TWO reports to the United Nations for the review of the United States human rights record later on this year. Now we begin our plans for speaking to world representatives to get the word out about our organizing, rights and the violations our communities experience. We have also been working with 11 artists to create materials representing the issues in diverse ways. An artist’s work is featured below (this work is copyright to the artist and we share it with their permission).

Here is how to access the reports. A coalition of community organizations submitted a report documenting all the rights issues. Download a PDF and read the full report. Other groups submitted a report, focusing on trans rights and the impact of US policies globally, in partnership with the Sexual Rights Initiative. Download a PDF and read that report.

Featured art work by Huck Reyes – A Labor of Layers

As shown in the UN report, sex-working and transness are often intertwined and sometimes inseparable–whether we like it or not.  As an artist who belongs both to the trans and sex-working communities, I am acutely aware of the reasons so many trans folks have found their way to sex work, while also understanding why state actors profile trans people as sex workers even if they’re not.  There are many layers to these realities and I show this through four multiple-exposure photo pieces.  I use color effect 35mm film and double (or triple) expose the film, layering different images on top of one another to express the inseparable nature of being trans and a sex worker–whether that inseparable-ness is imposed upon us externally or exists voluntarily. 

The Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls

January 31st, 2024 · · Reports Comments Off on The Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls - Tags:

Zee Xaymaca, with the support of the BPPP co-Executive Directors, has drafted a response to the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls.

We are pleased to provide our community and human rights based input to the Special Rapporteur so that they may ‘better understand the relationship between prostitution and violence against women, to clarify terms, approaches and actions States should take in order to maintain the spirit of international human rights law and to effectively protect women and girls from all forms of violence.” The full response can be read via a downloadable PDF available here and below.

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CSW68 Coalition Statement

October 29th, 2023 · · Reports No comments - Tags:

Earlier this year BPPP was granted consultative status with the United Nations. This means that we may now send in reports to the Commission on the Status of Women about the inclusion of sex workers and related communities.

In October 2023 BPPP submitted our first official statement using our consultative status. This statement was completed with the Sex Worker Coalition, a formal group of global multi-organizational sex worker rights groups, that includes Desiree Alliance, the Outlaw Project, New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance, BPPP and The Black Sex Worker Collective. Our advocacy focus is on gender-related and human rights related processes, including several U.N. committees such as the Commission on the Status of Women, CEDAW, CERD, and the Generation Equality process.

The Commission on the Status of Women’s 68th Session priority theme, “Accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective” provides an opportunity for the international community to address the specific economic and financial struggles of all, including sex workers. The review theme for the Commission on the Status of Women’s 68th Session regarding, “Social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls” also provides an opportunity to address the needs of sex workers. Read the complete statement via PDF.