We reviewed evidence from over 800 studies and reports on the burden and HIV impact of human rights abuses against sex workers across policy climates. Published research documents widespread abuses of human rights perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. Such violations facilitate HIV vulnerability, both directly and indirectly, and undermine effective HIV prevention and intervention efforts. Violations include homicide, physical and sexual violence from law enforcement, clients and intimate partners, unlawful arrest and detention, discrimination in accessing health services, and forced HIV testing. Abuses occur across all policy regimes, though most profoundly so where sex work is criminalized through punitive law. Protection of sex workers’ human rights is critical to respect, protect and fulfill human rights, and to improve their health and wellbeing. Findings affirm the value of rights-based HIV responses for sex workers, and underscore the obligation of states to uphold the rights of this marginalized population.
This paper highlights the impact of raid, rescue, and rehabilitation schemes on HIV programmes. It uses a case study of Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), a sex workers collective in Sangli, India, to explore the impact of anti-trafficking efforts on HIV prevention programmes. The paper begins with an overview of the anti-trafficking movement emerging out of the United States. This U.S. based antitrafficking movement works in partnership with domestic Indian antitrafficking organisations to raid brothels to "rescue and rehabilitate" sex workers. Contrary to the purported goal of assisting women, the anti-trafficking projects that employ a raid, rescue, and rehabilitate model often undermine HIV projects at the local level, in turn causing harm to women and girls. We examine the experience of one peer educator in Sangli to demonstrate and highlight some of the negative consequences of these anti-trafficking efforts on HIV prevention programmes.
We assess old age financial security in a sample of sex workers in India. Our analysis, based on primary data for 240 former sex workers and 340 current sex workers in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra, highlights three features of their economic situation. First, former sex workers economically outperform female-headed households in the general population. Second, old age security for sex workers is hampered by limited access to mechanisms to invest their savings productively during working ages, their incurring of high levels of out of pocket expenses for ill health and borrowing costs. Third, traditional sources of support in old age such as children are limited, in contrast to what we know about family-based support for the elderly in India. The article concludes by examining recent policy developments in India and their relevance for economic security among older sex workers.
Some feminists argue that sex work reduces the female body to an object of sexual pleasure to be exploited in the marketplace by any male -an argument consistent with patriarchal notions of protection, reverence and control, the construction of women as a devi [goddess], the dasi [slave] or the veshya [sex worker]. This article addresses our work with collectivising rural women not in sex work (Vidrohi Mahila Manch [Platform for Rebellious Women] (VMM) Sangli) and rural women in sex work (Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP)) from South Maharashtra and North Karnataka, India. It examines the apparent control adult women in sex work have over their own bodies and lives. Although it is true that unless acting collectively, they are less successful in confronting organised criminal gangs and the brutal side of law enforcers, most of them boldly confront sexual relations with individual male clients and men from their own community.
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