CHRONICLE OF THE VI ALL-UKRAINIAN FORUM OF SEX WORKERS

On 14-15 December 2023, in Kyiv the VI All-Ukrainian Forum of Sex Workers was held. Sex workers identified the main topic of the event as a response to the crisis and joint actions of communities in times of war.

The Forum program included: presentation of current research and monitoring of violations of the rights of SWs, and presentation of the results of these studies by community leaders and our partners; discussion of legislative initiatives in the field of decriminalization of sex work; assessing the impact of war on the life, health and well-being of SWs; and the effectiveness of community support programs.

During the opening ceremony, our dear and reliable partners made welcoming remarks:

Vera Yakovenko, Coordinator of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in Poltava Oblast: "The girls who regularly attend humanitarian classes in Poltava have changed - they have become more confident and aware of their rights. They have also been greatly supported by humanitarian aid."

Kostyantyn Pysarev, head of the NGO "Rainbow Life": "CO "Legalife-Ukraine" is a cosy and friendly organisation that always supports colleagues."

Kristina Manicheva, representative of SWAN (Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network): "This forum is an example of resilience, as is all the work of CO "Legalife-Ukraine" at this time. We are pleasantly surprised by how much research your organisation has conducted during the war to be aware of the needs to be addressed. The positive experience of CO "Legalife-Ukraine" can be used in other regions."

Tenyana Lebid (NGO “VONA”) and Vera Varyga (CO «Positive Women”) also welcomed audience.

The All-Ukrainian Forum of Sex Workers is a great opportunity to present the problems and achievements of the community, research results and plans for the future to the society

Kristina Manicheva, noted that despite the war, CO "Legalife-Ukraine" continues to conduct various studies to update the needs of the community and make support programs more effective. Kristina presented joint research work of SWAN and CO "Legalife-Ukraine" with funding from UNAIDS TSM in the presentation "Regional assessment of the impact of the war in Ukraine on sex workers and sex worker self-organisation in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia".

Summary of her presentation

The war has hit all Ukrainians hard, many families have lost their breadwinners, people of different categories have lost their jobs, money, housing, and have been forced to migrate within the country or go abroad. The level of violence is increasing, and women remain the most vulnerable to domestic violence and violence by military aggressors.

Sex workers face the same difficulties, but their burden is multiplied by criminalisation, economic and social vulnerability, legal insecurity, stigma and lack of state support.

SINCE THE FIRST DAYS OF THE WAR:

- They are exposed to new war-related risks to their lives and health.

- They lose the ability to provide themselves and their families with livelihoods, pay for loans and housing and communal services.

- Many of them do not have satisfactory housing today, due to lower incomes and rising rental prices. Internal SWs migrants become homeless and lose their housing - they cannot continue to pay rent, and social crisis housing is overcrowded.

- There are no specific state programs to support SWs in Ukraine. SWs have the opportunity to receive social benefits as internally displaced persons (IDPs) on a general basis. However, due to the lack of official employment in peacetime, they cannot apply for general state aid/compensation to war victims. And recently, due to changes in the procedures for issuing social benefits, SWs cannot issue such types of social assistance, such as payments to low-income families and single mothers, because they do not have a certificate of official employment.

- War-affected IDPs are forced to move from one temporary dwelling to another or to other cities/countries where the military situation is safer. Often, in the absence of official evacuation, people need assistance with transportation/reimbursement of transportation costs for relocation, as they do not have their own funds.

- Martial law has led to worsened access to HIV/AIDS prevention programs, and at the beginning of the war there was a high risk of interruption of HIV treatment and drug addiction treatment for many SWs.

The war has a painful impact on the psychological and physical health of SWs, which is confirmed by contacting the Hotline for SWs to the psychologists of the CO "Legalife-Ukraine", and negatively affects their economic and financial situation, as well as their legal and social status.

As sex work is criminalised and not recognised as a type of work, they do not rely on state support, and due to the high level of stigma and discrimination in society, they also lack support from civil society. CO "Legalife-Ukraine" is the only source of stable support for many of SWs.

The war in Ukraine has an impact on the markets of other countries. In the countries of Central or Central-Eastern Europe, working conditions for local sex workers have worsened; the majority note problems with housing and a sharp drop in earnings..

Instead, Ukrainian sex workers who were forced to flee to Poland due to the war mostly gave up sex work because they have children or elderly parents and fear of losing social benefits and assistance.

In some countries, including Moldova, Poland and Slovakia, concerns about human trafficking have increased amid the war, especially as women and girls flee Ukraine. According to Sex Work Polska, some sex workers, including those from Ukraine, have noticed increased attention to sex work establishments in Polish cities since the adoption of the law.

However, respondents from Moldova, Slovakia and Ukraine did not see any cases of human trafficking since the outbreak of the war. In Poland, there was one single case.

This means that huge amounts of money and resources have been spent on a problem that has no real basis and is not the most pressing for SWs today.

Kristina also noted the main problems faced by the self-organisation of SWs CO "Legalife-Ukraine" after the outbreak of war:

The self-organization was forced to reconsider its priorities and focus on humanitarian projects to help the SWs: "Humanitarian aid is a new direction in our activities. We hadn’t done it before, so we didn’t realise how difficult it could be and what a big workload it was. We didn’t have enough employees, warehouses, and it was physically very difficult. We had to learn how to do it."

Humanitarian aid grants are short-term, and the amount of aid is decreasing, although the need does not diminish over time.

During the session "Results of monitoring of violations of the rights of vulnerable groups, in particular representatives of the community of SWs, and response", Yevhen Bilotskyi from the National Paralegal Hub, Natalia Kozarenko from the UHHRU (Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights) and Mykhailo Reznik, lawyer, consultant of the CO "Legalife-Ukraine" spoke.

Summary of their presentations

250 paralegals are already working in the DATACHECK system. These are representatives of 9 key communities (MSM and LGBT+ people, women and youth living with HIV, sex workers, injecting drug users, former prisoners, people with tuberculosis) who have been trained in basic legal aid. All assistance provided by paralegals is free and confidential on a peer-to-peer basis," said Evgeny Bilotskyi in his report.

DataCheck-Human-Rights is a system for recording and responding to human rights violations of key populations vulnerable to HIV. The system records human rights violations in the following areas: Healthcare, Justice, Work, Community, Education, Emergencies.

More than 790 appeals were received from sex workers this year, of which more than 500 were resolved. Most cases of violations of rights were recorded in Vinnytsia region (140), Kirovohrad region (132), Mykolaiv region (128) and Poltava region (118), and the least - in Kharkiv (3), Cherkasy (1), Chernivtsi (4) and Kyiv (6). Most often, the rights of sex workers were violated by representatives of the medical sector - 337 appeals.

Natalia Isaieva, director of CO "Legalife-Ukraine": "Violators of sex workers’ rights are afraid of publicity, so the intervention of paralegals who represent self-organisation and have leverage at different levels often leads to the fact that the case is resolved on the spot, even without the involvement of lawyers."

Natalia Kozarenko, coordinator of the network of public reception offices of the UHHRU, shared her experience of cooperation in protecting the rights of representatives of key populations.

For 5 years now, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union has been providing legal aid to communities as part of a joint project with the CO "100 PERCENT LIFE".

More than 5 thousand consultations and qualified legal aid were provided to victims in 2022-2023. Most often, people filed complaints against: courts, police and medical institutions.

Currently, the UHHRU is working on two cases where the victims are sex workers. The first case concerns the medical sector. The second case is about blackmail by the police: law enforcement officers raided the premises and demanded that the SWs work on their terms, seizing all funds and phones. The joint efforts of the SWs managed to return the funds and phones, but the police have not yet been punished, so the case is ongoing.

Our consultant, Mykhailo Reznik, a lawyer at Legalife-Ukraine, shared his life hacks for defending violated rights.

If you see that you are being "footballed", namely:

a) you are sent from office to office or from body to body, and the issue is not resolved;

b) you are told only orally that you are not entitled to something; or your boss is sick; or on holiday, come back in a week, etc.

do not waste your time and apply to the relevant authority with a written statement or (in case of violation of your rights) file a complaint in writing against such "figures".

Mykhailo also advised the following:

Minimise verbal communication with law enforcement officers and turn it into a written appeal. All government agencies should respond within a month. Ideally, they should put a number on the second copy or send it by registered mail.

Contact the government contact centre - https://ukc.gov.ua/ - where you can submit an appeal online. It is free and very convenient. Representatives of the centre will distribute your appeal to the relevant government agency.

 File a complaint at several levels upwards. For example, if the violation occurred in Brovary, write not only to the Kyiv Region Prosecutor’s Office, but also to the Office of the Prosecutor General.

In difficult cases, try to open criminal cases.

Oksana Kashyntseva, lawyer, PhD, coordinator of the Fight for Health Platform, and Iryna Yakovets, PhD, senior researcher, expert of the Fight for Health Platform, presented to the participants the initiatives to eliminate stigma and decriminalise sex work. More about this presentation read in separate article.

Anastasiia Vorobiova from ActionAids delivered an interactive lecture on Gender Inclusive Security and Protection in Emergency Situations.

Anastasiia suggested comparing the threat of gender-based violence to the threat of rocket attacks: we cannot influence the threat, but we can reduce our vulnerability, thus increasing our security.

This also works with the protection of sex workers, for example: we cannot influence "bad" law enforcement officers, but we can teach sex workers to defend their rights, and this will reduce their vulnerability.

During the Forum, all leaders shared their experience of working at CO "Legalife-Ukraine".

Polina Shyshkova (Kyiv) considers finding a sex worker-friendly doctor to be the most difficult part of her work.

Polina is concerned about the problem of stigma against sex work and has her own vision of how to overcome it, using the experience of the LGBTIQ community, namely:

Talking openly about sex work as an experience;

Show that there are many sex workers;

Explain that sex work does not characterise a person;

Dialogues with people who stigmatize sex workers should be supported by arguments (statistics, facts and research findings)

"Thank you all for a great time, sharing experiences and summing up the results of the year. It was nice to see everyone again, meet some of the participants for the first time and discuss how the year went in different regions." - Polina, leader in Kyiv.

Maryna Pohorila, director of the Poltava branch of Legalife-Ukraine, shared the achievements of the initiative group over the past year: "For the first time, the initiative group of the Poltava branch received a grant from the Ukrainian Women’s Fund. Thanks to this project, 5 psychological trainings for the group and a training on public speaking were conducted”.

Maryna stressed that sex workers are usually reluctant to talk about their work or the problems they face. Most of them suffer from self-stigma, blame themselves and do not expect help from anyone. That’s why they really need these trainings, which help them become more confident and open.

Maryna maintains close relations with other organisations representing key populations. This helps to address many of the common needs and challenges: "I believe that we should work not only with Kyiv, but also directly with other regions, such horizontal connections strengthen us a lot."

The leader also stressed the importance of communication with local media: "Communicate with local journalists is important and sometimes useful. For example, after my interview with a local platform, our cooperation with the police did improved."

Svitlana Makohon, director of the Kryvyi Rih branch of CO "Legalife-Ukraine", recalled her path to human rights activism and shared her achievements over the years of work at CO "Legalife-Ukraine".

Svitlana went from being a drug addict to a community leader and a graduate of a Bible school.

In 2023, the community got its first office, which was provided by the church, where today the SWs gather to hold information sessions and support each other: "We call it a real Office of Invincibility!"

Svitlana noted that over the past two years, Legalife-Ukraine has provided a huge amount of humanitarian aid and psychological support to SWs:"The girls are very grateful. For many of them, it just helped them survive the war."

Viktoriia Sakhnenko, Director of the Mykolaiv branch of Legalife-Ukraine, shared her formula for success:

"The partners around us are 80% of our success" and recalled the history of the initiative group’s development in Mykolaiv: "At first, I visited them - brothels and saunas, distributed condoms, tested, counselled, and earned their trust. And then, when we developed a relationship and trust, they started coming to our office. Today we have been talking a lot about humanitarian aid, and I agree that Legalife-Ukraine has saved many people with its support. I am a part of the Legalife-Ukraine family and I am very proud of it."

Andrii Zhuk, a paralegal of the sex worker community at CO "Legalife-Ukraine" in Dnipro, spoke about current problems and violations of the rights of SWs.

Andrii noted that the main problems in the region are the police, their attitude towards SWs and corruption, as well as medical workers who stigmatize SWs and do not provide assistance.

Due to the war and forced migration, there is a shortage of medical staff: "While it is still possible to establish cooperation in Dnipro, it is extremely difficult to find a ’friendly gynaecologist’ in the region. We have two such doctors for the entire region".

Sex workers often face insufficient protection and support from the police, especially in situations of violence or abuse. The number of cases of violations of the rights of sex workers is increasing, and a new type of "punishment" for men involved in sex work has emerged - the delivery of summonses. In addition, Andrii noted that over 200 searches of sex workers were conducted in their region during the year, the number of cases of prosecution for cyber sex doubled, and this raises the issue of decriminalisation of sex work even more acutely.

"Despite all the difficulties, we have been working and continue to work. Until we achieve our common goal."

The second day of the Forum was devoted to summing up the results of the year and making plans. How do they see the future of the SWs?

The community’s list of wishes and urgent matters for the next year looks like this:

The self-organisation has long-term funding to develop the community and support the SWs. All representative offices and branches of CO "Legalife-Ukraine" have office space and equipment to carry out activities and hold meetings with initiative groups and partners.

In each of the regions, shelters for sex workers have been established, where each sex worker can receive protection and shelter, necessary legal, social and medical services, training and career guidance, and most importantly, understanding and support, time and opportunity to decide for themselves where to go next in life.

A large PR campaign was launched to destigmatize the community, with video and photo projects, interviews and public events with the SWs, involving international partners, media and opinion leaders to debunk stereotypes and myths about the SWs.

Decriminalisation of sex work was introduced and a project to provide social sex services to people with special needs was launched.

HIV Coordination Councils have been established in all regions and representatives from key populations have been included in them to influence programs and activities for the community, making them more qualitative, accessible and relevant.

Leaders and activists have the opportunity to study together, attend international events on the protection of the rights of the community, communicate and learn from the experience of self-organisations from other countries, and develop partnerships.

“We have been together for 6 years! I am very grateful to all of you, dear! You helped me to find myself and realise my potential. You are all incredible heroes in your work. I am grateful to our defenders that we have the opportunity to get together and plan our future work," says Svitlana Makohon.

We are grateful to our partners CO "100 PERCENT LIFE" and IF "Renaissance" (БО «100 ВІДСОТКІВ ЖИТТЯ» та МФ “ВІДРОДЖЕННЯ”) for supporting the sex worker community.

Team CO "Legalife-Ukraine"