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How do sex workers prevent HIV and other STD’s?

According to the World Health Organization, there is an estimate number of 33,3 million people, spread all across the globe, currently living with HIV. Violence perpetrated by clients or pimps, as well as possible difficulties to access sexual health services, have made sex workers one of the most vulnerable groups to the infection. Following the [...]

Picture by msmornington (Flickr)

Leaving prostitution: is there a quick fix? (Part 4)

(Page 4 of 4) Despite the Government’s endorsement of exit programmes, sex workers’ rights campaigners have raised concerns about such projects, accusing their promoters of “pimping” on the agony of prostitutes. Cari Mitchell, from the English Collective of Prostitutes, questions the kind of alternative that programmes like U-Turn give to women. At the moment, “there [...]

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Leaving prostitution: is there a quick fix? (Part 2)

(Page 2 of 4) It is 10.30 in the morning. Outside St Matthews Church in Bethnal Green, London, the grass is still wet with rain. The church’s fields are empty, like the steel benches spread across the garden. A few meters from the church, there is an orange brick house with a small yard surrounded [...]

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Leaving prostitution: is there a quick fix?

The Coalition Government has said it has “no plans” to change sex work laws in England and Wales – instead, the  Home Office has set as a political priority to provide help to men and women willing to leave prostitution. The so-called “exit programmes” have managed to help sex workers tackle issues such as drug [...]

"Observador oculto", by Marcelo Gregorin Coelho (Click to access picture)

Guest post: “women can’t do that, it’s not good for them”

The justification for the limitations of women’s autonomy, equality and freedom to make their own decisions on their personal sexual and reproductive rights has always been that “it is good for them”; that they need protection from themselves or others – for their own good as well as  the good of ‘the family’, work or [...]