Health-e News: Time to decriminalize prostitution
Maria Stacey, acting director of the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT)

“…The concept of structural interventions is one that the South African HIV community has struggled with in the past, but fortunately there is growing evidence for the impact of structural interventions on HIV infection in sex workers. These interventions include policy reform, addressing gender-based violence, addressing workplace safety, mobilization of sex workers to speak out for their rights, skills development, training and sensitization of health care workers and police, gender empowerment, and interventions to address stigma and discrimination. The idea that sex work should be recognized as work, in order to protect sex workers’ human rights and labor rights, and in order to reduce sex workers’ HIV risk, is … an idea whose time has come” (2/12).