Contacts: N’Jaila Rhee newjerseyrua@gmail.com, Penelope Saunders, bestpracticespolicyproject@gmail.com, Cris Sardina, director@desireealliance.org, Akynos, blacksexworkercollective@gmail.com, Monica Jones, theoutlawprojectinc@gmail.com
Sex Worker Rights Groups have told the United Nations how the U.S. violates human rights: now the world is watching
Newark, NJ – November 5th, 2020 – On Monday November 9, 2020 the world will be watching as member states of the United Nations hold the United States accountable for its spectacular failures in ensuring the health and human rights of sex workers, transgender people, migrants and other communities harmed by the criminalization of sex work.
This United Nations session known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) will be publicly live streamed by UNTV 8:30 am US Eastern, 7:30 am CT, 5:30 am US Pacific and 2:30 pm in Europe/Geneva. Our sex worker and trans led coalition groups will be live tweeting the event using the hashtags #sexworkerdemands #Blacktransleadership #whoresspeakup #holdtheUSaccountable #UPR2020.
The UPR is held every five years to hold member countries responsible for their human rights records and provides one of the only ways that our communities can shine a light on the extreme violations going on inside the U.S.
“We are calling on the United States to immediately end the atrocities of current border policies that impact all immigrants, including sex workers,” says Cris Sardina of Desiree Alliance. “Our report documents the death of migrant sex workers at the hands of state agents, the incarceration of migrant sex workers in rights violating detention centers, and the deportation of vulnerable people back into harm’s way. The deaths of people like Yang Song and Roxsana Hernandez must not happen again.”
“Black trans people in the United States are facing catastrophic levels of police brutality,” says Monica Jones, founder of the Arizona-based Outlaw Project. “We believe that member states of the UN will agree that it is time to put an end to anti-sex work policing practices targeting transgender people.”
“The U.S. has accepted UPR Recommendation 86, requiring it to take action to address the vulnerability of sex workers and transgender people to violence and human rights abuses,” comments Penelope Saunders of BPPP. “Yet in the last five years the U.S has pursued policies that directly contradict this commitment, putting in place new federal laws such as FOSTA/SESTA that silence online communication about health and rights of sex workers and prevent sex workers from organizing. This contradicts the right to assemble and speak.”
The Outlaw Project, Desiree Alliance, BPPP, the Black Sex Worker Collective, and New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance submitted a shadow report to the United Nations about rights violations and have spent a year meeting with policy makers despite the barriers of the pandemics of COVID19 and anti-Black police violence
To download a full copy of the report pls visit: http://www.bestpracticespolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SWCoalition_UPR36_USA_2019.pdf
To download a short one page summary of the report pls visit: http://www.bestpracticespolicy.org/2020/10/19/updated-upr-statement/
To learn more about the UPR process visit: tinyurl.com/UPR2020info