Great news for advocates of sexual health, human rights, and social justice! See my story below (first posted March 15, 2011 at Ms Magazine Blog):
———————-
Recently I blogged about how the United Nations’ Human Rights Council flagged sex worker rights in its periodic review of the United States’ human-rights record. Member state Uruguay recommended that the U.S. “ensure access to public services paying attention to the special vulnerability of sexual workers [sex workers] to violence and human rights abuses.”
Within four months of Uruguay’s recommendation to the U.S., and after a subsequent flurry of advocacy efforts by sex worker activists, researchers, and allies (including me), the State Department has released its response. To each of the 228 Universal Periodic Reviewrecommendations, the State Department replied in one of three ways: “fully support,” “partially support” or “do not support.”
In what is being heralded as a victory for sex workers’ rights, the State Department chose to “fully support” Uruguay’s recommendation, stating: “No one should face violence or discrimination in access to public services based on sexual orientation or their status as a person in prostitution.”
This simple statement marks a potential monumental shift in U.S. policy: a new recognition that anti-trafficking policy alone is not an adequate response to the human rights violations of all sex workers. There is mounting evidence that current anti-trafficking policy ignores (and even exacerbates) human rights violations of adult, consensual sex workers and of people working under coercive or trafficked conditions.
Members of my group, Human Rights For All: Concerned Advocates for the Rights of Sex Workers and People in the Sex Trade (HRA) were ecstatic. “People in the sex trade have been marginalized and stigmatized when seeking public services, including through law enforcement. This is a big step forward to acknowledging sex workers’ human rights,” says Kelli Dorsey, Executive Director of Different Avenues, a group dedicated to reproductive justice by and for girls and women of color.
“We were long overdue for the United States to take the needs of sex workers seriously, particularly the need to stem violence and discrimination,” says attorney Sienna Baskin, Co -Director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York.
On Friday, March 18, sex workers will stage demonstrations in cities across the country to celebrate the adoption of Recommendation #86. For further information on the demonstrations, as well as supporting documents, see the HRA website.
—————
Links:
- K. Lerum, March 15, 2011. For sex workers, recommendation 86 will go down in history. Ms Magazine Blog.
- K. Lerum. March 3, 2011. Human Rights for US Sex Workers now on Global Stage. Sexuality and Society.
- Human Rights for All: Concerned Advocates for the Rights of Sex Workers and People in the Sex Trade (HRA)
Comments 4
So Last Week: Sex News You May Have Missed | JamYe WaXman M.Ed. | Sex & Sexuality Educator, Author, Podcaster — March 21, 2011
[...] The Human Rights of Sex Workers are finally starting to be recognized. (TheSocietyPages) [...]
ESSAYS, RESEARCH PAPER, STATISTICS, ON HUMAN SEX TRAFFICKING, SEX TOURISM, SLAVERY, PROSTITUTION IN COLORADO | The Myth of Sex Trafficking and Sex Slavery, Research, Lies, Facts, Fact Sheet, Truth about Human Trafficking and Prostitution — December 3, 2011
[...] When the Obama administration took office on Jan. 1, 2009, many scientists and scholars were hopeful that empirical evidence would play a greater role in defining a range of domestic and international policies, ranging from justifications for war, to global warming, to sex education, to policies about human trafficking. The hope was that the administration would turn away from making decisions that were rooted in ideological agendas and make decisions that were informed more directly by reliable empirical data. To some extent, this has been the case. [E.G.: see the State Department's (remarkable) response to evidence of human rights violations against peop...]. [...]
John Garrett Jones — September 29, 2013
I have been a happily married man for 56 years, have two grown daughters and four delightful grandchildren. But I am also bisexual! I have written a book called “Coming Clean about Bisexuality” which is based partly on my own experience and which many other men have found helpful. It can be read or freely downloaded from my website, “Love - not war”, which can be found at the following link if you scroll half way down the home page:
http://www.garrettjones.talktalk.net
As you will see, I feel it is important to recognise that a bisexual man is not in the same position as an exclusively gay man and this affects the kind of gay sex he adopts. I would urge all bi men seeking male partners to concentrate on what makes men male and to avoid getting drawn into anal sex - which is in any case pseudo-heterosexual. For me, bisexuality is mainly about completeness. I would feel only half a person if I tried to cut one side out.
I have placed the book in the context of an anti-war site (which you may also find well worth reading) because men who know how to love each other should be appalled by the fact that so many men are still happy to kill and maim each other - and also any women or children who get in their way - if ordered to do so.
I’d be glad to hear from you if you care to reply,
John Garrett Jones