Voices of Women Media supports the Call to Action on Sex Work and HIV. As an organization that works closely with sex workers to be creative and gain technical skills, we recognize the importance in raising awareness of these issues in an effort to increase the rights of sex workers. This cause is very important for us as it affects the women we work with directly. In Amsterdam, The Netherlands there has been steps backwards in the fight for sex worker’s rights. We are witnessing the closing of the windows and the struggle that our women have to deal with in order to stay in business. We need to decrease the negative stigma that is associated with sex work. Voices of Women Media stands in solidarity along with these other sex worker organizations who have supported our own work by screening our videos  to their constituents.

VOW Media is an emerging organization that aims to provide a way for marginalized communities of women to educate and express themselves through different forms of media. VOW Media believes that personalizing women’s individual experiences in the long run can have a long lasting effect on women’s rights worldwide. VOW Media aims to contribute to the advancement of women in society by giving these women the means to take media in their own hands. Through using media and skill training, we want to further their abilities to empower themselves and let their own voices be heard.

While stigma of the HIV travel ban has been hailed as a thing of the past, two of the groups who most need HIV/AIDS resources — active and former sex workers and drug users — are still denied entry into the United States.

As members of the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance (HIV PJA), we recognize that both the continued criminalization of sex work and the racialized and anti-poor War on Drugs increase vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and effectively criminalize survival.

It is these very types of stigmatizing laws that intensify the HIV/AIDS epidemic — leading people living with HIV/AIDS, researchers, providers and activists to recommend that they be repealed. One prominent example of this is the recent release of the report by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law: http://www.hivlawcommission.org/index.php/report).

The HIV Prevention Justice Alliance calls for decriminalization and destigmatization as well as approaches that address racism and transphobia as structural measures to decrease HIV infection and to ultimately improve and prolong the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS.

The HIV Prevention Justice Alliance (HIV PJA) is a 13,000-person national network in the United States, based at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. We host three working groups: Criminalization & Mass Imprisonment, Economic Justice, Queer & Transgender Justice. The HIV Prevention Justice movement understands that the ability of any person to determine his, her or their HIV-related destiny is tied to the conditions in their community. These conditions are not determined only by individual choices or access. We expose and confront the persistence of inequality that comes from economic, political and social conditions that benefit the few to the injury of many. We fight for the highest possible level of health, human rights and quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS, as well as those who are not (or not yet) infected.

Here are a few reasons why The Poor Man’s Resource Society (TPMRS) decided to support the “Call to Change U.S. Policy on Sex Work and HIV”:

1. Although I am the Executive Director of TPMRS, due to circumstances beyond my control, I have had to rely on the extra income of sex work again. Having been a survival sex trade worker in the past, I’ve always known that if working a normal 9-5 was not an option for me, I’d never starve.

By supporting this Call To Action, and telling the truth about myself, I hope to take the stigma and power away from the idea some people have that sex work is not an honest or legitimate way to make ends meet and that sex workers are bad people for doing it.

2. The mandate of TPMRS is to support initiatives, policies, practices and businesses that empower marginalized persons and elevate their status in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (dtes) community. Sex workers and persons with HIV are marginalized persons; a person that identifies with both stigmatizations suffers double-jeopardy.

Many sex workers are actively educating themselves and implementing practices to ensure protection against HIV for themselves or their johns. This can only lead to a decrease in new transmission rates of HIV. Sex workers are doing their part to tackle a worldwide problem that is not going away anytime soon.

The sex workers that are being denied access to the US for this conference, and sex workers, like me, who signed the “Call to Action” are paving the way for all sex workers to stop hanging their heads in shame. When people lose shame in their lives, they open the door to becoming empowered to do good and better things for themselves and others.

3. I want to say to all the judgmental naysayers, “Hey, wake up and smell the coffee!” HIV is a serious medical concern that affects people from every walk of life, and does not discriminate. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Tina Marie Tomashiro is Executive Director of The Poor Man’s Resource Society, a resource for those with no other resource to turn to. TPMRS advocates for changes that empower and raise the status of marginalized persons. TPMRS offers a supportive environment, information and access to resources for members that have been harmed, oppressed or denied growth.

At the Latin America and Hispanic Caribbean Network of Female Sex Workers (RedTraSex) We work on prevention in HIV / AIDS from a comprehensive healthcare perspective; we promote training and strengthening of National Organization of Female Sex Workers on necessary issues for the population, aiming to strengthen organizations at national and regional levels advocating changes in public policies that involve them.

We join this campaign because we reject the discriminatory attitude of the U.S. government and we call for the United States and the United Nations to support us in this negotiation. We hold that it is the responsibility of the IAS and co-organizers of the Conference to resolve this situation urgently, since apparently they could not foresee it.

This regulation forces those who sell sex to lie about our work and try to show that we are “socially, economically and financially solvent” and we can travel back home. Thus, denying entry to sex workers, the Conference will not really represent all key populations in HIV response.

The United States must demonstrate its full commitment to public health and human rights through action to allow everyone participate in the Conference with full freedom.

The Latin America and Hispanic Caribbean Network of Female Sex Workers (RedTraSex) was founded in 1997 with the aim of strengthening the National Organization of Female Sex Workers (ONMTS) in the defense and promotion of their human and labor rights. The Networkcomprises 15 countries of the region —Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic and Uruguay— with an outreach  to more than 15,600 sex workers, through workshops, training, prevention tasks and advocacy on changing public policies.

The Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights enthusiastically endorses the Call to Change U.S. Policy on Sex Work and HIV. We have seen firsthand the way in which the U.S. policies on sex work as detailed in the Call, work to deny sex workers’ fundamental human rights, including access to reproductive health services. As defenders of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), we understand the ways in which sex workers’ SRHR are far too often violated and neglected by the authorities and demand action be taken to ensure sex workers’ human rights are realized. Many laws and policies on trafficking and sex work, such as those of the U.S., mean that sex workers are made vulnerable to a number of SRHR violations including: forced/coercive sterilisation and abortion, forced HIV/AIDS transmission, forced medical screenings and check-ups, denial of access to health services including HIV treatment, and gender based violence because they are often unable to control their working environments due to the lack of labour protections and recognition of their rights as human rights.

WGNRR affirms the need for protection and affirmation of sex workers’ rights.  WGNRR opposes any law or policy on sex work that is developed without the input of sex workers themselves and that does not prioritize sex workers’ safety and well-being. WGNRR further opposes the criminalization of sex work. WGNRR rejects the position that considers all forms of “prostitution” to be rape.  WGNRR further rejects the inherent conflation of sex work with trafficking. WGNRR demands the elimination of all forms of discrimination against sex workers, especially in the exercise of their SRHR.

The Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights is a southern-based global network that builds and strengthens movements for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and justice. Our work is grounded in the realities of those who most lack economic, social and political power. Through critical analysis and strategic actions, we connect members and allies, build knowledge, organise campaigns and share resources. WGNRR works to realise the full sexual and reproductive health and rights of all people, with a particular focus on the most marginalised. We believe that achieving this goal requires transformative social change.

The Southern United States has long been known for hot weather, fried chicken, and the proliferation of churches on every street corner. But few people know that the area also suffers disproportionately from rates of HIV/AIDS infection and death. Almost half of new AIDS diagnoses and deaths occur in the South, often among sex workers, one of the groups most vulnerable to the disease.

Due to stigma, criminalization and lack of resources for people in the sex industry, sex workers in the South have few opportunities for economic liberation, a high incidence of violence, and greater risk for HIV/AIDS.

When misguided social policies criminalize sex work under the guise of morality, police start arresting for possession of condoms as is happening all over the United States and in the South. Condom arrests lead to greater incidences of unprotected sex and risks for HIV transmission.

When sex workers are considered criminals even when they are the victim of a violent attack, thousands of sex workers are brutalized, raped, and even killed all over the country while the real criminals run free.

When hospitals stigmatize sex workers or even threaten to call the police on a worker who seeks help, sex workers are unable to secure treatment and testing for HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

When police raids drive sex workers underground, public health programs cannot bring them HIV services, including testing, education and prevention tools.

When people sniff at the idea of “helping prostitutes,” violence prevention mechanisms such as bad date lines and resource programs for sex workers are underfunded, understaffed, or nonexistent in areas where they are desperately needed.

The North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition is a nonprofit working to reduce HIV/AIDS and other blood borne disease through working with drug users, sex workers, incarcerated persons, law enforcement, and other vulnerable populations in the South. We call for change to U.S. Policy on sex work and HIV because people in the sex trade have the right to earn a living just like everyone else and to live their lives free from persecution and disease. When HIV/AIDS affects our communities’ most vulnerable people, it affects us all.

North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC) is North Carolina’s only comprehensive harm reduction program. NCHRC engages in grassroots advocacy, resource development, coalition building and direct services for those made vulnerable by drug use, sex work, overdose, immigration status, gender, STIs, HIV and hepatitis.