Protecting Prostitutes, United Nations Style

— By Titania Kumeh
| Fri Dec. 17, 2010 6:26 PM PST

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/12/protecting-prostitutes-united-nations

Two decades after the murders, the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA started the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, a week-long memorial for Ridgway's victims and an anti-violence campaign calling attention to hate crimes against sex workers. Today marks the event's seven-year anniversary. And last month, two women took the sex workers' right-to-safety movement even further.

In early November, a trans woman ex-sex worker who'd worked in Washington, DC (who we'll call Regina to protect her identity) and a 20-year sex worker rights advocate named Penelope Saunders appeared at the Palais des Nations in Geneva to lobby UN delegates reviewing the US's human rights record. Holding a report (PDF) assembled by an international coalition of advocacy groups, Regina and Penelope tried to talk ambassadors from Columbia, Australia, New Zealand, and 12 other countries into recommending that the US dismantle its anti-prostitution policies. The report suggests that all mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for those arrested under prostitution charges should be repealed. And that sex workers arrested and charged under prostitution laws should have their records cleared. Support services like education, job training, and healthcare should replace criminal charges, it adds.