Global Report on Sex Workers Rights Defenders(SWRDs)

Front Line Defenders have released a report dubbed Sex Workers, Rights Defenders at Risk on the findings of a 4-year investigation into targeted violence, threats, and attacks against sex worker rights defenders.

With over 350 sex workers Interviews in 20 countries, Front Line Defense was able to establish the first-ever global report documenting violence against sex workers who advocate for their communities rights.

According to the report, Sex workers, like many marginalised and stigmatised groups, experience extremely high rates of human rights violations, including their rights to health, to justice, to live free from violence and torture, to a fair trial, to housing.

The report revealed several cases of arrest, sexual assault in detention, raids on their homes and offices, immense psychological pressure, threats from managers, family, and clients; physical attacks, police surveillance while conducting health outreach work, public defamation campaigns, extreme financial burdens because of activism and discriminatory exclusion from policymaking in areas in which they have clear, demonstrable, and unmatched expertise.

It also documented a range of strategies that SWRDs use to protect their communities, featuring cases, stories, testimonies and survival tactics while exploring a broader, more nuanced collection of intersectional systems of protection deployed by HR.

Front Line Defenders Executive Director Andrew Anderson noted that sex workers rights defenders are at risk because they are defending the basic human rights of communities that are amongst the most
marginalised in every society.

”SWRDs protect their communities’ rights to live free from violence and discrimination, to access healthcare, housing, justice, and employment, and to organise, assemble, and advocate for rights,” he said. Research conducted by Front Line Defenders has revealed that over a dozen countries between 2017 and 2020 have arrested human rights defenders (HRDs), attacked them and sexually assaulted and detained them for their peaceful, legitimate human rights work.

For instance, In Tanzania, an HRD was sexually assaulted by a client with whom he had worked for years without a violent incident. Later on, Police and hospital staff both commented that the attack was to be expected, given that the HRD was a sex worker.

A detailed testimony of the attack was submitted to Front Line Defenders shows that throughout the sexual assault, the perpetrators repeatedly threatened the defender to stop hosting human rights training and doing public advocacy.

”The human rights work of SWRDs looks very similar to the work of defenders protecting other rights, especially from marginalised, criminalised, or stigmatised groups. However, due to the lack of visibility, legitimacy, and respect afforded to the concept of sex workers as human rights holders, the work of SWRDs is, correspondingly, often not recognized as HRD work,” the report read.

The report revealed several instances of assault and discrimination against the SWRDs and how it negatively impacted negatively on their physical and mental well-being while recommending possible solutions to these activities.

The report is relevant since it enlightens the vast majority who’ve felt that a report on the specific risks faced by leaders of their communities, produced by what they perceived as one of the leading HRD protection organisations could significantly impact access to HRD services, protection, funding, training, and in general to support existing efforts to validate the human rights work of sex worker rights defenders as a legitimate strand of human rights work amongst broader human rights and HRD networks.

”While hundreds of studies detail attacks against sex workers in general, and several academic studies have explored various aspects of sex worker organizing, no publicly available documentation had examined, in an in-depth, intentional, and global manner the risks facing sex workers who dare to advocate for their communities, Front Line Defenders noted.”

”Sex worker rights defenders driving these movements for rights are marginalised from mainstream human rights discussions and activities. They seldom feature in broader human rights conferences, campaigns, websites, donor priorities, training, and workshops, and are conspicuously absent from most HRD
discussions, spaces, and gatherings,” Defenders added.

Sex worker rights defenders have very little access to networking opportunities within the human rights and HRD fields. In the same way that rural defenders working on land and environmental rights are often excluded from urban-based activism and advocacy activities.SWRDs’ human rights work includes emergency response following attacks and arrests, establishing safe community spaces, public health advocacy, gender rights training, police reform, protection planning, legal and health counselling, prison aid and promoting access to justice for survivors.

BY PHILLY OPERE