Publications & Tools

This case study focuses on sex workers’ meaningful involvement in the development of rights-based sex worker program in national Funding Requests to the Global Fund in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

This communications toolkit was commissioned by the Levi Strauss Foundation and written by Leon Mar. It is a resource primarily intended for internal use by individuals and organisations seeking support for sex work-related programs from prospective donors and philanthropic institutions. The messaging contained herein (but not the toolkit itself) is aimed at prospective donors who are either under-informed or misinformed with regard to sex work issues but whose financial support is potentially desirable to advance the human rights of sex workers.

In the first quarter of 2019, the Network of Women Sex Workers of Latin America and the Caribbean (RedTraSex) proposed to the Consortium for Parliamentary Dialogue and Equity AC (Consortium), to join efforts to carry out a pilot research that would provide valid and quantitative information for the debate that would take place at the XIV Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean at ECLAC, which has as its central theme the economic empowerment of women, thus the present exploration was born. This report presents the results of the quantitative study and the collection of secondary data on the contribution of women sex workers to the economies of the countries, based on the income and expenses they obtain from their work, which represent a flow in the regional economy.

The CMI! campaign Counting Sex Workers In! puts a spotlight on sex worker-led advocacy and highlights the voices and perspectives of sex workers of all genders in order to advance understanding that sex workers? rights are human rights and a feminist issue. Counting Sex Workers In! partners have developed a series of fact sheets that highlight commonplace challenges that sex workers face and how allies can take action to support sex workers rights.

This page intends to provide a guide to the potential resources accessible for sex-workers during the crisis of the COVID-19. It includes potential financial support, best-practice resources and right-based tools.

Grantcraft (recently renamed Candid Learning for Funders) produced a guide on participatory grantmaking, generously funded by Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundation as part of a issue lab on Participatory Grantmaking. Download the guide Deciding Together: Shifting power and resources through participatory grantmaking and learn more about the report on Candid’s website.

“This study examines lived experiences of gender-based violence as faced by lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women, transgender people, and female sex workers in Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The study examines how state efforts to exercise control over women’s bodies, combined with patriarchal social systems, result in a wide array of types of violence. As Ugandan feminist lawyer Sylvia Tamale goes on to say in her introduction to the anthology African Sexualities, such systems of control have origins in British colonialism, at which time “A new script, steeped in the Victorian moralistic, antisexual and body-shame edicts, was inscribed on the bodies of African women and with it an elaborate system of control. The instrumentalization of sexuality through the nib of statutory, customary and religious law is closely related to women’s oppression and gender constructions.” Post-independence governments discovered that sexuality could be instrumentalized to suit their needs, too. Over 50 years since colonial power was vanquished on much of the African continent, patriarchal power over women’s bodies and sexualities persists.”

An extensive library of publications about sex work including overviews, histories, transnational studies, as well as policy and legal debates. debates,

A self-assessment guide for digital emergencies developed by Hivos,
Digital Defenders Partnership, EFF, Global Voices, Front Line Defenders,
Internews, Freedom House, Access, Qurium, CIRCL, IWPR and Open
Technology Fund.

Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline works with individuals and organizations around the world to keep them safe online. If you’re at risk, they can help you improve your digital security practices to keep out of harm’s way. If you’re already under attack, they provide rapid-response emergency assistance. Available in English, French, Spanish, Russian, and more.

Information on funders who make emergency and rapid response grants, primarily for human rights defenders. HRFN’s Human Rights Defenders Working Group compiled this guide.

Information on organizations that can provide temporary shelter,
wellbeing support and other forms of assistance to human rights
defenders.

This toolkit offers key organizing lessons, strategies, and political visions from migrant worker and sex worker-led political formations: workers who are forcibly excluded from the economy or working in the shadows of formalized economies. This toolkit features a summary of research conducted between February 2021 & July 2021. It also draws from collective learning during the Informal, Criminalized, Precarious: Sex Workers Organizing Against Barriers conference.

Global Philanthropy Project (GPP), Red Umbrella Fund, Funders for LGBTQ Issues and SWDC collaborated to develop Diving Deeper: Factsheet on LGBTI Sex Worker Funding.

This 2008 report provides extensive research relating to human rights violations of sex workers in Kenya. From it’s Executive Summary: “Currently, Kenyan national law criminalises the involvement of third parties in sex work. Municipal by-laws outlaw ?loitering for the purpose of prostitution,? ?importuning? for the purpose of prostitution and ?indecent exposure,? criminalizing sex work itself for all intents and purposes. Researchers interviewed 70 women sex workers, held six focus groups with sex workers across Kenya, interviewed public officials and convened a focus group with police in order to find out how this framework affects sex workers. This study found that Kenya breaches, in its law and practices relating to the treatment of sex workers, its own constitutional provisions and standards contained in international human rights instruments.” Also published on our website: [RUF Post – Why Sex Work should be Decriminalised] and funded by Open Society Foundation.