La Strada Documentation Center

Sex Workers’ Rights. Report of the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration, Brussels (2005)

Document number
1352
Date
2007
Title
Sex Workers’ Rights. Report of the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration, Brussels (2005)
Author/publisher
International Committee for the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe
Availability
LSI library
Document type(s)
Meeting Documentation/Conference Reports,
Keywords
Women's rights; Women; Control and regulation of prostitution, Protection, Punishable forms of prostitution, Prostitution; Sex work; Unionisation of sex workers; Clients, Abolitionism; New Abolitionism; Prohibitionism; Regulationism,
Summary
In 2005, a coalition of sex workers and activists from across Europe organised a sex workers’ conference to put the rights of sex workers on the European political agenda with the concrete aim of developing a set of tools which could be used by sex workers to defend and extend their human, labour and migrant rights. The conference led to the formulation of a Sex Workers' Manifesto, a Declaration of the Rights of Sex Workers and a list of demands and recommendations which were presented to the European Parliament. In late 2007, the International Committee for the rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), set up especially for the purpose of this conference, finally published a conference report outlining how the conference idea and organisation came about and was implemented as well as detailing the development of ICRSE, now a Europe-wide network for sex workers’ rights, since. The report includes conference contributions and analyses and presents sex work art and education material presented at the event. The history of sex workers organising and lobbying for their rights from 1973 onwards is sketched in Gail Pheterson’s presentation, the slow and difficult integration of sex work into the labour rights movement in the UK, leading to the establishment of a sex workers branch in Britain’s General Union (GMB) in 2002, is also outlined. Other contributions discuss in detail the prostitution laws in Sweden and Germany and a mapping project of the legal situation and implementation in difference European countries is presented. Female agency in the nexus migration and sex work is analysed by Laura María Agustín, who is researching the situation of migrant workers in London’s sex industry. A workshop discussing migration and trafficking concluded with the recommendations for the EU to implement a human rights impact assessment for anti-trafficking and immigration policies, the provision of adequate residency permits to ensure sex workers’ access to justice, access to medical and other services for trafficked persons and the adoption and implementation of, amongst others, the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families. The publication “Sex Workers’ Rights. Report of the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration” is available via the ICRSE website (http://www.sexworkeurope.org).
Related documents