Quick Links:

SWOP-USA

Desiree Alliance

Best Practices
Policy Project

Bayswan

NSWP Page on Violence Contains links to several articles.

Coping with Stigma, Discrimination, and Violence:
Sex Workers Talk About Their Experiences (outside link, pdf)
Research conducted by the Sex Worker Education & Advocacy Taskforce Cape Town by Nicolé Fick

UN: Women's Anti-Discrimination Committee Examines Netherlands’ Policies on Prostitution, Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking

Violence and Exposure to HIV Among Sex Workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia — By Carol Jenkins, the Cambodian Prostitutes' Union, Women's Network for Unity and Candice Sainsbury. Produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development, March 2006. Courtesy NSWP

Sex Workers and Violence Against Women: Utopic Visions or Battle of the Sexes? — By Laura M^a Agustín. Development, Society for International Development, Vol. 44, No. 3, September 2001.
"…uncovers some of the myths around sex workers and the men engaging their services within the context of building a movement to end 'violence against women'. She argues that totalizing all experiences of prostitution with a view to punishment and criminalization does not work and advocates a much more visionary and pluralistic approach." Courtesy CSIS

Final Report to UNAIDS: Police and Sex Workers in Papua New Guinea — By Carol Jenkins, 1997.
"A peer educator-based intervention for police, aimed specifically at reducing the frequency of gang rape of sex workers, was launched in mid-1996 as part of a larger intervention with sex workers." Courtesy CSIS

This training manual assists community-based organisations to facilitate a community-driven process for addressing and reducing stigma and gender-based violence (GBV) in HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives.

The manual:

• explores three participatory tools, namely Participatory Learning and Action (PLA); Community-led action research (CLAR); and transformatory workshops.
• gives a general overview for conducting community-led action research
• provides a description of the CLAR process among the key populations of the SVRI project. This section also gives an overview of the action plans developed based on this process.
• presents the challenges and lessons learned in implementing a community-owned process to address stigma and gender-based violence, and Section six presents conclusions.

The report highlights several lessons learned:

• Ensuring their safety is a key way of building the confidence of frontline workers
• Be aware of the context and constraints of target populations, such as truckers’ helpers and disguised community-based sex workers, in order to reach and mobilise them.
• Ensure that the project is presented to target populations in a way that is meaningful to them.
• Participatory methodologies are extremely powerful even in short duration because they involve participants as active learners
• Involving adolescents in the intervention programs, at the recommendation of the community, provided a vital opportunity to clarify their doubts, build on their knowledge, and give them the opportunity to voice their concerns on reproductive health, sex and sexuality.
• The intervention activities created an enabling environment, which led to the acceptance of people living with HIV and AIDS, and their active participation in transformatory workshops and all other activities of the project.
• Networking with government, NGOs and community-based organizations and media has been a great support and strength to the project in creating a larger enabling environment.