South Korea introduced a raft of new laws against sex work in 2004. These repressive policies are now up for constitutional review due to the intense reaction by sex workers there.
Prostitution is rising along with poverty in Britain. To protect women both the criminalisation of sex work and austerity must be reversed.
Faced with regressive policies grounded in moral panics over sexual exploitation and trafficking, the Brazilian prostitutes’ movement has mobilised to ensure a seat for itself at the policy-making table. Español
Organising sex workers to protest injustice, create safe spaces, and support one another is a difficult job. One South African organisation shares its stories of success.
Sex work in Argentina is legal, but since 2011 the anti-trafficking agenda has increasingly threatened that status. This has led to new alliances and strategies of resistance among sex workers there. Español
Many Thai women become sex workers not because they are poor, but in order to escape poverty. In doing so they have become providers and heads of households, and they deserve respect for that accomplishment. Español
Sex workers in eastern Europe and central Asia resist their social exclusion and repression in many ways, but the political climate has so far prevented broad-based organising.
Sex workers in Italy banned together against abolitionist projects and managed to force support mechanisms for 'trafficking victims' into anti-trafficking legislation.
A proposed law in Germany pretends to help prostitutes by registering them, but it will only increase sex workers’ precariousness and vulnerability. Respect and peer knowledge would go much farther.
The French state ostensibly sees sex workers as victims, but its combined legal framework positions them first and foremost as offenders, especially when they are migrants.
State entrapment, extortion, imprisonment and slander sharpen the consciousness of sex workers who denounce anti-prostitution, anti-pimping and anti-trafficking policies invariably used to repress women and undermine feminist liberation struggles.
Chinese sex workers in Paris demand respect from those who had no right to take it away in the first place.
