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Sex Worker Health and Rights Advocates

Millions of people around the world choose sex work to support themselves and their families, yet they are subject to serious human rights abuses on a regular basis. Sex workers have a legitimate fear of coming above ground to access mainstream health and legal protection services because of the discrimination they experience. This discrimination often occurs as a result of the laws, policies and practices of governments and other state actors. Tactical Tech is working with this community to help them connect with each other to defend their rights.

“Communication technology in general is a useful way of fast communication. Even more so in case of vulnerable and marginalized communities who do not have a chance to have face-to-face meetings due to geographic span or who are not allowed to unite. In some of the countries sex workers are so ostracised they are refused any information on their rights or social and medical services. Technology in such cases provides a safer space for activists to share experience, develop strategy and communicate with colleagues from other countries. Also information technology is a cheap and quick way to distribute information to a wider society as opposed to conventional media which in many cases is often heavily censored.” Aliya Rakhmetova , HCLU/TASZ

Our work with sex worker health and rights advocates involves helping them use ICT for advocacy at both grass roots and international levels by:

  • Building ICT expertise among sex worker advocates to enable peer-to-peer capacity building
  • Exploring how mobile phones could be used for street outreach work
  • Investigating how online knowledge sharing systems, such as wikis can be used to share strategies and campaigns with the global movement of sex worker advocates
  • Developing ways in which ICTs can be used to facilitate global advocacy strategies

Over the past year, Tactical Tech has worked with the sex workers community, building an understanding of the issues and their related dynamics and establishing a relationship of trust.

  • In April 2007, Tactical Tech led a series of technology workshops at a global gathering of sex worker health and rights advocates in Cambodia.
  • Working in collaboration with an experienced sex worker rights advocate and technologist, Melissa Gira, Tactical Tech undertook a needs assessment of the global sex worker communities' current technology practices and needs. This study of over forty organisations resulted in a paper outlining important trends and needs.
  • In December 2007, we held a meeting with representatives from the major regional sex worker advocate networks (Asia, Africa, the Former Soviet Union and Central Asia, Europe and North America) to plan their use of ICTs to better coordinate regionally and globally on major campaigns.
  • In December 2007, Tactical Tech conducted a training for members of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers on using the Internet for regional coordination

Our new project on Raising Sex Workers' Voices in Policy Making in Asia' is due to start. More details on this soon.