Sex Workers of the World Unite before the International AIDS Conference

Sex workers from across all continents, including most countries in Latin America, have come together in Mexico City prior to the International AIDS Conference to build community, increase sex worker visibility, and unify to demand recognition of sex worker rights as an integral part of HIV/AIDS work. Following on the great sex worker organizing that happened in Toronto at the last International AIDS Conference (IAC), activists are hoping that by coming together before the actual IAC sex workers will be better positioned to advance their messages and visibility, especially at a crucial time when new attacks on sex worker rights are happening in name of saving sex workers.

A new law enacted in Cambodia in order to improve the country's standing in the United States Trafficking in Persons report is causing serious harm to sex working, homeless and youth communities - and resulting in major human rights violations. Unfortunately, major HIV/AIDS groups working in Cambodia and Southeast Asia have not taken a stand against the law, despite obvious negative implications for HIV like prison guards raping sex workers in "rehabilitation camps," according to the Asian Pacitic Network of Sex Workers and the Cambodian group Womyn's Network for Unity. This is just the latest of many negative effects that United States' anti-trafficking policies have on HIV/AIDS work. Tragically, while the situation in Cambodia is a serious crisis, institutional violence and human rights abuses towards sex workers by the police and other structures are almost universal all the countries represented among the sex workers present, and delegates discussed extensively the challenges of offering solidarity to each other while having to confront their own crises in their own areas. For example, Different Avenues in Washington DC recently published a report documenting serious human rights abuses by the police against suspected and actual sex workers in the capital of the United States, while in Guatemala leaders of Organizacion Mujeres en Superacion are calling attention to an increasing number of murders of sex workers in that country.

Sex workers at the pre-conference "Universal Action for Sex Worker Inclusion" event also worked today to formulate a statement directed to the conference organizations and to the wider HIV/AIDS community and institutions. In 2006 at the Toronto conference sex workers raised their concerns through distribution of a similar document, "Sex Workers, Human Rights and the Fight Against HIV," as well as organizing events in the sex worker area of the Global Village (Stilletto Lounge) and having an excellent and raucous rally and march. Sex workers and human rights activists attending the 2008 conference of the International Harm Reduction Conference also formulated an excellent document about the relationship between sex work, harm reduction and human rights.

Just as sex workers and allies had the sexy and eye-grabbing blue shirts in Toronto, look out for a new design this year as well as many great shirts from various other groups including RedTraSex (Network of Sex Workers of Latin America and the Caribbean) which has very strong representation at the conference with members of groups present from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Peru (as well as folks from those countires and more representing organizations affiliated with RedLaCTrans, the Network of Trans People in Latin America and the Caribbean. Add in amazing, strong, beautiful sex workers and sex worker rights activists from Australia, Thailand, Cambodia, South Korea, Jamaica, the US, Canada, France, Sweden, and more countries, and you have a very powerful combination of human beings who will never stop demanding respect for their human rights. Sex Workers of the World, ¡Presente!