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join us nowMEKONG SEX WORKERS ALLIANCE (MSWA)
Popular consciousness is shifting globally as the majority of the world's people consistently and loudly reject attacks on human rights and dignity, to fight for a more just, safe, and decent world. In the Fall of 2023, energized to translate global calls for rights-based change into material support and solidarity for sex-working people in Asia, a key group of regional sex worker leaders, experts and activists joined together to establish the Mekong Sex Workers Alliance (MSWA).
Based in Bangkok, Thailand, MSWA is a direct response to the barriers of exclusion and systems of discrimination targeting sex-working people in public, governmental, institutional, and non-profit spaces across the region and globally. Rooted in the belief that human rights movements yield the greatest and most sustainable change when built upon principles of community leadership, inclusivity, and the practice of intersectionality, MSWA is committed to strengthening the influence and capacity of national sex worker organizations to realize structural and cultural change necessary to improve the human rights situation for sex working people in Mekong countries.
MSWA partnership is open to all national organizations led by women and gender-diverse sex-working people committed to empowering sex workers' self-determination and community-protection strategies.
Our Vision
MSWA envisions a future where national, regional, and global conditions ensure sex workers' rights are protected to live in dignity free from violence; where sex-working people and communities are treated equally as partners and participants of human rights, development, humanitarian action, peace, and security; where policy choices are based upon the protection of the human rights of sex working people; and where programming invests in communities to promote sex worker capacity.
MSWA calls for:
- The fulfillment of sex workers' health, labor, and human rights
- International recognition of sex work as a form of labor
- The full decriminalization of sex work, the elimination of punitive policing practices, and an end to impunity for all forms of VASW.
- The elimination of all systems, structures, and practices that challenge sex workers' right to live in dignity and safety, with choice in agency.
- The meaningful respect, inclusion, and leadership of sex workers in all forums and decision-making bodies that affect our communities.
- Bold, sustained funding of sex worker organizations, initiatives, and movements to ensure sex workers are sufficiently resourced to address challenges and implement solutions.
MSWA strategic objectives aim to:
- Develop institutional strength and capacity of national Asia Pacific sex worker organizations to provide programming, resources, and services that meet community health, safety, and justice needs.
- Strengthen community-owned human rights documentation, monitoring, and advocacy efforts.
- Grow sex workers' capacity, influence, and collective action to demand recognition as rights bearers with agency and influence to advance sex workers' rights.
- Achieve legally enforceable rights to sex workers' occupational health and safety protections and decent work standards.
- Establish governments, NGOs, and law enforcement across the region as active partners in increasing safety for sex workers.
MSWA Mission
- Mobilize funds and resources for national sex worker organizations in Mekong countries to strengthen sex workers' institutional capacity and community power to meet sex workers' health, justice, and human rights needs
- Foster conditions necessary for sex workers to assert self-determination and collective agency within environments of respect, equality, safety, and dignity.
MSWA's strategic objectives include:
- Develop institutional strength and capacity of national Mekong sex worker organizations to provide programming, resources, and services that meet community health, safety, and justice needs
- Strengthen community-owned human rights documentation, monitoring, and advocacy efforts
- Grow sex workers' capacity, influence, and collective action to demand recognition as rights bearers with agency and influence to advance sex workers' rights
- Achieve legally enforceable rights to sex workers' occupational health and safety protections and decent work standards
- Establish partnerships with governments, NGOs, and law enforcement to increase sex workers' safety
MSWA's operational priorities include mobilizing and developing organizational resources to bring our strategy to life.
MSWA development will produce the following changes:
Outputs:
- Scaled up and strengthened community-driven human rights monitoring mechanisms which deepened the evidence base on VASW and grew respect for sex worker knowledge across all levels
- Sex worker-led multi-level strategic advocacy campaigns leveraging community-owned data to reduce stigma and improve the human rights situation for sex-working people
- Strengthened, resourced, and comprehensive community-owned services and programming for sex workers' health, safety, care, and well-being
- National organizing and movement-building strategies to mobilize cross-movement, intersectional solidarity for sex worker rights
- Political commitments to reduce structural inequalities and practices fueling stigma and exclusion against sex-working people
- Law and public policy protecting sex workers' equal rights and opportunities for health, safety, and well-being without discrimination
Outcomes:
- Access to legal services and knowledge on human rights principles and protections increase community empowerment and reduce VASW and its impacts on HIV transmission
- Sex working people experience decreased stigma, discrimination, and violence; benefit from labor rights, and experience better working conditions
- Sex workers have meaningful involvement and leadership in sex work-related policy and program development
- Sex workers’ access to health and justice services and resources are of equal quality to those available to the wider society
- Sex workers provide strong and coherent leadership, build effective alliances, and develop generative relationships with duty bearers for the elimination of discrimination against women, gender-diverse, and migrant sex-working people
Sex Workers Meet Sex Workers’ Needs
Strengthening Community-Owned Mechanisms for Human Rights Monitoring, Advocacy and Service Provision in Mekong Countries
The Human Rights Situation for Sex Working People in Mekong Countries
Global and Regional Context
Globally, women, transgender, and gender-diverse sex working people experience disproportionate rates of violence and human rights violations. Across the Mekong Countries, sex workers endure conditions of widespread gender, racial, and economic injustices that constitute severe violations of their health, labor, and human rights.
Regionally, the structural violence perpetuated by worldwide systems of racial capitalism, discriminatory migration regimes, and punitive legal frameworks is compounded by violently repressive authoritarian environments, where the safety of sex worker human rights defenders is explicitly compromised by government harassment and obstruction of community monitoring efforts.
Barriers to Human Rights
Interconnected, multilevel systems of violence and oppression directly impact the autonomy, choice, and ability of sex-working people across the Mekong countries to negotiate safe, decent working and living conditions. Critically, the criminalization of sex work across the region, except New Zealand and the Australian state of New South Wales, is the key barrier preventing sex workers from realizing their human rights.
Criminalization drives institutional and reenforces societal stigma, discrimination, and promotes violence against sex workers (VASW), fueling:
- Unsafe working conditions
- Increased rates of HIV transmission
- Poor health outcomes for sex working communities
- Systematic police violence
- Denial of justice
- Impunity for all forms of VASW
MSWA's Response
While Mekong governments leave sex workers unprotected and increasingly vulnerable, individual sex workers and sex worker groups respond to evolving crises and meet sex workers' daily and long-term needs with care, compassion, ingenuity, and integrity.
It is in this spirit that MSWA works to:
- Fund national sex worker organizations in the Mekong region
- Provide technical support to strengthen institutional capacity
- Resource community power to meet health, safety, and justice needs
- Foster conditions necessary to realize the full breadth of sex workers' rights