Wearing a hot pink t-shirt that read "Somos parte de la solución" (We are part of the solution), Elena Reynaga, founder and executive secretary of the Argentine Association of Female Sex Workers, was the first ever sex worker to address a plenary session in seventeen International AIDS Conferences. "It is time that we begin to be trusted," stated Reynaga during a speech that focused on human rights for male, female and transgender sex workers. "What makes us vulnerable are the policies that repress us in many different ways."
Central to sex worker activism at the XVII International AIDS Conference was the call for an extensive revision of the UNAIDS Guidance Note on HIV and Sex Work, published in April 2007. According to sex workers and activists present at the conference, the guidance note was to take into consideration outcomes and recommendations from a sex worker consultation with UNAIDS and UNFPA that took place in 2005, but the guidance note almost completed ignored the sex workers' input. Instead it focused on a rehabilitative approach to sex work, following a policy in which sex workers need to be rescued from their vocation. A global working group on sex work policy, comprised of sex workers and sex worker activists from around the world, has submitted a suggested re-write of the guidance note to UNAIDS.
According to Ly Pisey, sex worker activist from Cambodia, policy makers and others are under the false assumption that adult sex workers are not in the trade because of choice, and that they want to be rescued from their victimhood. According to Pisey, these people only hear half of the story when they hear "I don't want to do sex work." Pisey noted that it is rather that sex workers think "I don't want to do sex work because it is not an accepted part of society."
Sex workers at the AIDS Conference advocated for governments and international policy bodies to recognize sex work as a legitimate profession. They cited the case of Brazil, in which sex workers have successfully lobbied their government to include sex work as an official profession in the list published by the Ministry of Work. Prostitutes in Brazil, as they prefer to be called, can also retire if they contribute to the social security system. Brazil is also noted for having rejected USAID funding for HIV and AIDS in 2005 because of the U.S. Government's policy to make aid recipients sign an anti-prostitution pledge. In doing so, the Government of Brazil publicly acknowledged that inclusion of sex workers in their national AIDS strategy contributed largely to their success in responding to the epidemic.
A third item for sex worker advocacy at the conference was the decriminalization of sex work. According to Meena Seshu, longtime sex worker activist from India, criminalization makes sex work go underground, increases violence against sex workers, and makes sex workers harder to reach with condom promotion and HIV prevention messages. Currently the Indian government enforces a neutral policy on sex work, but due to increasing pressure from the United States government, is pushing for implementation of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, which criminalizes entry into sex work and categorizes all sex workers as "trafficked victims." Seshu also stated that it is important to differentiate between adult sex work and child prostitution, and that sex worker activists are definitely opposed to the latter.
Sex workers who are in the profession by choice have been drastically hurt by anti-trafficking laws. In Cambodia, U.S. government encouraged anti-prostitution and anti-trafficking laws have led to a rise in imprisonment and rape and violence by policemen towards sex workers. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, there was also a marked increase in sexual violence towards sex workers by military and police, and a number of sex workers who experienced this trauma later tested positive for HIV.
The message of sex workers at the International AIDS Conference was loud and clear -- sex workers demand to be recognized as a legitimate profession and see themselves as part of the solution. Sex workers called for a massive scale up of services and resources from the international community, as currently only one in three sex workers has access to HIV prevention services. As Elena Reynaga shouted to the plenary before being greeted by a standing ovation, "Some may say sex work is not decent. We reply, indecent are the conditions in which we work...We don't want to sew. We don't want to knit. We don't want to cook. We want to improve our working conditions."
