United Nations Body: COVID-19 Relief Aid Must Include Sex Workers

LOS ANGELES—Sex workers in countries as diverse as France, Japan, South Africa, and Bolivia have seen their incomes devastated by the ongoing coronavirus crisis, while their governments sit by and allow them to suffer. On Wednesday, a United Nations agency issued a statement calling for the exclusion of sex workers to end.  In those countries and others, governments have specifically shut sex industry workers out from the financial relief packages designed to allow people to endure the widespread lockdowns and stay-at-home orders that have brought economic activity to a near-standstill, though sex workers were among the first groups to feel the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. In its statement, UNAIDS—the U.S. body created to battle the four-decade HIV/AIDS pandemic—called on “countries to ensure the respect, protection and fulfillment of sex workers’ human rights.” UNAIDS issued the statement in conjunction with the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), saying that, “as sex workers and their clients self-isolate, sex workers are left unprotected, increasingly vulnerable and unable to provide for themselves and their families.” The group also said it had heard reports of “punitive” crackdowns on sex workers amid the pandemic, including raids on the workers’ homes, and threats to deport migrant sex workers. The U.N. agency called for “access to national social protection schemes for sex workers, including income support schemes,” as well as “emergency financial support for sex workers facing destitution, particularly migrants who are unable to access residency-based financial support.” UNAIDS and the NSWP also demanded an immediate end to arrests and prosecutions of sex workers, as well as a “firewall” between health services and immigration authorities, to guarantee that sex workers who seek testing and treatment for coronavirus can obtain those services without risking arrest and deportation. While UNAIDS also said that the criminalization of sex work must end during the coronavirus pandemic, even in countries where the occupation is legal, workers have suffered as a result of the global outbreak, which has so far killed more than 87,000 worldwide, and infected nearly 1.5 million. In Bolivia, where sex work is both legal and unionized, the government has ordered tight curfews and brothel closures that have left already struggling sex workers with no incomes. Sex work is also decriminalized in Singapore, but brothel closures and other shutdown measures have left sex workers destitute. Bangladesh is home to what is believed to be the world’s largest legal brothel, with 1,500 sex workers employed there. But they were all put out of work about two weeks ago, when the government banned patrons from visiting brothels as part of efforts to slow the spread of the virus. The Bangladesh government has promised an aid package for sex workers however—a one-time payment equivalent to $25, and one 65-pound bag of rice per person. Photo By SG ZA / Wikimedia Commons