This brief provides ten reasons why decriminalizing sex work is the best policy for promoting health and human rights for sex workers, their families, and communities.

Human Rights Watch has conducted research on sex work around the world, including in Cambodia

Introduction

Sex workers are at disproportionate risk of violence and sexual and emotional ill health, harms that have been linked to the criminalisation of sex work. We synthesised evidence on the extent to...

Decriminalization would allow sex workers to maintain their livelihood without fear of violence or arrest, and access health care to protect themselves.

Understand how Amnesty has worked to protect human rights of sex workers, and why the policy is so important

Sex work is criminalized throughout the United States, typically as misdemeanor offenses. Similar to the way the Unites States treats and criminalizes drug use, the policing of sex work exacerbates...

Globally, female sex workers are 13.5% more likely to be living with HIV than other women of reproductive age; in Asia, female sex workers are almost 30% more likely to be living with HIV.

Mike tells Sarah how NGOs, activists and George W. Bush resurrected the ‘stranger danger’ panic for the modern era. Digressions include Reply All, muffins and Yelp for massage parlors. …

This Briefing Note outlines the problems with the conflation of the term 'sexual exploitation' with sex work, and how this exacerbates harms to sex workers.