SHARP Note: August 2008

Date:

September 5, 2008

The OSI Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP) periodically distributes information on key sexual health and rights advocacy issues, events, and grant opportunities as they arise. The August 2008 issue includes a list of International AIDS Conference activities, upcoming conferences and meetings and requests for proposals. Subscribe to receive updates by email.

Topics

Dispatch from the International AIDS Conference
Sexual Health and Rights News Update
SHARP Grantee News
Recent Publications
Upcoming Meetings and Trainings
Call for Nominations

Dispatch from the International AIDS Conference

The XVII International AIDS Conference that ended August 8 in Mexico City was successful in highlighting, as never before, the critical need for human rights to be at the center of the global AIDS response. Sexual health and rights activists were visible throughout the conference, demanding that health policymakers listen and respond to those most affected by the AIDS pandemic.

Prominent plenary speeches were given by a sex worker, for the first time ever, and an openly gay government official from Mexico. Elena Eva Reynaga, a sex worker rights activist who is the founder and Executive Secretary of AMMAR in Argentina and Executive Secretary of the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Female Sex Workers (RedTraSex), called for the recognition of sex work as work and the universal respect of sex worker rights. Jorge Saavedra, Head of the National HIV/AIDS Program in Mexico (CENSIDA), highlighted the urgent need for policymakers to understand how the epidemic is affecting sexual minorities, particularly men who have sex with men (MSM), and allocate adequate resources so that appropriate prevention and treatment reaches these populations.

Activists continually reminded funders, researchers, policymakers, and program planners that civil society should be fully integrated into the design, implementation, and evaluation of AIDS responses. A symposium session on "Human Rights, HIV and Sex Work Policy" described how the process to develop the UNAIDS Guidance Note on Sex Work and HIV has not respectfully engaged sex workers themselves. Activists demanded that UNAIDS put in place an oversight body which includes sex workers and nominate a sex worker to the UNFPA team that will finalize the guidance note.

In another first, there were sessions on transgender issues included in the scientific program. In the session, "Male and Transgender Sex Workers: Identities and Vulnerabilities," panelists highlighted the lack of funding and specific policy guidelines for addressing the needs of transgender and male sex workers as contributors to these groups' invisibility and vulnerability to violence and HIV infection.

SHARP grantees and partners were active in pre-conference events as well as in sessions throughout the conference. A two-day satellite organized by the Global Forum on MSM and HIV brought attention to the funding and service gaps for MSM living with and at risk for HIV. SHARP grantees presented research on HIV prevalence among MSM in Botswana, Malawi, and South Africa showing MSM to be a high-risk group for both HIV infection and human rights abuses. Another pre-conference symposium organized by the Mexican sex worker rights organization Aproase, in partnership with the international Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), brought together sex workers from around the world to discuss advocacy strategies, including increased visibility of sex work issues at IAC.

OSI's Public Health Program's symposium Breaking Barriers: Strategies for Change, featured four sex work activists: Elena Reynaga (RedTraSex), Melissa Gira (Desiree Alliance), Cynthia Navarrete Gil (Aproase) and Gabriela Leite (Davida). They discussed innovative ways that their respective organizations have used human rights and empowerment strategies for sex workers to reduce their vulnerability to HIV. And SHARP launched the report Our Lives Matter: Sex Workers Unite for Health and Rights by Anna-Louise Crago at the IAC. The report highlights the efforts of eight groups from around the world to organize and defend the rights and health of sex workers.

SHARP congratulates those whose years of activism brought such rewards in Mexico City. In particular, we congratulate the empower Foundation of Thailand for being awarded the Red Ribbon Award by the United Nations Development Program (as highlighted in SHARP's June newsletter) and the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) for receiving the 2008 Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch. The awards honor the efforts of empower and APNSW to call attention to and demand action to address the rights abuses faced by sex workers.

However, la lucha continúa and we look forward to seeing you in Vienna in 2010 for the next International AIDS Conference.

Sexual Health and Rights News Update

Another Victory for Free Speech and Public Health
August 8, 2008
In an ongoing court battle to protect the First Amendment and promote effective public health policy, on August 8 a federal judge extended free speech protection to a broad range of groups working to combat the AIDS epidemic.

This is the latest victory for free speech in a case brought by the Alliance for Open Society International (AOSI) and Pathfinder International to outlaw an unconstitutional and dangerous policy that forces groups receiving government funding to denounce prostitution. The anti-prostitution pledge requirement, passed by Congress in 2003 as part of the Global AIDS Act, violates the First Amendment by compelling private organizations to adopt a narrow-minded moral ideology that flies in the face of established prevention policy. The pledge requirement hampers the efforts of health workers by forcing them to condemn the people they are trying to help.

The judge, Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled in 2006 that the requirement violated the rights of the two initial plaintiffs in the suit, AOSI and Pathfinder International, and issued an order preventing enforcement of the anti-prostitution pledge requirement against them. Today's ruling extends that protection to the U.S.-based members of InterAction and Global Health Council, both large umbrella organizations of humanitarian and health groups that the judge ruled may now join the suit. All plaintiffs had been required to sign the anti-prostitution pledge as a condition for receiving USAID funding.

More information, and the AOSI press release can be read here: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/sharp/news/victory_20080808

SHARP Grantee News

Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers Wins HIV and Human Rights Award
August 6, 2008
SHARP congratulates the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) for receiving the 2008 Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch. The award, which recognizes outstanding individuals and organizations that protect the rights and dignity of people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, was presented in Mexico City on August 6, 2008, at the XVII International AIDS Conference.

For a list of past recipients of the Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, please see: www.hrw.org/campaigns/hivaids/Awards_for_Action/past_recipients.htm

Recent Publications

Our Lives Matter: Sex Workers Unite for Health and Rights
By Anna-Louise Crago, August 2008
Our Lives Matter: Sex Workers Unite for Health and Rights, a report sponsored by SHARP, highlights the innovative contributions of advocates and sex worker groups from different parts of the world to organize and define their human rights. Rigorous antiprostitution laws and policies around the globe lead to the imposition of harsh and repressive measures against sex workers. Intolerance and stigma make it difficult for sex workers to safeguard their health and lives. Despite these challenges, sex workers respond with creativity and wisdom, protesting to be free from incarceration, violence, extortion, eviction, and humiliation. They have fought for equal access to health care services. And they have called for sex work to be officially recognized as work, a policy shift already taking hold in some countries that has significant implications for securing the benefits to which sex workers are entitled.

These groups, like countless others, are energetic and resourceful leaders in the fight for sex workers' health and rights. What they hold in common is an uncompromising commitment to the right of all sex workers to live full and free lives. Their efforts demonstrate how that goal can be realized.

The report can be found at: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/sharp/articles_publications/publications/ourlivesmatter_20080724

Sex and the Global Fund
Health and Human Rights: An International Journal
The Open Society Institute's Shannon Kowalski and SHARP consultant Susana Fried have published an article entitled "Sex and the Global Fund: How sex workers, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people, and men who have sex with men are benefiting from the Global Fund, or not" in the latest edition of Health and Human Rights.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has allowed countries to bring their response to HIV/AIDS to an unprecedented scale, resulting in innovative projects that reach otherwise underserved communities with HIV prevention, treatment, and care. But in regions and countries where sex workers, men who have sex with men, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons are criminalized or stigmatized, organizations that are led by or work with these groups face challenges participating in Global Fund processes and accessing funding. The article explores the potential of the Global Fund to create space for the participation of these groups in decision-making and to increase their access to resources; examines barriers that hinder their participation; and proposes measures to overcome them.

Upcoming Meetings and Trainings

Sex, Rights, and Law in a World with AIDS: Call for Abstracts
Deadline: September 30, 2008
In partnership with aids2031, the International Center for Research for Women (ICRW), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS (GCWA) will convene a meeting in early 2009 entitled Sex, Rights, and the Law in a World with AIDS. The conveners are soliciting abstracts of published or unpublished papers that capture research and/or experience on sexual behavior, sexual identity, human rights and the law as they relate to a long-term response to the AIDS epidemic. Research, program and advocacy-oriented papers are welcome. Ten to twelve of the submitted abstracts will be selected by the conveners for presentation at the meeting. For more information about the meeting and how to submit an abstract, e-mail Ann Warner (awarner@icrw.org).

Call for Nominations

Felipe de Souza Award: Call for Nominations
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) calls on the international LGBTI, human rights, and sexual rights communities to submit nominations for the 2009 Felipa de Souza Award that honors an organization or an individual whose work has made a significant contribution toward securing the full enjoyment of the human rights of all people and communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the basis of sexual orientation or expression, gender identity or expression, and/or HIV status, anywhere in the world.

More information on the award can be found at http://www.iglhrc.org/site/iglhrc/section.php?id=76 and the application materials can be downloaded here.