CO “Legalife-Ukraine” protection of rights and paralegal support for sex workers in Ukraine in 2024

In 2024, we expanded our network of paralegals who are working with sex worker community. Throughout the year, 22 paralegals provided support to SWs in 16 major cities of Ukraine: Vinnytsia, Poltava, Kryvyi Rih, Cherkasy, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kropyvnytskyi, Kherson, Zhytomyr, Lutsk, Kyiv, Rivne, Sumy, Lviv, Odesa and Chernivtsi.  The community used DataCheck app to record and respond to human rights violations.

In order to increase human rights capacity and involve the community in the paralegal network, 44 paralegals/activists were trained in 4 online trainings on protecting the rights of women and girls in war in 2024.

Our paralegals are people who do not have a specialised legal education, but who have undergone special training and can provide primary legal assistance in case of rights violations. This name with the prefix ‘para’ was chosen by analogy with ‘paramedics’ who also provide primary care. Only in this case this help is juridical.

According to our surveys, the proportion of SWs that face violations of their rights in war conditions is growing every year. Thus, at the beginning of the war, this figure was 56%, in the second year of the war - 62%, and finally, in the third year of the war, it reached 68%. Almost half of those we surveyed admit that this war and its consequences have had a negative impact on their ability to protect their rights.

Our paralegals record appeals from SWs regarding violations of their rights and provide legal assistance to SWs, if they need it and agree to it. Most often, SWs are facing: refusals to provide services in medical and social institutions, ignoring of complaints and applications from SWs by law enforcement agencies, delay of the process of obtaining social benefits and demands of charitable contributions for the opportunity to receive services.

During 2024, paralegals of CO ‘Legalife-Ukraine’ recorded in DataCheck more than 1,900 applications for violation of SWs’ rights. Of these, 1230 cases were successfully resolved by our paralegals with the consent of SWs to intervene and provide support.

Also, representatives of SWs community received services for the recovery of lost documents, for support and transportation to receive social and legal assistance, namely:

Support and transportation for social and legal assistance - 144 services

Restoration of lost documents - 61 services

The most frequent clients of paralegals were women - 98 per cent of applications, with the highest number of applications recorded in Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia, Poltava and Sumy regions.

The most frequent areas of concern for women’s rights violations were the following:

Education and Employment - 8% of the total number of cases;

Administrative services and social protection - 13% of the total number of cases;

Law enforcement and justice - 30% of the total number of cases;

Healthcare - 48% of the total number of cases.

Healthcare workers and law enforcement officials remain in the first place in terms of the number of violations of the rights of SWs.

The analysis of appeals recorded in the DataCheck app complemented the results of two studies conducted by CO “Legalife-Ukraine” in 2024: ‘Assessment of Barriers to Access to Services for LGBTQI People’ and “Study of the Impact of Martial Law on the Observance of Human Rights by LGBTQI People”. The results of the studies and recommendations based on them will form the basis for advocacy proposals from the community in 2025 and will be submitted for discussion to the Coordination Mechanisms on HIV/AIDS at the national and regional levels.

To expand the types of services for our community, CO ‘Legalife-Ukraine’ managed to attract additional funding and collect the needs of SWs to update them and provide emergency assistance to SWs in the regions, namely  - to provide humanitarian kits, temporary housing and transport to SWs affected by the military operations in Ukraine.

Let’s stay together and continue working to overcome crisis and protect the rights of the community!

Team of the CO “Legalife-Ukraine”